Supreme The Methodology Behind A "Cool" Brand

One of the most popular brands in recent years is Supreme. In the past few decades, a number of famous brands in the world have been competing with him, including Lv, The North Face, Nike and so on. Although its selling price is not as high as luxuries, the price of Supreme in the two tier market is several times higher than the selling price because of insufficient supply.
In a joint series of Supreme and SWAROVSKI in 2019, it created a miracle of 2.9 seconds limited joint Box Logo sweater sold out.
At that time, the short sleeves sold at $398 were now priced at about 700 US dollars in the 2 market, and the price of domestic drugs was around 6000 yuan.
So far, a cool company has only 11 stores worldwide, and few have seen advertisements in public advertising channels. Even many people do not know who his founder is.
But the "low-key" company bought a 50% stake in the US private Carlyle in 2017 at a valuation of $1 billion.
We want to study its development history and combine with foreign marketing theory CRUSH to see whether it can be learned by many small circles in China.
　　 01
History of Supreme
James Jebbia good commercial sense of smell makes Supreme stand on the front of skateboard culture.
Unlike many of the founder of tidal brand, James Jebbia did not systematically learn costume design before creating Supreme.
He came to New York in 1983 to work in a Parachute high quality skateboard and clothing buyer's shop. After accumulating store management experience, he founded his own buyer shop Union in 1989, mainly in the clothing brand of England and Canada. In 1991, he got acquainted with the founder of Shawn, Stussy of Losangeles skateboard brand Stussy, and jointly opened the first Stussy store in New York, and Stussy achieved the global income of 20 million dollars in 1992.
In 1994, James Jebbia discovered that the skateboarding culture of young people began to prevail in New York, so they set up their own skateboard brand Supreme.
He opened the first Supreme store in Lafayette Street, and in the store design, she innovatively emptied the middle area, so that the skateboards could freely go shopping on the skateboard to make the store a recreational space for local skateboards.
Shop slowly, but seize the core crowd.
In 1995, director LarryClark, a controversial film Kids, described a group of young and confused people in New York at that time, including actors Supreme Justin Pierce and Harold Hunter. Through the influence of film and brand word-of-mouth, Supreme became a group of young people with a common interest at that time in New York. Of course, there were a number of founders of fashion brands such as the founder of Eddie Cruz, founder of Zoo York, Harold Hunter, and so on in Undefeated.
Although the brand built a local community, the overall development speed of the brand was still slow. It was not until 1998 that it opened the first overseas store in the Daguan mountain area of Japan. At that time, Supreme's strategy in Japan was to get consumers' cognition through the combination with Japanese fashion artists such as Teng Yuan Hao and Nigo.
By 2004, Supreme chose to open second local stores in Losangeles's Fairfax. As of today, there are only 11 stores in the world. Compared with 60 of Stussy and 40 of Bape, it can be considered very small, but it will not lose to two brands in brand influence.
The idea of not deliberately pursuing scale is also confirmed in an interview with GQ's founder. The founders feel that a brand aimed at a small group of people is a very cool thing, so he can not slowly pursue the scale of the brand, but slowly precipitate the brand through time and the core users.
Product power is brand power.
In terms of products, the founder has always followed the best clothing quality that consumers can afford, including the originality and color matching of products, giving consumers more selectivity.
Although Supreme's most classic box logo is controversial, it has been accused of "plagiarizing" the works of Barbara Kruger, but it has not hinders consumers' recognition of brand Logo. The clothing of box logo in the two tier market will be sold several times the selling price. This unique brand logo enhances consumer memory, that is, logo is brand DNA.
Apart from Logo, one of the most widely known features of Supreme is its limited offer. It will sell some new products in its few stores every Thursday at 11 a.m., because products are often sold out of demand, so every time the new products are sold, there will be a long queue outside the store. This is similar to many brands' hunger marketing, and every time the new product is sold, it will get a high brand fever.
But unlike many brands, for example, Supreme will not choose replenishment after the first sale. Long run out of stock is a negative experience for brand sales and user experience, but it continues the tonality of brand "cool".
Before 2006, the main joint names of Supreme were mainly fashion brands, including Undercover, Bape, Neighborhood, etc., on the one hand, it deepened their influence in the tide brand culture circle. On the other hand, Supreme's influence at that time did not attract the attention of the world's top luxury goods such as Lv.
However, Supreme gradually began to expand its influence with sports brands and even designer clothes after 2007, including Nike, The North Face and Thom Brown. The joint itself brings the two brands back to the user group and is also making a free exposure to Supreme.
Stars in the same paragraph
The stars above Supreme include Justin Beiber, Kanye West, KylieJenner and so on. Supreme will ask professional photographers to take photos of these upper body stars, and then sell them as printed on short sleeves, very famous including Tyson and Lady Gaga.
This marketing method not only greatly reduces the marketing cost, but also differs from the traditional TV and magazine delivery, which has better effect and higher efficiency.
