1 Minutes To Sell A Pair Of Shoes, Valuing 10 Billion, What Is The Brand Doing Right?

There are two pairs of shoes in front of you.

A pair of Nike classic series Roshe Run Flyknit's new running shoes, the net surface, the color is bright, Nike has taken the spokesperson advertisement for it, encourages you to put on it to run, the sparkling "hook" attracts you willingly to draw out the wallet to pay 1299 yuan.

The other pair looks very ordinary: black and white grey, wool upper, and logo are inconspicuous, but it emphasizes itself as "the most comfortable shoes in the world" and "the most environmentally friendly shoes in the world" at a price of 899 yuan.

How do you choose?

2 years, 1 million pairs of shoes

In the face of Nike's new running shoes, when you pay a moment, you think more about whether these shoes are strong enough, not match their temperament, and the pleasure of the classic hook.

But so far, you have bought countless pairs of shoes. You may still not be able to answer the specific material and how to produce the pair of Nike sneakers on your feet, and why you should pay the corresponding price for them.

You may not care about these, or more accurately, you are not aware of the importance of these problems unless someone tells you specifically.

In fact, Nike has launched the global production map, and consumers can query partners in Nike production and supply chain on the corresponding website to promote the sustainable development of the fashion industry.

But under the Nike shop, consumers will not be told the situation voluntarily. After all, after half a century of operation and development, Nike's supply chain system is global, and the system is complex.

However, Allbirds chose to take the initiative to tell you.

The shoe brand from New Zealand was founded in March 2016 by Tim Brown, a former Zealand football player, and Joey Zwillinger, a sustainable material technology expert.

At the beginning of its founding, Allbirds dismantled the specific materials of a pair of shoes: the vamp is the best Merino wool in New Zealand and the eucalyptus tree in South Africa. The sole is made of sugarcane, and the insole is made of wool and castor oil, and the shoelace is made of plastic bottles. Even 90% of the shoes are made of recycled cardboard boxes.

Each country produces, produces, assembles, and produces enough environmental protection and carbon emissions. All information is open and transparent, consumers can go to offline stores to touch material materials, watch videos of the production process online, the company has passed the most stringent B-corp certification in the world, and also provided a review report issued by authoritative third party organizations.

In the 2 years after the start, Allbirds sold 1 million pairs of shoes worldwide, which means that every 2 years, a pair of Allbirds shoes sold.

Those who bought the shoes included former US President Obama, Hollywood star Leonardo Dicaprio, talk show queen Oprah Winfery, Google founder Larry Paige, Apple CEO Tim Cook, and investment partner of Silicon Valley famous Vc firm Andreessen Horowitz Keller Russell.

For a time, Allbirds became the standard of Silicon Valley investors and start-up executives, and quickly became popular from social networking sites, becoming a hot new brand in the footwear industry.

In October 2018, Allbirds received a $50 million investment in C, valued at $1 billion 400 million, and gradually moved from an online sales brand to offline. At present, more than ten offline shops have been opened in major cities such as New York, London and Chicago.

In April 2019, Allbirds entered the Chinese market, opened its first Asian store in Shanghai, and launched online multi-channel operation: official website, WeChat mall and Tmall flagship store.

Allbirds, less than 4 years old, is considered by the Wall Street journal to be the main competitor of Adidas and Nike in the future. What exactly has it done?

Minimalist design and fast iteration

Allbirds advocates the minimalist design, whether it is the product itself or the product pricing, there are 6 shoes at present, two kinds of price: 95 dollars and 115 dollars.

The 1 million pairs of shoes sold at the beginning of the brand had only 2 styles: Wool Runners and Wool Loungers. Among them, Wool Runners has been sold on the Allbirds official website at a price of 95 US dollars since its sale in March 2016. It has not been discounted, nor has it become an old one.

This is quite different from the fashion industry. Of course, over the past three years, the same Wool Runners is not static.

In the Internet trend report of the Internet queen Mary Mikel, Allbirds is listed as one of the most responsive brands: it updates the product design timely according to the feedback of users, and also uses social media to maintain its own heat. In 2017,

The products of Wool Runners will first be sold on a small scale, and then the product will be upgraded and updated according to the feedback of users during the month.

"There were customers who complained that the label of the tongue was uncomfortable, so we changed the label when the next product was changed." Co founder Joey Zwillinger said.

So far, Wool Runners has undergone 30 iterations.

In addition, Allbirds's products are very unique in color matching. Although only 6 series of shoes have been launched at present, they have made many attempts in color, giving different colors and different personalities, such as dawn violet, graphite gray, moonstone blue, Kuang Huanhong, and ice sky blue.

At the same time, in order to make the simple shoes have more rich collocation, Allbirds has introduced many kinds of coloured shoelaces, so that consumers can acquire freshness at low cost.

In social media interaction, when Allbirds introduces a new color, it will take a "color matching" photo, such as lavender shoes lying on lavender pads, so that yellow shoes with pineapple appetite. The game of "color matching" has attracted consumers' comments and commentaries.

According to the Allbirds global business director Erick Haskell's public speaking, the brand adopted the DTC mode (direct-to-customer, the brand directly faces the consumer operation, does not expand the distribution channel), at present has nearly 2 million users.

