Behind The 150 Thousand Exploding Down Jacket...

A new clothing store has been opened at your door. If 1 years and 365 days, the product renewal rate is too slow, there is no tricks. It is difficult for you to go in and spend money again and again three times.

When the shop has new tricks, when shopping guide calls to you, "look at it casually, there are new models recently", you may stop for a moment, look around the shops, wonder what the new style of the brand is, and instantly open the sales situation.

It is one of the secrets of Zara, H&M and other fast fashion brands to quickly launch new products and exceed consumer expectations. The ability to create new products is the competitiveness of the clothing industry to write into brand genes.

New, natural will attract attention. But we have to say that consumers who are bombed every day by advertisements and marketing methods have become more and more picky and more difficult to please and serve.

Growth is the eternal concern of brands. Traffic dividends are bottoming out, traditional marketing methods are becoming more and more invalid, the power of growth is sinking and sinking, and brands are constantly chanting to find their "super users". From "flow thinking" to "super user thinking", what can brand innovation provide consumers? The head brand always tries to maintain the leading position of the industry, and how to find a breakthrough market faster?

The information asymmetry between consumers and brands still exists: consumers' more precise needs are not satisfied, while brands are developing products to provide services blindly.

　 Ceiling for children's clothing industry

In 1996, Qiu Guang, who had worked hard in the home appliance industry for many years, spotted the clothing market and established the mass fashion brand "Semir". In 1998, Semir began to use the "virtual operation" mode to outsource the production and sales channels. After 3 years, the rapid expansion of the affiliation policy has become the head brand of the domestic apparel industry.

In 2002, Semir launched the children's clothing brand Balabala, facing the 0~14 year old children's consumer group, the product located in the middle-income family.

In 2018, Semir group achieved a total revenue of about 15 billion 719 million yuan, an increase of 30.71% over the same period last year, of which the proportion of children's clothing business accounted for more than 60%.

After the low tide period of high inventory in the domestic apparel industry, Semir group has adopted a diversified marketing network development mode that combines direct operation with franchises, and complements online and offline.

As of June 30, 2019, there were 9123 outlets in the country, accounting for 8.3% of the total outlets, including 5293 children's clothing stores, and online sales channels such as Taobao, Tmall and vip.com.

After 16 years of development, Semir children's clothing business has achieved a comprehensive coverage of the whole category, age and consumption level, forming a complete brand matrix for children's clothing. It has become the leader of the children's wear industry in China with a market share of 5.6%.

According to Euromonitor statistics, in 2018, China's children's clothing market was highly dispersed, CR5 was only 9.1%, of which balbala occupied 5.6%; second Adidas kids was only 1.5%, far lower than that of developed countries such as the United States (27.70%), Britain (22.40%) and Japan (27%).

CR5 (Concentration Ratio, industry concentration rate) refers to the total market share (output value, sales volume, total assets, etc.) of the top 5 largest enterprises in the relevant market of a certain industry, and it is an important index to weigh the market structure of the industry. The greater the CR value, the higher the concentration of the industry, the more the market competition tends to monopolize.

According to public information, as of the end of 2017, the top five market share of children's clothing industry in China were balbala, Adidas kids, piglet, ANN, and ticla.

The market share of these five major enterprises has increased steadily in recent years, and the industry concentration has been raised. But compared with the European and American markets, the market share of these head brands still has much room for improvement.

This means that the competition in children's clothing market is not enough, and the industry is far from the ceiling.

With the liberalization of the second child policy and the main role of the parents after 80 and 90, the market for the brand children's wear market is huge.

According to the "market demand and investment forecast analysis report of China's high-end children's clothing industry" released by the prospective industry research institute, from 2013 to 2017, the market growth of the children's wear industry in China reached a compound growth rate of 9.68%, and the compound growth rate of the industry in the next three years will remain at about 14%, higher than that of the men's wear industry and the women's wear industry. In 2020, the size of the children's clothing market in China is expected to exceed 200 billion yuan, reaching 265 billion 500 million yuan.

The first financial and business data center pointed out in the latest 2019 China Internet consumption ecology big data report:

When 80 and 90 become the main force of mother infant consumption, their childcare concept and consumption concept are different from before. They pursue the trend, fine and scientific child care, promote the rapid development of online children's fashion brand, and whether the supply side side can meet the needs of consumers. Children's clothing industry is facing enormous challenges and huge business opportunities.

Sorrow and joy in new product development

As the leader of children's wear brand, Barbara brand leader Lan Jianbin believes that the stage of competition among brands in the industry has not yet arrived. At present, the children's clothing industry needs to work together to enlarge the market share.

The challenge to brand is: how to match the needs of consumers, develop new products, expand new traffic channels, acquire new customers, retain old customers, improve conversion rate and customer unit price.

"If the new product is just talking about a single explosive product, it is easy, but a company has a faster and higher success rate of innovation." Vice president of Alibaba group and Secretary of the enterprise service system Jing Jie, said: "standing in the perspective of an enterprise to talk about product innovation, it should be how the various departments in this enterprise systematically cooperate to judge what new products the enterprise needs to develop."