　 02
The methodology of "cool" brand
The success of Supreme is closely related to the "cool" in brand DNA, many of which conform to the CRUSH theory of marketing theory of Joeri Van den Bergh and Mattias Behrer. Next, we will sort out the methodology of building "cool" brand for young people by combing the contents of the book.
The relationship between CRUSHModel and brand
In Joeri Van den Bergh and Mattias Behrer's How cool brands stay hot, they summed up the most favorite brand elements of the generation of generations to represent a word, representing brand cool feeling, realism, uniqueness, identity and happiness. Further subdivision, the two factors that affect brand power are brand cool feeling and identity, and they all show positive correlation. That is, the more cool the brand is, the stronger the identity is, the stronger the overall strength of the brand will be.
Cool factors
The two authors, through surveys of more than 1500 Y generation youngsters, have made cool a formula called cool =22%'s original +23% popularity +55%.
From the case of Supreme, it can be seen that its coolest comes from its attraction in minority culture. It guides everyone's cognition of brand by building core user groups, and keeps DNA in the process of development.
Different categories of "cool"
In order to study the impact of category on the cool, the book also made a cool sense index for these young people (CHI= (Y generation believes that the category is easy to produce cool brands - do not think the number of people) / total survey number).
The conclusion is that it is difficult to design original products such as fashion and electronic consumer goods. People will think their products are cool, but it is difficult to transmit them to brands.
On the contrary, such as coffee / water / cereal, which is hard to become a cool brand in stereotype, it is easy for consumers to transfer "cool" to brand level through originality.
Although many traditional foods, such as food and beverages, seem to be very difficult to make great difference in products, but if they can make some differences in packaging, marketing and other aspects, they may still be considered as a "cool" brand by young consumers.
Brand identity
The so-called brand identity is actually what we call the consumption of layers, or subculture consumption.
Take Supreme as an example, its subculture is the skateboard culture that has been popular since 1950s. The core of skateboard culture is real, creative and adventurous spirit. But in those days, the skateboard's unruly personality was unacceptable to most people. Many brands saw such groups unwilling to risk attracting such a sub culture crowd, which also gave a good competitive environment for the rise of small brands.
Y generation consumers' demand for brand characteristics
From the survey results, the top five brand features of Y generation consumers include reliable, sincere, unique style, honesty and conciseness. Supreme has been working hard to create such a "real" for the core skateboards. For instance, shop assistants do not cater to consumers, and they will not choose to satisfy all consumers in the absence of obvious supply of goods. They maintain consistently low profile in advertising, and have always grasped the core skateboards, such a circle culture has deepened the core consumer's recognition of brand.
However, we find that subculture and mainstream culture often produce contradictions. Many times, subculture has not been accepted by the public for a long time. For example, hip-hop culture and so on, subculture is never accepted. It may take a long time and cost of education.
And after subculture is accepted by the public, it often faces the risk of becoming a mainstream culture. For example, the hipster culture appeared in the US in the nineteenth Century, and gradually became the mainstream culture in the early twentieth Century. The effect of cultural circles disappeared, and the sales of many brands that were attached to this culture declined sharply, and the core circles gradually drifted away.
How to become a cool brand
We have also found some conventional ways to create "cool" brands in the book: brand exclusivity, scarcity, regular surprises, innovation, advertising and selective delivery.
Scarcity
The most important thing to become a "cool" brand is the scarcity of products, which can be seen from the sale of Supreme and Nike sneakers.
These brands sell products through limited sales, which makes people feel that products are scarce, so they form a two tier market spontaneously. The price is often several times the selling price, which improves consumers' threshold in disguised form, and the high price makes consumers discouraged.
innovate
Innovation has different demands for different consumer products. The biggest innovation for clothing is originality. For food and drink, it is flavour and health. Differentiated products enhance consumers' sense of "cool" and make it easier for young consumers.
Advertising delivery
According to a study of 315 consumer product brands conducted by consulting firm, the top 1/4 of advertising cool is 2 times the conversion rate of post 1/4. There is a big gap between the domestic emerging brands in the new media delivery, the good ROI can be 10, and the average ROI is less than 1. Advertising forms are becoming more and more abundant, such as short video of plot style, short video of tutorial class, etc.
　 03
The Z generation's niche culture.
Finally, we return to the Z generation's niche culture:
On the whole, "cool" and identity are the two most important factors in building a brand. For different racetracks, the low "cool" sense of the track can obtain strong brand attractiveness through relatively less product innovation, and have the opportunity to get tremendous explosive growth in the short term, such as the tea we like to see and three and a half half-way; and the high "cool" sense of the track is very difficult to transfer the minimally invasive product to the brand level, and see that more success is a long-term subversive product such as apple mobile phone, but often requires long-term R & D investment and product update iteration, which is relatively more difficult.
For any category, the positioning and maintenance of the core group is a necessary condition for the consistency of brand tonality. The significance of brand private flow operation is not only for selling goods, but also for building a brand owned community to enable consumers to get a sense of belonging.
We will also pay close attention to investment opportunities under sub culture, such as a ready to eat brand under the single culture.