Japanese Fashion Brands Withdraw From Chinese Market

On June 30, Japanese fashion group stripe international withdrew from the Chinese market, and all the online and offline sales channels of seven brands, including Earth Music & ecology, ehypen world gallery and samansa MoS2, were closed.

Earlier in April, 4 ° C holdings, a jewelry group aspiring to become "Tiffany of Japan", announced that it would withdraw from the Chinese market and close three stores in the coming year.

In the past three years, Japanese fashion brands / enterprises that have successively withdrawn from the Chinese market also include: fast fashion brand honeys, department store brand Itokin and its brands, collection point, a multi brand clothing collection store under the fashion group adastria.

The Japanese women's clothing brands that still remain in the Chinese mainland market are: majestic dragon, w closet, nice clap; mark Styler, Murua, emoda, gyda, ungrid, jouetie of mark style; Moussy and sly of Baroque Japan; snidel, Lily brown, Mila Owen and fry I.D. of mash holdings.

At a time when the world's major fashion brands are making efforts in the Chinese market, why do Japanese brands, which have always been popular with young people, have little voice and action, and even are declining? Through the research, luxuriant records found five reasons why Japanese fashion brands are not acclimatized in China

Market positioning is not high, not low

Slow response to the rapidly changing Chinese market

Over reliance on traditional department stores and shopping centers

The digital process is slow

Insufficient investment in brand building and communication

Market positioning is not high, not low

Fashion consumers' purchase preference is developing toward "two poles" - luxury goods with high price or fast fashion with low price. The brand positioning in the middle is quite embarrassing. Under the influence of the epidemic situation, there are signs of accelerating the evolution of this trend.

Take the brand Earth Music & Ecology of stripe as an example. Its main customers are young women in their teens and 30s, whose prices are higher than fast fashion. Looking at China's social media, it can be found that some users define it as a "fast fashion brand", while some consumers think that the brand is "a little expensive" or even "more and more expensive".

At present, the Japanese brands majestic dragon and W closet, which are still operating in the Chinese market, are closer to fast fashion brands in terms of price. Through the official Taobao stores of each brand, it can be found that the highest price of these two brands after discount and promotion is about 600 yuan. However, the prices of snidel and Lily Brown are slightly higher, and the unit price after discount is about 1000 yuan, mainly aiming at white-collar women.

In terms of 4 ° C holdings, the group has started to implement the brand high-end strategy since the second half of 2018. The fashion jewelry business is divided into three parts: the first grade of 30000 yen (about RMB 1968), the second grade of 30000-70000 yen (about RMB 1968-4592), and the third grade of more than 70000 yen (about RMB 4592), and develops and sells products according to these three price levels.

Even if 4 ° C holdings decides to go high-end, most Chinese consumers who know the brand still define it as a "affordable jewelry" brand.

Slow response to the rapidly changing Chinese market

A number of overseas brand executives contacted by Huali Zhi have marveled at the "speed" of China, which is not only reflected in the evolution of consumer preferences and fashion trends, but also in the whole process from production planning to new stores.

In terms of production and store innovation, the average production cycle of fast fashion brands is 10 days, and the stores are updated at least once a week. In Zara, for example, the rate of brand update is about 12000 models a year, twice a week. But ordinary fashion brands can't even do it once every two weeks.

Founded in 1999, Earth Music & ecology is the creator and leader of this style. The main features of its products are simple and comfortable. After the birth of the brand, the parent company, stripe group, continued to make new records in the following ten years. According to some data, in 2011, the annual sales of Earth Music & Ecology single brand reached 25.6 billion yen, firmly occupying the position of Japan's No.1 women's wear brand.

Earth Music & ecology is one of the Japanese style enlightenment brands of many post-8090 Chinese fashion consumers. However, today's consumers prefer more diversified fashion styles, and they also prefer sports, leisure, oversize, or more slim style. But the style of Earth Music & ecology has not changed much. Although the Chinese consumers feel sorry for the departure of high school.

Talking about another Japanese enlightenment brand honeys, which has withdrawn from the Chinese market, some consumers said that it was "the favorite of junior high school".

A netizen said bluntly: "I found that earth music has also withdrawn from the Chinese market. Following honeyys, another childhood and tears of the times, these Mori women's Day brands are no longer available in China. Now the trend of women's wear in China is very European and American."

In contrast, the Japanese brand jouetie, which entered the Chinese market in 2017, is based on street style and is good at mixing and matching with various styles such as rock, modern and young girls, and has a unique personality that attracts current consumers.

Over reliance on traditional department stores and shopping centers

Compared with the international well-known fast fashion brands, Japanese traditional fashion brands are more traditional and cautious in the layout of China's offline market, and are more inclined to use the strategy in the Japanese market.

Itokin, which entered the Chinese market as early as 1995, is itself a department store operator, and its dependence on the department store channel is self-evident.

