Can Outdoor Brand The North Face Do High-End Fashion?

Outdoor has become a fashion element, but whether the main functional outdoor brand is fashionable or not is still a question.

After years of CO branding with the trend brands, the US outdoor brand The North Face has finally accelerated the pace of fashion. First, it announced the launch of a joint series with Maison Margiela sub line MM6, and then launched a 2020 spring summer series for its branch Black Series, which will debut in Paris fashion week in February 24th.

The information conveyed by a series of actions is that The North Face is no longer satisfied with the simple fashion alliance, and is looking for a place in the high-end fashion industry.

Black Series previously existed only as a branch of The North Face Urban Exploration, mainly through joint cooperation in the public view, such as the joint series published by Japanese designer Cang Shi Yi Shu. The North Face Urban Exploration is the outdoor fashion series established by The North Face since 2015. Compared with The North Face main line, it emphasizes the introduction of brand outdoor technology into life scenes, which is more suitable for daily wear and also pays more attention to design.

However, this series is no longer a joint name. Instead, it is designed by Tim Hamilton, the global creative director of the brand. Specially invited international rock climbers Margo Hayes and Matty Hong will shoot advertisements and will be released on fashion week in Paris. It is enough to see The North Face's importance to the series.

It is noteworthy that the highest price of Black Series 2020 spring and summer series reached US $1500, while the products sold by The North Face official website were mainly between 200 and 500 dollars, and there were dozens of parity series of tens of dollars. Even Summit Series and other top-level series for professional outdoor sports did not exceed 700 US dollars.

The earlier released MM6 joint series directly reflects the interest of The North Face. As the secondary brand of Maison Margiela of high fashion house, the younger MM6 combines fashion elements and high-end fashion. It is popular with fashion and fashion circles recently, which provides a basis for its cooperation with The North Face.

The joint series has been released in London Fashion Week in February 16th. It has reproduced the classic products of The North Face's down, coats, jackets and skirt items in MM6's deconstruction design. This is even the first joint launch of MM6's capsule series with Opening Ceremony in 2011.

Joint names are not new words for The North Face.

The North Face can be said to be the first outdoor brand to enter the fashion trend. As early as 2007, The North Face began to link up with the tide brand Supreme of the United States, which is a hot topic in the trend of the world and is still in progress. As of 2019, autumn and winter, more than 20 joint series have been released, and leopard pattern down garments and other classic products have been produced.

In addition to long-term cooperation with Supreme, The North Face has continued joint cooperation with Vans of the same group as Viagra group, as well as Japanese fashion brand Sacai, Junya Watanabe, HYKE, trend brand BEAMS, Japanese fashion designer Kurashi Kazuki and so on.

The North Face is popular with fashion brands, largely because outdoors is actually a fashion element. Although urban life scenes do not require functional performance of outdoor clothing, outdoor technology elements in fashion design will remind people of the extreme sports of excitement and the spirit of outdoor pursuit. Not only is the trend brand frequently associated with outdoor brands, but even luxury brand LOEWE launched a series of men's clothing that emphasized outdoor functionality last year.

It is through the combination of a series of trends that The North Face has entered the fashion and fashion context, otherwise it is still a typical North American outdoor brand.

In 1966, The North Face, founded by Douglas Tompkins, was originally a retail shop specializing in outdoor sports equipment such as rock climbing and mountaineering. At that time, there were not many outdoor stores in the United States, and outdoor sports enthusiasts could only choose to buy equipment in military merchandise stores. The North Face satisfied the needs of consumers and became a gathering place for outdoor sports enthusiasts.

Since 1968, The North Face has started designing, producing and selling its own products. It has gradually become the largest outdoor brand in the United States, covering all kinds of outdoor products such as high performance jackets, ski suits, sleeping bags, backpacks and tents. In 1997, The North Face's brand revenue exceeded 200 million dollars, and began to adopt a new slogan, "Never Stop Exploring".

However, because of a series of decision-making errors, including blind expansion of product line series, the The North Face situation is in sharp decline. In 1998, The North Face increased its revenue by 22% to 247 million dollars, but net profit fell 55% to 3 million 800 thousand dollars. In 1999, The North Face lost nearly $100 million.

Subsequently, The North Face was acquired by the Vans parent company VF rich group in April 2000 and embarked on the road of transformation. Its brand includes Vans, JanSport, Eastpak, Timberland, Kipling and so on. Unlike many outdoor brands dedicated to professionalism, the brand of Wei Fu's brand is developing a distinct brand culture. For example, Vans is tied up with skateboarding culture, and JanSport and Eastpak are younger designed to adapt to the daily life of young people and young people.

The professional outdoor market is a niche market. Although the high-end products of The North Face are still highly praised by outdoor fans, this is obviously unable to meet the expectations of the parent group's growth and its brand culture description.

After joining the Wei Fu Group, The North Face fully developed the outdoor products of parity on the one hand. On the other hand, it enhanced the brand's trend attributes through cooperation with fashion trend brands, and promoted the popularity of the new generation of consumers. Positive transformation provides impetus for growth.

At present, The North Face is the largest brand of the Wei Fu group. In 2013, it became the first brand to win over $2 billion. Although the group does not provide specific revenue for the brand, it has been estimated by analysts that The North Face increased to $2 billion 400 million in 2017, and revenue increased by 9% to about 2 billion 600 million US dollars in 2018, which is the largest single outdoor brand in the world, higher than that of Columbia and so on.

This proves that The North Face has achieved success in the past few years considering both outdoor attributes and fashion trends. It has made the brand fashion gene and has become one of the most potential outdoor brands in the high-end fashion industry.

