Is The Myth Of Fast Fashion Really Entering The "Final Chapter"?

The rumor that Forever 21 has withdrawn from China has been boiling for two months.

This is just a silhouette.

The past year can be described as the darkest period in the history of fast fashion business. The words such as store closing, bankruptcy, and bankruptcy frequently appear. Both investors and consumers seem to have lost patience.

For fast fashion brands, the myth seems to have come to an end.

1. The collective failure of fast fashion brands

The rumor that Forever 21 quit China finally ended in April.

All Chinese websites were closed, and Tmall and JD flagship stores ended badly, leaving only a statement that "orders before April 29 can be applied for refund before May 7".

The news came suddenly, and the process was also frightening.

The online bleakness can be seen, and the offline consumption is amazing.

9.9 A color pure T, five yuan three pairs of style earrings, the original price of 399 basic short boots 49 yuan to take home.

There are also metal colored short skirts with different styles, animal print coats, cross bandaged PVC bras... 20 yuan for every 200 yuan, 40 yuan for every 200 yuan.

In fact, in the past year, the winning situation of fast fashion represented by H&M and Zara is beginning to be rewritten.

During the Christmas holiday last year, the super fast fashion brand Boohoo sold 486 pieces of clothes for less than 5 pounds, which means that the transportation cost is higher than the product itself. Its competitor ASOS also sold 257 dresses and 2141 different styles of tops for less than 10 pounds. H&M and Zara also started the biggest discount season of the year, with long lines in front of the fitting room and cash register.

Prior to this, Topshop, the "fast fashion" brand that has been in the UK for 50 years, announced that it would terminate its cooperation with the Chinese franchise partner Shangpin in advance. In November 2018, New Look, another British "fast fashion" brand, which had been struggling in the Chinese market for four years, announced its withdrawal due to its overload and planned to close more than 120 stores in China within the year.

In the first half of this year, Gap's performance was also relatively passive. From frequent store closures at the beginning of the year to multiple changes of executives, purchase of children's clothing, and splitting the group, it was committed to sustainable development, and did not make any achievements. Even the strategy of turning Old Navy into a "core engine" for profitability also failed, and in the first quarter, it fell into a comprehensive regression.

Even Uniqlo, which is developing most smoothly in China, has slowed down its growth. Since December last year, no new stores have opened in Uniqlo. In addition, it is expected that 18 stores will be closed by the end of August this year.

Once upon a time, fast fashion can be said to hold up half the sky of all major shopping malls. If the newly built shopping malls want to attract consumers, the addition of fast fashion brands is indispensable. However, fast fashion brands have to face the fact that consumers are gradually "abandoning" fast fashion. More and more fast fashion brands join the "loser" camp, offering discounts, clearing warehouses, closing stores, and withdrawing from China

2. Fast fashion is being abandoned by young people

McKinsey has an interesting new report, in which the survey shows that more than half of fast fashion clothes will be abandoned in less than a year.

It also put forward a point of view that the post-90s, post-00s and other new generations have become the main consumers of clothing. They are no longer satisfied with buying mass-produced clothes at low prices when they are young and have sufficient materials, but hope to continuously obtain unique experiences and innovative products.

According to the latest report released by fashion organization Thredup, 25% of female consumers said they would not buy fast fashion clothes from 2019, most of whom are young consumers. Among the more than 1000 women surveyed by Thredup, 58% believed that waste should be reduced this year, and 42% said they would reduce waste by buying second-hand goods.

The advantage of fast fashion lies in its cheapness, quickness and low price. Behind this industry with huge demand, there are many unbearable "secrets". With the popularity of the Internet, the dark side of fast fashion is gradually uncovered. Like the butterfly effect, criticisms against the fashion industry have poured in at one time. These criticisms are not only aimed at a single problem, but also chronic diseases involving all aspects of the industry chain.

The brand is aging and has not penetrated into the new generation

When "fast fashion" emerged, the audience was mostly the post-70s and post-80s generation. Now, more than a decade has passed. The post-90s and post-00s are completely different classes. They pay more attention to products and experiences rather than brand effects. Fast fashion brands cannot survive without corresponding operation and upgrading mechanisms for the new market situation and new consumption forces.

Product positioning, not high, not low

From the perspective of brand positioning, fast fashion has been in a state of high success and low success. Fast fashion brands, in essence, are mainly driven by price, not high-end brands. In the first tier cities, such as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen, where fast fashion is mainly distributed, fast fashion has been unable to keep up with the pace of user consumption upgrading. In terms of channel sinking, it has been slow to move and lost market opportunities.

"Cheap fashion", product quality not up to standard

With the upgrading of consumption, consumers who used to pursue cheapness pay more attention to quality, which also makes "fast fashion" no longer fashionable. According to the information released by relevant departments, "fast fashion" has become a major disaster area with substandard quality in recent years. Forever 21 brand has been punished for many times with "adulterating and adulterating products, passing fake products off as genuine, shoddy products off as good, or passing unqualified products off as qualified products". H&M also has frequent quality problems in China, and has been punished five times for quality problems since last year.

In addition, a large number of media exposures about fast fashion have made people realize that the fashion industry, which has always been famous for its brilliance, has actually hidden a large number of loopholes, including not only the well-known environmental pollution, labor rights and interests, but also the secret supply chain, women's rights and interests and more.

3. Transformation and upgrading targeted at social grass planting platform

In the face of its own difficulties, Fast Fashion also launched a self-help campaign.

The most eye-catching is the tried and true co branding strategy.

In the first half of the year, Uniqlo can be said to have swept the Chinese market, and the cooperation with KAWS produced a rush buying effect in China. On the day of sale, the KAWS x Uniqlo co branded clothes on the counter were snapped up, and the clothes on the models were also picked off. H&M, also a fast moving fashion brand, could not sit still. On the eve of 618, the most conscientious cooperation series in history, H&M × Giambattista Valli Fairy Dress, was launched to fight against Uniqlo's KAWS co brand, and plans to introduce another high-end brand, Other Stories, into China.

In fact, e-commerce also has a great impact on fast fashion, with less and less offline passenger traffic. In addition to the popularity of short videos, live broadcasts, small red books, and micro and micro businesses, online celebrity KOL's ability to carry goods is growing, and the market competition is becoming more fragmented.

The fast fashion target group is relatively young, with low purchasing power, and the clothing style is unstable, so it is more likely to be impacted by the Taobao online celebrity brand.

In this situation, new image and new field become the transfer target of fast fashion. For example, Zara's spring 2019 ads are launched, which move towards a simple sense of sophistication and conform to the preferences of millennial consumers. It has never even invited spokesmen to appoint post-90s stars Zhou Dongyu and Wu Lei as brand image ambassadors in Greater China, and pre-sales the same model of stars in Tmall flagship stores, and in the first half of the year, it has tried to regard cosmetics as a new growth point.

In addition, Zara has hired designers of all ages to analyze the popular trend of Instagram in order to better understand consumers' views on it. At the same time, the online e-commerce platform also provides designers with design inspiration. Background data can help designers understand the keywords that consumers search when shopping, so as to infer popular trends.

Of course, the last co branding of Uniqlo and KAWS has caused users to rush to buy products without the preview video and the early warming up of a large number of star online celebrities.

Recently, joint dithering has set off a trend. Users wear their favorite UT and produce various creative short videos. In the video content, there are many Cosplayers who wear UT to reproduce the cartoon characters, triggering a wave of classic cartoon memories. The ultimate goal of the challenge is to cultivate the brand awareness and purchase intention of the new generation of young consumers around the world.