Ups And Downs And Self Rescue: Forty-Three Years Of Bosteng

The story began in 1976. That year, Gao Dekang, 24, was riding a bicycle carrying hundreds of kilograms of clothing materials for the village sewing group business. He traveled between Changshu and Shanghai, a town called Bai Zhen day and night.

This is the beginning of Bosteng's advertisement today, "you work hard for 43 years in the cold wind".

In 1990, the brand of Bosideng was officially registered, with 8 sewing machines, and the 11 villagers were all at the beginning of its establishment.

Bosideng was listed on the Hong Kong stock market in 2007. Those years were also the most spectacular period of Bosteng, saying that it was not too much of a "national brand": it was certified as "China's well-known trademark"; in the prime time of CCTV, advertisements were broadcast repeatedly; as a diplomatic gift to many leaders of Russia and Finland, it was awarded the first "world famous brand" in the clothing industry. In recent years, many honors have been given to the growing brand of enterprises one after another.

But after the boom, Bosideng gradually faded away from the public's vision, not only slowly forgotten by the fashionable young people, but also became what they call "childhood memories". If you mention that you want to buy a Bosteng, the rate will be sniffed. Is that not the brand of the elderly? Even the middle aged and the elderly have lost interest in the brand.

What happened to Boston?

Let's go back to 2013.

2013 of internal and external troubles

2013 is a painful point in Bosideng's growth history. It is a tragic achievement watershed. Before brilliant profits, there has been a cliff shaped fall since this year. The huge gap made Bosteng still unable to return to the peak of fiscal year 2012.

In May 2013, the Guangzhou daily published a news entitled "doubling the down price of the bird flu in the off-season". The news mentioned that the price of the goose down that was just 80% after the Spring Festival was about 500 thousand yuan per ton. Now the price has doubled to 1 million yuan per ton, and the eiderdown has increased from 200 thousand yuan to 480 thousand yuan per ton.

Although Bosideng has reached long-term cooperation with Down duty suppliers, foreign trade orders have been hit by the flu. The 3 million 700 thousand orders for foreign trade down garments that were then received need about 300 tons of cashmere, of which 160 tons of eiderdown are scarce.

In addition, Bosideng is also facing difficulties.

A company that has been in a stage of rapid development will inevitably show more hunger and thirst for the market. It is clear that the business is concentrated in the field of down garments. It has obviously been unable to satisfy Bosideng's ambition. Bosteng began its strategic transformation in the fiscal year 2012 to 2013, and put forward the idea of "multi brand, four seasons and internationalization".

But this strategic transformation has caused snowfall in Boston's cold winter, and it is obvious that the down jacket is not able to keep out the cold this time.

On the one hand, there were already a number of mature four seasons clothing brands including seven wolves, Hai Lan's home, Taiping bird and so on. Even if Bosteng men's clothes were placed high hopes, it would be very difficult for them to get a real share in the industry. Besides, Bosideng did not accurately locate many brands at this time, lacked a clear main line. The strategy of multi brands was too fierce, and too dense resources also posed challenges to its internal management.

On the other hand, in the first 10 years of twenty-first Century, the trade between China and the international trade became more and more close. So did the clothing industry. New foreign brands continued to enter the Chinese market. After 2010, the fast fashion brand, led by ZARA and UNIQLO, rose rapidly in China.

Take ZARA as an example, it relies on the demand for new products of the trend to control the market in a very fast way, and it is crazy to encroach on China's clothing market when compared with other shopping mall brands.

According to the 2013 annual report of Boston, the sales of non down garment business increased by only 1.9% over the previous year. Obviously, Bosideng is not able to explore the field of non down garment business. Instead of letting Bosteng find the right way to develop, the road of diversified development has made it bogged down in the mire.

2013 winter is another warm winter.

This makes Bosideng worse.

As of March 31, 2014, the income of Boston group fell 14.6% during the year compared with the same period last year, and the sales of brand down clothing decreased by 17% compared with the same period last year.

The strategic transformation not only failed to achieve the desired results, but picked up sesame and lost the watermelon. Bosideng was in an awkward position at this time.

Up to 2 billion of the backlog of stocks has been depressed by Boston and its profits are shrinking rapidly.

I saw him building a tall building and seeing him in the future.

Precipitation and self rescue

In the face of the changeable market, not many enterprises can really follow the wind. How to stop the loss in time is particularly important.

Going to stock is the first step in Boston.

The sale of down season clothes and shutting shops continued. Boston's scraping and healing lasted for three years.

In 2016, Bosideng's net profit finally stopped its downward trend and began to rise. It pulled itself back from the brink of danger and completed the most important self rescue in forty years.

Next is a more important period of adjustment. What should we do next? This is the sword of Damour and Chris hanging over the brand. If we are careless, we will give this enterprise that has just been slow down a fatal blow.