In October 2018, Semir wholly-owned the KIDILIZ group, a middle and high-end children's clothing group in Europe, and promoted the multi brand business of KIDILIZ group in China. In the same year, the Agency introduced the famous American children's clothing brand The Children's Place.

In the first half of 2019, Semir further optimized its multi brand business portfolio and differentiated brands to meet the market's demand for different brand positioning and different target consumers.

In the mass market for children, a combination of Barbara as the leading brand, Macal and other brands has been selected as a market segmentation. In the high-end market segments, the main business is to build a combination of KIDILIZ channel's CATIMINI brand and ABSORBA brand.

The development strategy of whole category and multi brand poses a greater challenge to the quality and rhythm of new product development. In 2019, as Tmall's KA business, Tmall and Barbara jointly developed a number of new category explosions from the perspective of industry development.

Tmall's maternal and child industry operation expert Hua Mo believes that, based on Alibaba's business operation system, Tmall will create new products in the industry's head brand as a platform, which will lead the whole industry to change its mind faster. "Creating new products together is not just a new product, but how to generate growth in the production of new products, and to drive the cognition of the whole industry and consumers."

In addition, Tmall will create a brand that is representative of the fashion and popularity of the industry. This is not limited to the volume or size of the brand, but to see whether the brand is in line with the industry's direction.

Take children's down jacket as an example. In 2019, Barbara's children's clothing was the first explosive product of the whole category of children's clothing, light weight down jacket, sales of 150 thousand single items, new products increased by more than 30%, and the total 11 of the whole category of feather and down clothing reached 39%, which was more than 21% of the whole shop.

The explosion was built on the strong supply chain of Barbara. Traditional clothing enterprises usually prepare for half a year in advance to finalize the design, which means that the latest trend is uncertain.

Tmall and Barbara have borrowed new tools from the Tmall strategy center to put forward new optimization schemes in the original autumn and winter down jacket design.

With down jacket and IP upgrade, the 4 series of Disney, the havoc heavenly palace, the ugly doll and the climber have been launched. According to the geographical distinction between light, light, cold, and extremely cold, we have added seamless, goose down, outdoor fixtures, trend of the national tide, shopping malls and market sinking money, extending the price band up and down.

The realization of these design schemes is not easy. Behind each series are changes in production and supply chain.

Since 2015, Semir has been accelerating the supply chain reform. Since 2016, the implementation of the ordering system has been implemented in the winter wear. Semir group has increased the proportion of fast and reverse products and the control of the company's goods. At present, the proportion of fast and reverse products is 30%. Through the small batch and multi frequency orders, it reduces the long period tail cargo and optimizes the inventory management.

In order to meet the small quantity sales test of the explosive products, Barbara enabled the mobile supply chain to negotiate and cooperate with the factory to undertake a higher cost to ensure the short term production demand. However, because of the prevailing trend and consumer preferences, the inventory pressure of clothing was greatly reduced.

The final sale of these 150 thousand down coats is combined with the exposure of Alibaba's global marketing release: this explosive light and thin down jacket has launched the Ali eco advertising matrix, which has been exposed in Tmall's small black box, cat's super ecosystem, Tmall U and so on. It has also carried out propaganda with the resources of Tmall's marketing department, such as explosive list resources, KOL and net red anchors.

From design to production, from the new to the promotion, from the new to the repeated purchase, the brand has become more intelligent, more precise and efficient in every aspect of product development and promotion because of the participation of Alibaba's eco economy.

　 Category innovation of Hanfu and swimsuit

Barbara sells down clothes in winter, which is expected by consumers. However, in 2019, Barbara also sold small niche products such as children's swimsuits and Hanfu, and sold very well: the products represented by children's performing costumes, home furnishing, Chinese dress Qipao and swimsuit doubled, and swimwear category had a market share of 12.7%.

These are the new products of Tmall's maternal and infant industry operation expert, which is valued by Hua mo.

In 2019, the number of active users of Tmall Taobao App has reached 750 million. Such a large consumer group will have personalized and diversified needs under different scenarios.

As a platform, the consideration must be how to accurately match the needs of consumers, achieve order, experience and service, and create a rich, convenient and efficient trust for the platform itself.

Before 2019, Taobao or Tmall searched for "children's bathing suits". This is the field of innovation that has not yet been covered in the industry.

Tmall discovered this kind of consumption demand with big data technology. From the perspective of category innovation, it will choose to create together with the head merchants to guide the benign development of the high fever category in the industry.

For example, the Chinese clothing under the trend of big tide, through the co creation of the head merchants and the operation of more than two years, has risen to the middle level of the industry, and even will enter the Top10 and Top5 of the industry.

Lan Jianbin believes that subdivision areas like swimsuits and Hanfu are easy to ignore.

Enterprise product innovation often focuses on the conventional items such as style, fabric and color, but Tmall brings a new perspective of category innovation from platform dimension, stimulating innovation on the supply side, and bringing higher growth space.

From the consumer side, it has more choice space. Any consumer is likely to trust the platform and brand because of a personalized consumer demand, and the expansion of business opportunities is based on trust.