Kardashian Launched Into The Underwear Market, Behind Which Is A Huge Cake Selling Tens Of Billions Of Dollars Annually.

At the end of June, American TV celebrities and Kim Kardashian West launched their new body sculpting underwear brand, emphasizing that this body garment can perfectly display the good shape of women and show many models of Kim Kardashian with lordosis and rear warp wearing a promotional photo of the new series of body sculpting underwear.

However, the name of the body clothing brand "Kimono (kimono)" has attracted overwhelming criticism and opposition: many Japanese netizens said that she did not respect Japanese culture, ignored the particularity of traditional Japanese clothing and made improper use of Culture Appropriation. Even the Kyoto City of Japan, the birthplace of kimono culture, was openly protested by the mayor.

In the end, as criticism intensified, Kim Kardashian, who insisted on not changing her name, announced through Twitter that after careful consideration, she decided to rename the brand.

"This is a new brand that I have planned and designed in the past year, and it is my passion for 15 years." Kardashian had high hopes for new brands on her personal twitter, but now, the "Kimono" storm may disrupt her plans over the past few months. She and brand investors are trying to save the chance to occupy a place in the industry of over $83 billion.

The global lingerie market, which includes underwear, is valued at $83 billion 300 million in 2018 and is expected to grow to $93 billion 800 million by 2023, according to market research firm Ou Rui information. Although the vast majority of underwear market are ordinary underwear and sports underwear products, competition in the field of body shaping is inevitable.

Compared with 2017, the number of new products in the US market increased by 143% in 2018, according to EDITED, a retail analyst. Among them, the most popular styles are high waist body pants, antiskid body suits and long sleeved body shaping clothes.

At present, there are not only the leading brands such as Spanx focusing on body building clothes, but also the underwear giants such as Vitoria's Victoria s Secret and countless new brands. EBY (famous model Sofia Vergara founded underwear and plastic underwear company, founded in 2017), ThirdLove, Cuup and Knix are the latest companies in the field.

In recent years, leading brands, including Vitoria's secret and Spanx, have faced varying degrees of market share reduction.

According to the data of Coresight Research, Vitoria's Secret market share declined from 31.7% in 2013 to 24% in 2018 under the intense competition in the market.

A spokesman for Spanx said in reply to an e-mail in the Wall Street journal, "although our underwear business is growing every year, we also see that competition in the industry is intensifying. We must constantly change in order to continue to maintain the leading position in the industry.

In a large and dispersed market, Kardashian hopes to win with the creation of fluent lines, more detailed classification and over a variety of alternative colors.

As early as last year, Kardashian has registered the "Kimono" brand in the United States, and has registered a series of similar brand names, including "Kimono Body", "Kimono Intimates" and "Kimono World".

In terms of product positioning, Kardashian chose to directly regard the American head dressing brand such as Spanx as an opponent.

"I also try to go through those brand of body sculpting underwear. But, including Spanx, their design will keep the place I do not want to flatten. " "My body sculpting underwear will be softer than other brands," she said. "The fabric that can be curled can highlight the part that the body should have highlighted."

According to the currently available products, the new brand's body sculpting series includes unscare underwear, underwear, waist waist pants and other products, not only has used a lot of traditional size classification from XS to XL, but also extends from XXS (00 yards) to XXXXL (20 yards). In addition, considering that it is often difficult for consumers to find underwear suitable for their skin color, similar to the confusion encountered in the purchase of concealer, buying naked colored underwear will also make women feel unhappy. Therefore, the new product Kardashian will launch will have 9 colors, and it is expected to be priced between 22 and 98 dollars.

In contrast, a traditional appearance and collar fitting kit in Spanx product line sells for about $150, with only two colors of black and champagne.

The new brand also led Kardashian to compete directly with another popular icon, Rihanna (Rihanna).

As the hero of Puma's recovery in recent years, besides the Puma joint name Puma x Fenty and the beauty makeup brand Fenty Beauty, Rihanna also launched the personal underwear series Savage x Fenty, which is different from the advocacy of fullness and sexy. It has been welcomed by the majority of female consumers. Like Rihanna, Kardashian also modeled herself as a lingerie brand, hoping to attract the attention of millions of young women who want to stay in shape.

