3 Seconds Were Sold Out. Why Is UNIQLO X KAWS So Hot?

3 years ago, the phenomenon of "universal consumption" triggered by UNIQLO and KAWS was at its peak.

According to the fashion business express, the "KAWS:SUMMER" series of Japanese fashion UNIQLO and contemporary American artist KAWS is officially launched today. The products include 12 adult T-shirts, 6 children's wear and 4 canvas bags, which not only have KAWS's classic XX eye and skeleton image COMPANION, but also KAWS's giant BFF PINK built last year in the DIOR men's show.

In the wake of the announcement video and the early exposure of stars such as Ouyang and Nana, the series received high attention before the sale, triggering a series of consumers queuing up early to shop and snapping up, and the products with the highest price of only 99 yuan were all snapped up in 3 seconds in some shops.

According to sources, the value of series products in the second-hand monopoly market is expected to turn 10 times to nearly 1000 yuan.

It is noteworthy that this series is unique because it is the last line of cooperation between KAWS and UNIQLO.

KAWS himself announced the news through the official account of Instagram two days before the issue of cooperation series, which aroused widespread concern of consumers.

The product with the highest price of only 99 yuan is completely robbed in the shop within 3 seconds.

KAWS's WeChat search index has risen 100 thousand times in the past 1 months, according to fashion business express.

As one of the most important artists recognized nowadays, KAWS, who lives in the Brook forest region of New York, has created a lot of influential works in the field of pop art. These works not only touch young people with their modern artistic style, but also span the field of art and design, including contemporary art, graphics and product design, oil paintings, murals and large sculptures.

In early 1990s, when KAWS studied painting in Manhattan's visual arts school, she showed talent in graffiti. She painted her soft skull into skull and XX eyes. She often painted KAWS on walls and trains, and even secretly brought home DKNY, Calvin Klein and other luxury brand posters home for processing.

After graduating from University, he entered an animation studio as a free painter. This experience gave him the opportunity to pay more attention to pop culture and idols in comic strips.

KAWS's fame began in 1999. The Paris buyer's shop Colette organized a small exhibition called "KAWS:Exposed" under the introduction of "i-D", and issued the same name book.

In 2006, KAWS founded OriginalFake, a personal clothing brand, and went out in 2013.

However, KAWS's art works are more widely disseminate after working with UNIQLO.

Under the traction of NIGO, a friend and UT designer of the UNIQLO library, the topic of KAWS works began to be known and even sought after by more young consumers through 99 yuan one T-shirt.

UT is the project launched by UNIQLO in 2004 to better conform to the trend market. It launched the fashion T-shirt with the global designers and artists. In 2014, when it came to stream Godfather NIGO, the project became the most famous brand of art crossover.

In 2017, UNIQLO joined the Yu Deyao Museum and the Fort Worth Museum of modern art in China to hold the "KAWS: the beginning of the end" China's first exhibition, presenting the most classic works of KAWS in the past twenty years to Chinese consumers.

Subsequently, UNIQLO and KAWS also launched the "KAWS x PEANUTS" and "KAWS x Sesame Street" series, which also triggered panic buying boom.

Some analysts point out that the attraction of KAWS works for young consumers lies in the perfect combination of street culture and other industries. The image of their creation integrates the popular cartoon characters, and reflects the feelings and circumstances that embody feelings through humorous presentation.

The picture shows UT creative director NIGO and contemporary American artist KAWS.

KAWS announced through the Instagram that this cooperation series is the end of its work with UNIQLO.

In addition to KAWS, NIGO has also pulled the head of Murakami Takashi, Futura and Pharrell Williams into the UNIQLO camp, enabling UNIQLO to speed up the invasion of the market by grabbing a series of people who have the right to speak while specializing in high-tech new retail sales.

Earlier, there was an industry survey. Before NIGO became the creative director of UT series, the correlation between UNIQLO and the trend market was 30%. When NIGO took office, the index increased to 70%.

Last May, UNIQLO announced the appointment of Takahiro Kinoshita Kinoshita Hyoho, editor in chief of fashion and culture magazine POPEYE, to manage the overall creative dissemination of UNIQLO.

Kinoshita Hyoho will work closely with UNIQLO's global marketing team and creative President John Jay at his headquarters in Tokyo to supervise and manage UNIQLO's brand promotion and product design creativity.

In addition, UNIQLO and LVMH's luxury brand Loewe creative director J.W. Anderson, Chinese designer brand Alexander Wang and the original creative director Lemaire of Hermes have also become a regular product launched on a quarterly basis, which has gained positive response from consumers.

According to the survey, with the quality foundation, UNIQLO's "goodwill", "recognition" and "purchase intention" all surpass the competitive brands.

What makes sense is that another fast fashion H&M, which also keeps consumers queuing up all night for the same series, is in a bottleneck.

H&M will launch joint venture with new designers every year, but after its cooperation with Alexander Wang, its joint series is not as attractive as consumers in the past.

However, H&M did not give up this strategy.

Different from UNIQLO, H&M partners are usually luxury brands or high-end fashion designers, such as Lanvin, Balmain and last year's British designer Erdem Moralioglu. The latest is Project Love series, which is working with Italy designer Giambattista Valli.

H&M's latest joint series, even with supermodel Kendall Jenner and Chinese popular singer Li Yuchun's platform, has not received much attention.

It is reported that some products of Project Love have been unveiled at the amfAR charity evening in Cannes, France. They are presented by supermodel Kendall Jenner, fashion blogger Chiara Ferragni and Chinese female star Li Yuchun, among whom Li Yuchun is appointed spokesperson for the series.

However, the limited pre-sale of the series in some stores in H&M in May 25th did not generate much topic heat.

