The Fashion Industry Should Stop Disdain Taobao For The Difference Between Taobao And Tmall.

The fashion week in Shanghai has been raging. The big difference is that people will see some intruders who are not fashionable.
Superr, Lucency and Roaring Wild will show the new season's fashion series during the fashion week, which is very popular with young people. Although this is their first appearance on the platform (Roaring Wild has previously participated in the exhibition of new heaven and host land), these brands have been well known to millions of Chinese consumers before joining the fashion week's "adult ceremony" as they have won their own customers through the incubation of Taobao and Tmall of Alibaba. In the past, Alibaba, which did not enter the mainstream fashion circle, has become China's most abundant independent designer brand cultivation base.
Ten years ago, Roaring Wild was founded in Shenzhen by its creative director, Meng Bingan (BG). He is a rapper and skateboard enthusiast. Today, Roaring Wild has become one of the most popular local brands in China.
At the same time, SuperR has more than 1 million fans in its social media. When Labelhood's founder Liu Xinxia (Tasha Liu) announced that the brand was included in the 2020 spring and summer released lineup, she told BoF that many fans of SuperR were excited about the decision.
Liu Xinxia said that the platform's absorption of "Amoy brand" is a natural extension of the development of China's fashion market, and is also the result of the pursuit of Labelhood's young fashion lovers.
"In China, Taobao is a very unique platform, you can launch a series, build your own brand image, and adjust the design according to customer feedback. The relationship between these Amoy brands and customers is very close, "she explained.
Get rid of old stereotypes
Over the years, the word "Amoy brand" has been used to ridicule the "self-employed" brand of grass roots and not serious business. Those respected fashion brands will shop in Tmall rather than Taobao C2C. However, Liu Xinxia pointed out that the boundaries between "wholesale brand" and "DTC brand" have become very vague in the context of China, and such cognition is becoming increasingly inaccurate and meaningless.
"These Amoy brands, everyone can talk about design, everyone is working with KOL, celebrities and media. Brands are much more equal, "she said.
Liu Xinxia said that China's Taobao designer brand is now repositioning itself as "China's DTC" brand, because they have the ability to create and nurture a consumer community with a high degree of participation and to sell products directly to the community. They also use community feedback to design new products and meet new consumers.
Just like in the west, the Taobao DTC model with Chinese characteristics has overturned the concept of price as a measure of quality indicators. Design led, vertical manufacturing integrated Amoy brands, as well as lower online operating costs relative to physical stores, allow some consumers to find quality clothing that can be bought at affordable prices.
Taobao Fashion Festival break bridge show TMF fashion show source: Alizila
Joshua Hupper, co-founder of designer brand Babyghost, said: "you can go to Zara to buy goods without emotion and soul, but as long as prices are similar, you can buy products with stories, designs, personalities and social feelings from us."
Babyghost is a frequent visitor to Shanghai fashion week and New York fashion week. It will usher in 10th anniversary next year, but its business was first built on Taobao. Recently, Tmall has also entered Tmall. The two platforms now account for more than 80% of their total sales.
　 The lifeline of young designers
In 2010, Huang Qiaoran, a co-founder of Hupper and Babyghost, visited New York on a trip to China, persuading Huang to start selling products at Taobao. She found that the platform was the place for young peers to shop, Qiaoran Huang. The two of them later moved to Shanghai.
Babyghost's original plan is not heavily dependent on DTC channels. The two were looking for partners in wholesale business in fashion week and Showroom, but as Hupper said, the numbers did not increase at all.
"From Taobao, it gives us freedom. We don't have to be chosen by others. We can put anything we like in our shop. It's very interesting to see the reaction of customers at once, "Huang Qiaoran said.
"There are too many brands on Taobao now. If you want to see what is happening in China's fashion world, you shouldn't just watch fashion week. It's only a small part. You should go to Taobao, where there are many cool brands.
Similarly, the growth of Chinese designer brand Ms Min over the past ten years is more like an organic process rather than a previously laid out plan. The brand is now sold from Totokaelo in New York to Plum in Beirut, but its success is largely thanks to Taobao and Tmall. Later this month, the brand will hold a big show in Beijing to commemorate its 10th anniversary creation.
In 2009, Liu Min, the designer of Ms Min, opened a shop on Taobao, selling her ancient collection in the early years, and then she won a group of enthusiastic followers.
Her husband and Ian Hylton, President of Ms Min, recalls: "when she was wearing masks, she used a nearly Cindy Sherman style photo (as a model display of the product), which was popular in the early days of Taobao." He added that when Liu Min was preparing to launch his own series, he had a reason to go back to Taobao.
He said: "although no designer at that time was on Taobao, we could see no reason not to go to Taobao. Why do you reject a place with the largest audience you can imagine? "
According to data released by Taobao and CBNData last year, 480 thousand people from Taobao buy products from independent fashion, furniture and jewelry designers every day.
Despite the fact that Ms Min already has 50 Wholesale partners over the years, there are many such brands as Lane Crawford, but sales of brand 40% still come from the Internet.
"Taobao is past tense, and now Tmall is the best performing among all our retail outlets," Hylton said.
　　 The dividing line between Taobao and Tmall
Today, Tmall and Taobao -- the two platforms between the two Alibaba are not barriers. Initially, they were classified according to the C2C and B2C models, but consumers and businesses did not strictly divide the boundaries as they did in the past. If you search products from Taobao's apps, you will see Tmall's global search results from Taobao, Tmall and Alibaba's cross-border e-commerce platform.
Together, as of June 2019, Alibaba group reported that its retail market in China has 755 million monthly mobile users, with a net increase of 34 million per quarter.
