Mid Day Luxury Brand Days Sad Valentino Advanced Customization Advantage

Advanced customization is the highest embodiment of brand value, but how to cash it has always been a headache.

Valentino, a Italy high fashion house, has risen steadily after being guided by creative director Pierpaolo Piccioli. Recently, the brand's 2019 autumn and winter advanced custom fashion show released by Paris Gaosheng Zhou once again aroused the concern of the industry. With its distinctive individuality and diversity, this series has broken the recent change of high Monday. Pierpaolo Piccioli has revealed another possibility of advanced customization for the advanced customization that has always served the wealthy group.

Since last season, Pierpaolo Piccioli has begun to be interested in the tolerance of Gao Ding fashion. He has launched 45 black models in the 65 models of the series. This season, he mixed the complex inspiration of multi racial folklore, Renaissance painter Rosso Fiorentino, legendary fashion editor Diana Vreeland and so on, and further interpreted the difference and individuality, presenting a series of multi racial, cross age and diversified profiles. He said in a media interview after the show that the advanced custom fashion is unique and personal.

"For me, this series is to reiterate the importance of diversity. Inclusiveness is very important for advanced custom fashion, otherwise it represents a beautiful world but belongs to the past. Advanced customization must be diverse and gorgeous, "Pierpaolo Piccioli said in an interview after the show.

It is noteworthy that each set of the 71 sets of works of the series is named after its tailor. At the end of the fashion show, Pierpaolo Piccioli invited all tailors working in the fashion house to join in the curtain call and went to embrace Valentino Garavani, the founder of the fashion house who was sitting in the showroom.

Since Maria Grazia Chiuri left Valentino for DIOR as the creative director of women's clothing, the Pierpaolo Piccioli exhibition, which only held the creative power of Valentino, showed its talent in the aspect of advanced customization, and soon gained a high evaluation in the fashion industry.

Even in the ready-made clothing series, people can get a glimpse of the technology and the pure attitude close to the advanced customization. At the same time, he does not forget to infuse the contemporary art and interesting factors to break the dreary. In addition, Pierpaolo Piccioli is a series designed for the Moncler Genius project of Italy luxury feather brand Moncler, which impressed the consumers with the ingenuity of the combination of advanced customization and down coats.

German sociologist Georg Simmel wrote in the 1904 Fashion. Journal International Quarterly that fashion is driven by imitation and differentiation of these two forces. The middle class reflects their social status by pursuing the latest trend, and these trends are gradually imitated by the bottom of society. When the middle class finds it impossible to distinguish itself from the bottom of society, it starts to chase the next trend. The more anxious the middle class expresses their identity, the quicker the pace of fashion. Social media and contemporary marketing methods accelerate the pace of fashion.

But advanced customization is different from that of the middle class. Generally speaking, customers who are highly customised are the most conservative social strata. They do not welcome excessive changes. Advanced customization maintains consistent stability and does not change with the trend. This has become one of the reasons why Gao Ding Zhou's topic is decreasing in the social media era.

Hubert de Givenchy, founder of Givenchy, who died last year, said in an interview that "fashion is dead, and fashion houses are now only dependent on accessories. Even the fashion shops in Champs Elysees are in the name of fashion, actually selling handbags. His death was also considered by many commentaries to be the end of the era of advanced customization. As early as 2002, Yves Saint Laurent also made a judgement that "high fashion is dead".

Advanced customization represents brand image. The brand of high fashion house spends a lot of budget to hold high show, not for economic reward, but as an opportunity to shape brand image. However, advanced customization has not become profitable. It has become a common knowledge of the industry for many years. Especially those brands that only have advanced customization business, LVMH's Christian Lacroix, which was once a highly customized brand, is a typical example.

Now it seems that under the leadership of Pierpaolo Piccioli, Valentino gradually revealed the style of Valentino Garavani. The question now is how Valentino can transform the good reputation of advanced customization into the performance return of its garments and accessories, and promote the sustainable development of the brand.

As a matter of fact, Valentino is currently a relatively small brand that maintains high fashion tonal and is in good condition. It shows more potential than other mid-range luxury brands.

In April this year, Valentino CEO Stefano Sassi revealed at the Altagama consumer and retail insight conference organized by Boston consulting firm that sales in 2018 increased by 3.4% to 1 billion 200 million euros compared with 1 billion 160 million euros in 2017. He said that although Valentino did not grow at a normal pace, the Valentino showed a positive trend in 2018, and stressed that the group still had confidence in achieving strong growth.

In addition, Valentino showed positive trends in all markets in the first quarter of 2019, but Macao and Hongkong slowed down and were offset by the growth of sales in the mainland of China. He added that Chinese consumers now spend less on travel and choose more in the local market.

Stefano Sassi said that its casual wear has not shown any signs of weakness for the men's clothing department, which is increasingly vulnerable to rumors. He further explained that when the brand first entered the field of men's clothing business, it was inspired by the elegant tone of the brand women, but it was actually the direction of failure. Then Valentino turned to casual men's clothing. In 2016, it launched the sports shoes like Rockrunner, which are popular among male consumers.

Stefano Sassi added that, in general, formal clothing accounted for only 4% of the sales of men's clothing, 50% of accessories, and the rest of it was clothing and casual wear, and stressed that the concept of formal dress had been abandoned. Next, Valentino will still strive for leisure series, and the brand will never go back.