In order to enhance the replacement rate, Allbirds also introduced slippers, socks and other peripherals such as eye patch, insole and shoelaces. Around the product of "the most comfortable" product, Allbirds will probably launch the clothing series in the future.

Content marketing, return to the source

In his December 31, 2019 inter Year speech, friends of the year, Luo Zhenyu mentioned that the "perfect diary" of the domestic brand has defeated the 112 year old L'OREAL and the 73 year old Estee Lauder in 11 years of sales in 2 years, which he believes is the great benefit of China's new infrastructure. China has the manufacturing strength that can be assured that others can do it.

The strength of manufacturing is the foundation. However, new brands need innovative marketing strategies to survive in the competitive cosmetics market.

There is also a skin care brand HFP in China, which specializes in cosmetics ingredients from the perspective of raw materials through Xiaohong book and other platforms. It has become popular in 2 years, becoming the first professional skin care brand in Taobao platform.

HFP's popular line has brought together a wave of ingredients. New consumers are no longer blindly following big brands when they buy cosmetics. HFP did a small amount of brand advertising in the early dissemination, and focused on providing consumers with solutions to skin problems.

This is similar to Allbirds. From the beginning, it chose to provide professional precise content from the perspective of consumers' "unknown" and guide consumers to pay attention to new knowledge and technology.

On the official website and social media account of Allbirds, you can find all the raw material production video of all products, and explain the professional information with the language that ordinary people can understand. Compared to the official website of Nike, the official website of the company is just an advertisement display and sales channel.

Tim Brown, co-founder of Allbirds, is an athlete with design thinking. The idea of making shoes with wool comes from the real experience of athletes.

Because of professional football, all of Tim's shoes are sponsored by big brands such as Nike. These shoes are reflected on the shining logo on the playground.

Tim in life wants to have a pair of simple and comfortable sneakers, no big logo, no much complicated design, and more environmental protection, because New Zealand, born in sheep with more people, has naturally thought of designing wool sports shoes such as Wool Runner itself.

He made a video of this idea on the crowd raising website KickStarter, and raised 119 thousand dollars in 5 days.

The name of Allbirds comes from the first impressions of people who landed on New Zealand Island: All birds!

The ability to arouse people's most original feelings about a thing is the result that Allbirds hopes to achieve: a pair of shoes, the most important thing is not that logo is mostly beautiful, not how amazing the design is, but whether it is comfortable enough and breathable.

In order to convey the brand's "most comfortable shoes" positioning, Allbirds's product advertising is both natural and visual. The feeling of putting on shoes like "walking in the clouds", the scene of advertising shooting in nature, shoes and the sky, waves, woods, grassland integration. These shoes are prepared for those who love nature and love freedom, and put them back in the embrace of nature.

Leonardo's advertisement for Allbirds is also asked in nature: do you pursue materialism? Do you care about the source of products and how they are produced?

Environmental protection is a selling point, but not the only selling point.

In 2018, Hollywood star Leonardo Dicaprio, who has been working on environmental issues, announced on Instagram that he invested Allbirds in his own name. He thought it was a positive way for business participation in solving climate change problems. The label of Allbirds has become "the most environmentally friendly shoe in the world".

But according to Joey Zwillinge, co-founder and sustainable material technology expert, "sustainable development is the three most important pillar of Allbirds brand development."

In his view, Allbirds is first a commercial brand, to solve the pain point of consumer demand, in the process of meeting the needs of consumers, the brand has found a better way to do better products.

This is practically a real problem for all sustainable brands. Once the use of environmentally-friendly materials is involved, the relative cost will rise. Under such circumstances, big brands often use small-scale attempts to deal with the media and the public's blaming corporate social responsibility.

Are consumers really willing to pay a higher price for products that are sustainable?

The "Chinese new generation fashion consumption white paper 2018" released by fashion media "gorgeous ambition" shows that consumers who believe that corporate social responsibility will affect individual buying behavior account for 80.4% of the total number of respondents.

The sensitivity of China's young consumers to sustainable development is also improving: young consumers will be willing to choose more socially responsible brands when they are faced with a huge selection of commodities.

At the end of August 2019, the world's 32 fashion and textile companies jointly signed the fashion industry environmental protection agreement during the G7 summit in France, aiming to reduce the impact of fashion industry on the environment in three areas, including climate warming, biodiversity and ocean.

In 2019, the clothing and fashion brands signed by PRADA and Adidas signed new products made from recycled materials, but this series of measures still remain in the recycling of materials.

Unlike the above practices, Allbirds is starting to make sustainable technological development and product design from the source of the product, which is a further attempt.

The use of renewable wool and oak instead of unsustainable petroleum products produces only 60% of the carbon emissions from the traditional shoe making industry, which is 95% less than that of cotton products. For the whole shoemaking industry, it is a revolutionary revolution of raw materials.

Allbirds is not the only overseas brand to enter the Chinese market with a sustainable concept. Sweden's Freitag (old cloth recycling bag), the United States Rothy's (plastic bottle recycling flat shoes) and so on, all entered the Shanghai market in 2019.

Using wallet to vote for sustainable development has become one of the ways of consumption and identity of young people.

Despite its strategic cooperation with Taigu, Allbirds has made 4 outlets in the Chinese market in 8 months, and has been working closely with mainstream brands in the marketing strategy for young people. But it is still to be seen whether a single product line, which is not cheap, can really win the hearts of Chinese consumers.