In July 2017, Bosideng began to cooperate with Shanghai Jun Zhi consultancy, and threw out its own confusion to the company that had provided consulting services to Feida crane's milk powder and electric vehicle.

After many twists and turns, Bosideng finally realized that the so-called "four seasons" can not be carried out hastily. We should first focus on the key of down jacket, and then extend our brand types.

In November of the same year, Bosideng began to upgrade its brand strength, strengthen its core business and feather down, and established the strategic position of "the world's hot down eider expert". This time, it no longer focuses on the entire garment industry, but restores itself to the field of down coats.

Also in the winter of 2017, the goose feather from Canada sweeps the young people of China. The Star Street patters and the tide makers wear all kinds of winter clothes that are related to the trend. Almost all of them can be seen as the brand of Canada Goose.

It is suddenly realized that the down jacket is no longer the exclusive of the middle aged and the elderly. It is no longer just a fashionable insulator with amazing color matching and the hair collar of the earth.

Young people in the second tier cities who follow the trend of design and have a certain sense of purchasing power will invest in the feather clothing brand of canadian goose, and the acceptance of the down garment price is also rising. This consumer group can bring great benefits to the enterprises.

The appearance and operation mode of Canada goose reminds us of Bosideng, which is in the period of important strategic development. It is very important for an enterprise to have precise consumer positioning and brand marketing.

At this point, everything is in short supply.

Return

In September 2018, New York fashion week started on schedule. And in the brand name list of the fashion week, Bosideng was very impressed.

Annne Hathaway and hawk eyed Jeremy Rainer sat in the guest seats at the show. The opening ceremony was Alessandra Ambrosio.

Bosideng's move sparked a fire in the Chinese consumer group far from the other side of the globe. At a time, the topic of Bosideng was skyrocketing, and people were asking questions: is bostenden so fashionable?

Not only that, Bosideng has also marked the label of "domestic products" for its own. The whole series is based on traditional Chinese ink painting elements and dragon elements as the design highlights, adding another fire to the young people who are keen on the "national tide" nowadays.

At the same time, Bosideng also began to further expand its marketing channels, increase advertising efforts, and cooperate with Focus Media, so that Bosideng ads began to appear in the majority of young office elevator, and to strengthen the strength of star goods.

In addition, Bosideng began to gradually shut down its traditional offline stores and replace them with new stores in shopping centers and fashion department stores. These new stores, with the transformation of Bosideng, appear bright and fashionable.

According to its positioning consumer group, young people with purchasing power, Bosideng also raised its product price, and the main products were priced at 1500 to 2000 yuan.

These initiatives are undoubtedly effective.

In 2018, it was recognized as the economic cold winter, but Bosideng rose in the year against the market. Its share price rose from 0.62 Hong Kong dollars at the beginning of the new year to 1.45 Hong Kong dollars at the end of the year.

Bosideng intensified its transformation and marketing in 2019.

In September 2019, Bosideng took part in the fashion week in Milan. On this fashion week, people saw Niicole Kidman, who was in Boston's Oscar movie, saw the "Cosmos blogger" Chiara Faragni, who appeared in the front row of the show, and saw the first super model Kendall Jenna who had taken the lead for the Chinese brand.

Bosideng once again boarded the major social software platforms, ranging from friends circle to little red book to micro-blog search.

Some people found in news photos that Ma Yun, who had once crossed Canada goose, was also changed to Bosideng.

During the Tmall double eleven in 2019, Bosideng also won good results: Tmall flagship store broke 7 minutes sales, 78 minutes broke last year's total sales of 414 million yuan, sales of the whole network exceeded 800 million yuan, and total channel sales exceeded 1 billion yuan, an increase of 37% over the same period last year.

And in November 27th not long ago, Bosideng and French designer gurteye collaborate the Bosideng high Teye designer joint series down jacket. This time, Bosideng is cooperating with "Queen Yang Mi" and "fashion darling" Li Yuchun. Open micro-blog to see is hot search "can not grab Bosideng", point to the topic page, a fashion KOL Boston's praise is beyond words.

In 2019, Boston's share price rose to HK $4.5, almost seven times that of 2018's 0.62 Hong Kong dollar.

Look at the three years of Bosideng transformation, its revenues from 2017 to 2019 were 6 billion 817 million yuan, 8 billion 881 million yuan and 10 billion 383 million yuan respectively, and net profit also changed from 392 million yuan in 2017 to 981 million yuan in 2019.

Bosideng ranked the fifth and third place of the two indexes of "business income" and "total profit" released by the China Apparel Association in 2018.

With the quality of the past, the sense of continuous improvement and the precise marketing method, after many years of silence, Bosideng once again proved himself.

Perhaps it is too early to say that Bosideng has fully completed its own expectations. But looking back on the 43 years of its ups and downs, it can probably be summed up in eight words: every past is a preface.