From the external environment, the rise of luxury feather products is likely to inspire The North Face.

Over the past few years, the trend of luxury and fashion has become more and more fashionable in the past. Moncler, first recognized by luxury fashion industry through fashion, creatively created luxury feather products. Before being acquired by Remo Ruffuni in 2003, Moncler was also an ordinary outdoor brand. However, under the clear fashion orientation, Moncler has successfully entered the high-end fashion industry.

Especially after launching the Moncler Genius project in 2018, Moncler has proved to the industry an important fact that the concept of haute couture and luxury goods can be associated with outdoor practical products.

In general, luxury symbol value is far greater than the use value, brand history and technology create a premium, brand experience is mainly reflected in luxury brand shopping experience, customer relationship maintenance, and the use of luxury brought by identity symbols. However, in terms of product experience, the performance of traditional luxury goods is actually uneven.

But the luxury feather and cashmere products have broken the situation. Besides the added value provided by the traditional luxury brands, the practical value of down and cashmere products has made the luxury experience return to the product itself. Take the Canadian outdoor brand Canada Goose as an example, the brand logo down jacket with advanced technology support can provide warmth experience under extremely cold conditions. Luxury cashmere brands benefit from higher cashmere acquisition standards and processes, providing consumers with a soft touch experience and warmth.

On the other hand, in the past five years that street fashion has invaded the high fashion industry, the high fashion industry has gradually recognized such outdoor elements as feather and functional fabrics.

In fact, before 2015, feather products were not recognized by the high fashion industry. For a long time, down jacket is not considered a fashion item. Fashion editor is proud of being less dressed in winter, rather than seeking warmth. In the trend of Google, the word "puffy jacket" (down jacket) was searched in waves before and after 2016, mainly due to the trend of the down fashions in the luxury fashion industry before and after 2015, and fashion trends tended to spread from high fashion to the public sector.

Therefore, after Moncler, the rising Canada Goose, a functional rising star, benefited from Moncler's consumer awareness in advance. China's down garment giant Bosideng even took a ride. It joined the international fashion week, launched a joint venture with French designer Jean Paul Gaultier, and increased the price of products to the high-end fashion.

These typical seasonal clothing brands strive to get rid of seasonal labels, hoping to maintain the brand's freshness by fashion, thereby defeating the weather.

For outdoor brands The North Face, the above trend obviously provides a possible access to further high-end. In particular, considering that The North Face down jacket has also become a very popular social media exposure product in the past this year's luxury down trend, but compared to Canada Goose and Moncler, the price of The North Face down jacket is very close to the people.

Of course, high-end transformation is not easy. It is one thing to have the ability to be high-end, and whether it is necessary to be high-end is another matter. At least for now, only Moncler really turns down clothing into a luxury fashion item. While the main function and Canada Goose, which is relatively simple in product design, are classified as luxury goods on the price band, but in fact, it has not yet been recognized as a real high-end fashion.

In fact, today's Moncler has more emphasis on luxury rather than practicality. Canada Goose, which is famous for its "tooling style", has gradually become a symbolic dress. Consumers may not pay attention to the technological elements they use when they buy luxury feather products. To be more precise, Canada Goose is trying to tell a story about a cold polar brand. Although not everyone wants to go to Antarctica and Iceland, but Canada Goose wants someone to pay a high premium for the story when global travel is becoming popular and climate anomalies are happening.

Moncler and Canada Goose point out the two paths to high-end: high-end fashion and high technology.

The North Face Design Manager Mona Al-Shaalan, in an interview with the media, said: "many brands are integrating high fashion with outdoor style, but no brand has such a play space as The North Face."

In most cases, however, the two path can only choose one. The North Face emphasizes the use of high performance fabrics in the spring and summer of Black Series2020, but its intention to move consumers with fashion design is very clear. That is to say, as the brand of outdoor sports technology as the core value, The North Face has chosen the fashion path, so it must provide a higher level of creativity than the popular series in the high-end series.

In fact, under the leadership of The, North Face has retained the high-end product line for extreme outdoor environment, and the technology content still represents the top level of the outdoor industry in the industry, but the main target of the brand is still in the mass market.

In a highly competitive high-end market, it is possible to gain opportunities in the market only if sufficient resources are invested and done to the utmost. This creates the contradiction between the resource game between the high-end product line and the mass market business. At the same time, if betting high-end fashion line is the prelude to The North Face's overall upgrading and price increase, the brand must give up some consumers.

It can be said that a brand with too wide price can hardly do a good job in high-end series, because the brand value has been diluted by the price band. However, the price of domestic clothing brands that rely on the sinking market is still unknown because of the strategic abandonment of brands and the sinking of the market.

Such a dilemma is very difficult for any middle end brand. China's down jacket brand Bosideng is facing similar problems in the process of fashion brand upgrading. Bosideng launched a high-end professional product Summit Series in October 30th last year, ranging from 5000 yuan to 11000 yuan. Because this series of down jacket is on the shelves during the double eleven period, and the sales volume in Tmall flagship store is not impressive, some people in the industry have questioned the high-end of Bosideng.

In the current market, we can also see that although FILA, Champion, Kappa and other sports brands have chosen fashion strategy in recent years, they are still more cautious in the face of high-end fashion. FILA still tends to launch a high-end series in the form of joint name. In December last year, FILA released the 2020 spring summer high fashion fashion series with 3.1 Phillip Lim.

The bigger danger is that professional sports brands aspiring to fashion recognition need to be careful at all times to avoid the danger of the brand's original professional and technological image. Because fashion trends have significant periodicity, people's enthusiasm for outdoor elements may be out of date one day, while loyal sports fans are the core assets of the brand.