However, in the contest of goods, and in the marketing activities of the new endorsement, Kardashian may be better than the "power" of topic and influence. From the perspective of fans' body size, Rihanna has over 72 million fans on Instagram, while Kardashian has 142 million. On the list of "2018 Instagram fortune list" announced by Hopper HQ, three of the Kardashian family came on the list, of which one of Kim Kardashian's posts has a commercial value of 720 thousand dollars.

Kardashian said she had no time to study other lingerie brand marketing strategies because of her own management of the other two companies, KKW Beauty and KKW Fragrance, which were led by her husband, the famous sports rap brand Yeezy (Chinese nickname "coconut shoes") and the famous American rapper Kanye West (Chinese nickname "kan Ye").

"Kanye is fully involved in some aspects of brand development, including packaging and brand initial logo." She believes that with the success of Yeezy, the new brand will soon become famous and highlight its tight encirclement.

At this stage, Kardashian's new brand has been supported by the financial team behind the fashionable personage, including Net-a-Porter founder Natalie Massane (Natalie Massanet), venture capital fund Imaginary Ventures, private equity fund Irving Place Capital. And Cowboy brand Good American CEO Jens Grede is a member of the new company's board of directors.

"At present, the potential of the underwear market is limitless, and there is still a big gap." Natalie Masaneo said in an e-mail, "consumers are not yet fully satisfied with demand, and those brands on the market have stopped the pace of innovation. Kardashian is more focused on providing products of more varied sizes and colors, which is exactly the same as the most successful innovative brands. She added, "this new brand is likely to subvert the whole industry."

In the United States, body sculpting clothing is gradually becoming the evergreen product. Its underwear is the beginning, and now it has become a daily dress. According to the Allied Market Research report, the global market for tights and body clothing is expected to reach US $5 billion 600 million by 2022.

Looking back at the Chinese market, in the past, the application scenes of body shaping clothing were mostly used for banquet or postpartum women to restore their stature, but in recent years, body sculpting and body underwear have also been popularized in a wider range of consumer groups.

According to the report on the competition pattern and market prospect of China's body sculpting body and underwear market in the past 2016-2020 years, the market scale including body shaping underwear and body underwear in 2014 will reach 108 billion yuan, and the sales volume will exceed 300 billion yuan by 2019. Among them, the compound annual growth rate of body underwear will keep two figures.

At this stage, the consumer groups of plastic clothes are mainly concentrated in the big cities like Shanghai and Beijing, and the developed cities along the eastern coast of Jiangsu and Zhejiang. According to Xinhua news agency, Tmall's "618" shopping Carnival in this year's clothing field, Tmall's body clothing category growth increased 20 times, while in the lazy bear sports investigation, Taobao search on the "plastic clothes", the associated products more than 5000, the price range from 11 to 4495 yuan, the best sales in 150 thousand months sold in a month.

At present, there are many brands of body building clothing on the market. The most important brands are Ting Mei, AI, Li Fang, Ttiumph, and MNI van, etc. because Chinese consumers' brand awareness has not yet been established, most consumers only distinguish products from price and simple functionality. With the maturity of consumer awareness and the improvement of consumption ability, there is still room for growth in China's body building industry.

"Although it is very limited to maintain body shape through body shaping clothing, it will remind itself to maintain the correct posture, such as chest straightening, abdominal absorption, no hunchback and so on, because of wearing body sculpting underwear. A consumer who bought a body for a long time told lazy bear sports that "although fat has no memory, it has muscles. Wearing a body garment will help people remember the correct posture and help improve posture. But there is no shortcut to lean, and we still need to exercise. "

But as Kardashian said, apart from highlighting the figure, these clothes can not leave the body of the garment also has another role, that is to bring her incomparable sense of security.

"I have learned to be strong enough to face frequent criticism in social media, but when the weight gain is excessive, the headlines still make me feel uncomfortable. I didn't want to share my fat group with the rest of the world. For a while, my heart was broken. She said, "the body sculpting dress can be said to be my second layer skin, which keeps me in shape and feels comfortable and smooth. I like the feeling of being bound. "