The series of cooperation between H&M and Erdem Moralioglu last year did not stir up too much spray, which is in sharp contrast to the grand occasion of queuing up overnight by consumers.

Some analysts believe that the failure of the H&M strategy is partly due to the increasingly widespread and even widespread flooding of the joint series, which has led to an aesthetic fatigue.

In order to meet the demand of fast fashion for "fast" and "relatively low price", high-end brands or designers who collaborate with fast fashion brands usually have to abandon the quality and durability of high-end fashion because of their interests. This is why consumers lose confidence in such cooperative products.

On the other hand, the joint partners of fast fashion choice are getting narrower.

Some analysts believe that the popularity of the joint series is directly related to the popularity of the partners, but the popular luxury brands are vigilant against this cooperation to prevent brand exposure from flooding. This leads to the more difficult choice of H&M's serial choice.

This year is the fifteenth year that H&M has launched joint cooperation. The carnival scene of consumers has become the past.

At the same time, the problem of H&M joint series has gradually emerged. In 2011, Versace x H&M series had a large number of returns, and the cooperation series of brand 2017 and Balmain was also exposed to quality problems.

H&M seems to have taken the way of joint cooperation to a dead end, while the performance of UNIQLO, which is the key node of the trend of art, is rising.

According to fashion business express data, in the first half of February 28th, the sales of fast selling group of UNIQLO parent company increased by 6.8% to 1 trillion and 270 billion yen, or 76 billion 300 million yuan, gross profit margin was 47.9%, net profit increased by nearly two figures, and recorded 9.5% to 114 billion yen, or about 6 billion 800 million yuan, a record high.

During the period, the income and profit of UNIQLO in mainland China recorded a double-digit strong growth. Sales of e-commerce outlets rose by 30%, pushing UNIQLO sales up 14.3% to 580 billion yen, or 34 billion 700 million yuan, in the international market other than Japan, while operating profit increased 9.6% to 88 billion 400 million yen.

In addition, UNIQLO's same store sales in Southeast Asia and Oceania have recorded an upward trend, and the operating profit in the US market has also been successful.

Sales of UNIQLO Japan continued to be affected by the weather, down 0.5% to 491 billion 300 million yen, and operating profit plunged 23.7% to 67 billion 700 million yen, but the sales of e-commerce channels also recorded a strong growth of more than 30%. The proportion of revenue increased from 7.5% in the same period last year to 9.9%.

According to Nikkei BP consulting company recently released brand image survey, "brand Japan 2019" results, UNIQLO ranked twelfth, is also the first clothing category.

Not only is UNIQLO, but the luxury brand and street culture that were originally incompatible with fire and water have also been speeded up within a year. From the joint name of Louis Vuitton and Supreme, DIOR, Fendi and even CHANEL are moving closer to the trend culture.

Some analysts have pointed out that street style and hip-hop culture are being resurgence around the world, overturning the fashion industry dominated by high fashion, so the rise of UNIQLO is logical.

The difference between UNIQLO and Zara and H&M lies in its adherence to quality. Many consumers say that even if UNIQLO's series of cooperation funds have been fired to nearly 1000 yuan, its comfortable texture is also worthwhile when used as pajamas.

In order to avoid the repeat of the mistakes, uniqo never abandoned the investment in new materials research and development, and in the face of changeable consumers and weather, the uniqo is focused on making the single product to the extreme.

It is certain that UNIQLO will continue to play a fast fashion "destroyer" through the global Internet and the constantly emerging designers' joint series.

In addition, the importance of excellent young people is the key to the growth of UNIQLO and young consumers.

In 2014, UNIQLO was named "the most desirable enterprise in the new generation" by Cheers magazine. It is not only popular among young people, but also one of the largest number of Japanese companies in the world.

According to Nikkei Chinese net news, Xun marketing group will raise the salary level of the employees. The monthly salary of 650 graduating graduates scheduled for April 2020 will be increased by 21% to 255 thousand yen, or 15 thousand yuan, compared with the current 210 thousand yen.

At the same time, Xun marketing group also said it would consider raising salaries for employees who were recruited before April this year to ensure fairness.

It is noteworthy that Ryui Masa will usher in his 70 birthday this year, and is also the deadline for him to set aside his CEO. He will continue to "supervise" the operation of the company as chairman in the future.

It is reported that the new CEO will not recruit from outside, but from the executive directors and other internal staff.

At present, there are more than 40 executive directors in XXX group, and Ryui Masa's two sons are among them, but Liu well has officially denied that he regards his son as chief executive candidate.

Ryui Masa said that UNIQLO brand clothing for all types of consumers, whether they are billionaires, middle class or low price customers, and in the rapidly changing fashion retail market, the actual operation must be responsible for young people.

Some people have speculated that KAWS's cooperation with UNIQLO at the best time may mean that the "graffiti" will return to its work.

According to official data, in the past 2018, the total auctions of all works in KAWS increased by 260% compared with 2017, with a total turnover of nearly 34 million dollars, and the average single piece price doubled to US $82 thousand from 42 thousand and 300 US dollars in 2017.

In April this year, NIGO sold THE KAWS ALBUM to Hongkong at Sotheby's auction house at a price of HK $5 million, and the final paction price was HK $100 million, which refreshed the auction record of the KAWS works. "KAWS"

This undoubtedly pushed the popularity and brand value of KAWS to a climax.

For UNIQLO, the risk of the trend is that street culture is once again incorporated by capital into a tool to attract young consumers.

In this regard, Warren & Campbell pointed out in their research that the more the sub culture crowd prevailing in the mainstream culture (countercultural), the more they feel the right way to break through the brand practice of social conservative norms is particularly cool.

When young consumers will learn about KAWS on the print of UNIQLO T-shirts, speed is no longer the key to winning fast fashion. A new consumption cycle is on the way.