Stefano Sassi summarizes three major trends in the industry. First, consumer loyalty is getting lower and lower. Second, brands must act quickly to adapt to changing trends. Third, the brand needs to better carry out marketing and communication activities through digital revolution. Through more communication with consumers, consumers can understand the value and DNA of brands and stand out from many competitors.

Realizing that the brand can not counter the trend of the Valentino, it has made a corresponding layout for the capture of consumer mentality in marketing strategy and product structure.

Before the autumn and winter series was released in Tokyo last November, Valentino collaborate with Japanese origami artists Kyohei Katsuta and Satoshi Kamiya, Japan's famous brand Yohji Yamamoto and Doublet, and set up a concept store called VLTN TKY, trying to expand the brand development idea through the new form of cross-border cooperation.

Valentino has also worked hard for the Chinese market. The brand takes the lead in choosing to conform to the trend of star and KOL influence enhancement, and cooperate with the popular traffic stars. In 2017, Valentino announced that after 90 million artists Zhang Yixing was the first brand ambassador of the Chinese market through the official account of micro-blog, and then announced in January this year that he was the first spokesman for men's clothing in Greater China.

At the same time, in the mainland market with online channels as the main consumer places, Valentino also seized the luxury marketing hotspots of Tanabata. In July 23rd last year, the Tanabata series, which was launched by Ambassador Zhang Yixing of China, was released on the WeChat Mini program entitled "VALENTINO Tanabata limited series" two days later, and some products sold out on the first day.

In order to seize the new growth point of the cosmetics and perfume market, the brand reached a long-term cooperation agreement on cosmetics and perfume in May last year with L'OREAL, the world's largest makeup group, and came into effect in January 1, 2019. A new PWC study shows that the global cosmetic industry will also grow further in the future, the annual compound growth rate will reach 5%, and the annual sales volume will exceed 500 billion euros by 2021.

Keeping pace with the times and contributing to leisure series, rather than paranoid insistence on high fashion tonal, proves that Valentino has a relatively realistic anticipation and planning for business layout and business performance, providing a prerequisite for the commercialization of the brand in the future.

However, some analysts believe that for Valentino, accessories business is still a big short board, but it is also an opportunity for the future. According to Research Cosmos, by 2025, the luxury handbag Market will grow at a CAGR of 8%. Only rely on explosive shoes can not pull the brand to achieve strong growth, while the high fashion price is too high and timeliness, not like Louis Vuitton, Gucci, DIOR has many kinds of signature hot selling handbags, resulting in Valentino has never been able to stand firmly in the first tier luxury goods.

At the same time, Valentino also needs to be alert to the trap of mid-range luxury brands. The global fashion retailing industry continues to be turbulent, and the major luxury brands are beginning to accelerate the pace of change. In the first quarter of this year, the earnings data show that market flows are constantly flowing to the top luxury brands, and there is no mass marketing budget and bold enough innovation measures. It will be very difficult for mid-range luxury brands to achieve breakthroughs. (extended reading: "mid-range luxury brands" lose growth momentum, the first quarter of the world's major luxury brand earnings summary)

From the perspective of group strategy, the change of Valentino ownership structure has also become an uncertain factor for the future development of the brand.

Earlier, according to Reuters, after selling the British fashion brand Anya Hindmarch, Qatar private equity Mayhoola, which owns Valentino, Balmain and Pal Zileri, may want to keep distance from the luxury sector. It is reconsidering the group's investment and positioning in the fashion industry, and hovers in the two options of leaving the fashion industry and further increasing investment. It is reported that the valuation of Valentino is currently between 25 and 3 billion euros.

Some sources further pointed out that the head of Mayhoola has realized that there is a lack of structural strategy in its investment, and Stefano Sassi may be responsible for supervising all Mayhoola fashion brands for a period of time, because he is unofficially involved in the operation of brands including Balmain and Pal Zileri.

The industry generally believes that once Mayhoola decides to get rid of the fashion business, the Gucci parent company Kai Yun group will most likely take over Valentino.

Last year, there were rumors that Kai Yun group was negotiating with Mayhoola on the acquisition of Valentino, and the industry is generally optimistic about the acquisition. Due to the coincidence of the target market and consumer group of Valentino and Gucci, owning Valentino will mean that the group has another trump card to lock in the consumer, alleviating the worries that the industry is similar to the Gucci style and leads to the fatigue of consumers. At the same time, the two sides can play a huge synergy in production and marketing.

Compared with Mayhoola, Valentino seems to be able to go further under the escort of Kai Yun group. For the latter, it can be regarded as a safety card.

Valentino said recently that the board of directors is evaluating a loyalty program for all employees, not just management. It will issue and allocate a total of 3 million 180 thousand shares of the company from 2019 to 2023, allowing employees to directly become shareholders of the brand, aiming to stimulate core staff to work in a long-term and sustainable manner and play their important strategic functions so as to promote the long-term development of the group and create an enterprise culture that continuously creates value and improves performance. This is seen as a manifestation of Valentino's long-term ambition.

The days of mid-range brands are sad, and the advantage of advanced customization is precisely the chance to squeeze Valentino into the first tier. But Valentino obviously needs more daring concrete measures to transform its unique influence into performance growth. Author: Drizzie