Meng Bingan, Roaring Wild designer, photo source: the other side offers
Generally speaking, Taobao is considered to be the preferred platform for Chinese consumers to buy cheap or medium priced domestic products, because Taobao is widely known as "omnipotent". Tmall is at the high end of the value chain, such as Pacific bird, Mo&Co., JNBY, and so on. The mature commercial brands are stationed here. At the same time, Tmall has also merged more international products, including international designers and luxury brands such as Michael Kors, Alexander McQueen and Bottega Veneta on Luxury Pavilion. Last month, Lifeng group and Alibaba announced that Net-A-Porter also launched its online flagship store on Tmall.
Regular overseas brands usually prefer to enter Tmall, especially the more high-end entry of Luxury Pavilion. They will not share online space with cheap mass brands, but will not co-exist with counterfeit or gray market products. Although the latter is not so popular on Taobao as it used to be, it is far from completely disappearing.
Chinese independent designers may start a Taobao store, and now there are more than 800 such stores in operation. But if they succeed there, they will probably move to Tmall, a brand run company. This earned quite a lot from a complicated market stall and opened its own boutique.
Alibaba is seeking independent design.
Facts have proved that Taobao has provided an interesting way for Alibaba to combine its brand and creativity. Last month, at the group's headquarters in Hangzhou, the electronics giant launched this season's Taobao creation Festival and broken bridge fashion show to enhance the creativity and independent design of Taobao platform. Supermodel Naomi Campbell is on the surface of West Lake, and famous local designer brands such as Particle Fever, Chen Peng, At-One-Ment by Wanbing Huang are also involved in the show.
"We hope to provide a platform to support these local young creators, encourage them to design more, create more and try more," said Dong Benhong, chief marketing officer of Alibaba group (flower name: Zhang Wuji) at the festival of creation: "everything is for the purpose of showing cash." When consumers like a product, sales will come naturally. "
Even if a Taobao store is impossible or inappropriate for those young international brands, Alibaba will turn to independent design to provide these brands with the opportunity to reach consumers who are more and more enthusiastic about independent fashion.
Large international brands can also find other opportunities on Taobao. Many brands have begun to seek cooperation with young Chinese designers. Recently, we have seen the cooperation between H&M and Chen Anqi (Angel Chen) and CONVERSE (Feng Chen Wang). Taobao can be regarded as a good place to discover new talents, because the next generation of designers is starting here.
Pacific bird in Paris fashion cycle Tmall China Cool activities show on the show source: the other side provides
Competition is more intense than before.
The Chinese market is a much more competitive arena. Most industry recognizes that today's bonus period has passed. Building brands like Ms Min, Babyghost or Roaring Wild will not be as easy as in 2010. They suggested that the best young designers in Europe and the United States abandon Taobao and attach importance to Tmall, which is reasonable.
Fierce competition between brands has also pushed up the cost of receiving and retaining customers. Since 2017, the average cost per 1000 browsing on Tmall has increased by 60%.
At the same time, Tmall has been investing heavily in overseas Fashion Week activities, positioning itself as the Chinese gateway to international fashion brands. On the latest fashion week in Paris, Tmall showed the Chinese brand Eifini and Taiping bird, ending its "China Cool" tour across New York, Milan and Paris.
Jessica Liu, Tmall fashion and luxury business leader, said: "China Cool" is our forward-looking vision of global fashion. Liu Xiuyun, We have chosen those emerging and mature brands that we believe may have real international appeal. We play a unique role in this field to help "China Cool" be recognized and recognized worldwide.
Making use of Alibaba's data and social earning
"On Tmall, there are large Chinese brands like JNBY, Mo & Co., and international brands such as Diesel. They have a large budget to carry out a lot of marketing on this platform, but Babyghost belongs to a niche market, "Huang said quietly.
The smaller brands of Chinese designers, such as Babyghost and Ms Min, stand out on Taobao because they have strong communities. These groups are not built up by advertising, but developed through social interaction across multiple online platforms and close offline gatherings.
"We know who we want to be, so we will use algorithms to talk to more specific customers," Huang said. She told BoF that Alibaba's data can tell them some details, such as the constellation of some users, or even whether they have recently upgraded to their parents.
Hupper said that Taobao's social networking tools this year have really changed the "sales pattern" of Babyghost.
In April, they hired a live broadcaster, the 23 year old former brand loyal customer who was shown live in Babyghost's studio every afternoon at half past four to half past ten. She would try on clothes, answer questions about size and production in real time, and provide more sensory experience to potential consumers and existing consumers.
Embedding social functions in platforms such as Taobao and Tmall is a response to the rise of social networking platforms such as little red books and many other social networking platforms.
According to the 2019 Taobao direct seeding ecological development trend report, there are more than 300 live broadcaster on average in 81 anchor years, the average length of live broadcast is close to 8 hours per day, and there are many more than 350 live broadcaster hosts in one year. Through interactive better live streaming has become a fashion brand online retail a huge flow of entry, thus becoming the standard of Taobao shop. In 2018, the GMV of the whole year was broken by 100 billion, and the conversion rate was over 65%. Taobao is optimistic that GMV will exceed 500 billion in three years.
"Some Chinese independent young designer brands start on Taobao is justified. If independent designers are more conservative and only want to do wholesale business, this will not be good for business. If you have an online flagship store, you can control your image, lock your customers and develop the right connections with them, "Liu Xinxia said.
Overseas brands can learn the same lesson from them. Those brands that only use Taobao and Tmall as an outlet for e-commerce, but have not yet made good use of its rapidly rising social marketing brand, will be more difficult to compete with the new generation of Chinese brands that are familiar with these latest functions.
"International brands still don't know how to deal with customers in Taobao and Tmall systems," Liu Xinxia said. "Social networking is no longer just micro-blog and WeChat."