Since 2011, stripe group began to expand its direct business and open single brand stores in China, with more than 100 stores in China at its peak. However, the information available shows that most of its stores are in store stores or shopping centers, and few large independent stores can fully display the characteristics and concepts of a certain brand.

While stripe group is expanding the Chinese market, UNIQLO, Zara, H & M and other fast fashion brands are quietly laying out. Unlike stripe's small stores, these fast fashion brands spend a lot of money to build large stores in prime locations, such as Nanjing West Road in Shanghai and Sanlitun in Beijing.

Stripe group began to adjust its store strategy in the Chinese market in 2017 to open large stores, but it was later than these fast fashion brands. In addition, the large store Earth Music & Ecology Tokyo launched by stripe group is a collection store with 51 brands. Although the store name is integrated with the brand name, the overall selection and commodity display weaken the sense of existence of the main brand.

Honeyys, which mainly caters to students and young white-collar consumers, also relies heavily on department stores in offline channels. Due to rising production costs and declining performance, the number of stores has declined from nearly 600 in the peak period until it completely exits the Chinese market in 2018. Honeys entered the Chinese market in 2006 and is one of the first Japanese fashion brands to enter the Chinese market.

When adastria, another Japanese fashion group, entered the Chinese market for the first time, it also chose a development model similar to that of stripe group. In 2008, adastria group introduced its collection point, a multi brand clothing collection store, into China. At that time, the first store in mainland China (2010) was in Suzhou Yongwang, and the number of stores once expanded to more than 40. In mid-2019, the group decided to close all its collection point stores in China.

The digital process is slow

The proportion of e-commerce in China's fashion retail industry is much higher than that in Japan, and the competition is more intense, especially for the low-end positioning brands, especially for youth fashion brands.

Although honeys has entrusted the e-business to its partners in 2009, it has only entrusted the e-business to the channel. In 2010, honeyys opened its tmall flagship store, but it still handed over the operation to a third party. It was not until 2014 that the company established an independent e-commerce department to be responsible for the self-supporting business of online channels.

Itokin, which entered the Chinese market in 1995, did not open its online flagship store until 2011. However, the online operation was handed over to a third-party company. The group was unable to adjust its online business flexibly and then closed its online business in 2012.

Earth Music & Ecology opened tmall's flagship store in 2015, but e-commerce sold online products for exclusive use. It was not until 2018 that the parent company stripe group established a strategic partnership with Alibaba Japan and began to promote a new retail business model of online and offline integration.

As of the end of June this year, stripe international has seven brands in mainland China: Earth Music & ecology, ehypen world Gallery, samansa MoS2, American hollic, green park, nicoron, yecca vecca. However, among the seven brands, only Earth Music & ecology, ehypen world gallery and samansa MoS2 have opened online channels in Jingdong and tmall.

As of the withdrawal from the Chinese market, 4 ° C Holdings has not yet opened an online channel in China.

Insufficient investment in brand building and communication

In the era of social media marketing explosion, how to reach a wider audience and improve brand identification and recognition has become a major challenge for brands.

In 2011, stripe group opened microblog and wechat accounts for Earth Music & ecology. So far, the brand microblog has 240000 fans. Since the beginning of this year, the maximum number of wechat headlines has been less than 4000.

However, the high sales rate of E & music was mainly focused on the new products and interactive products. In addition, the brand did not cooperate with stars and well-known KOLs. In addition, the joint name with bean eaters earlier attracted a small amount of attention, and the overall momentum was insufficient.

4 ° C holdings lacks a sense of presence in China's social media. Perhaps it is to ensure the high cost performance of the brand, and there is not enough budget in marketing. Most Chinese consumers don't even know the brand exists.

Although a large number of Japanese brands have left, but at the same time, many Japanese fashion enterprises are adjusting their pace to expand the Chinese market with a more positive attitude. For example, adastria group, mark Styler, Baroque Japan, etc.

In 2017, mark Styler introduced its young fashion brand jouetie and chose to open tmall flagship store first.

Besides cooperating with KOL, the social media content of Moussy, a brand of Baroque Japan, will also share the material of the product and provide suggestions on how to wear it, so as to interact more closely with Chinese fashion consumers.

Although it closed all its stores in the Chinese market, adastria group did not give up the Chinese market, but chose to open its lifestyle brand Niko and Return to the global flagship store model. Jiahui Kitamura, director of adastria group and President of sales department, said in an exclusive interview with Huali Zhi: "if you can manage a store in the most expensive location in Shanghai, the challenges in other places will be relatively small. Another reason is that for strategic considerations, consumers are more willing to enter the flagship stores of the brand, feel the atmosphere, and explore and discover. And ordinary stores sell conventional goods can be placed online

In addition, Niko and At the same time of opening physical stores, they began to prepare for China's online business. The epidemic situation made it launch wechat app mall more quickly. Recently, it cooperated with well-known anchor Li Jiaqi in live broadcast. In addition, they were frequently taken on by idols and stars, such as Cheng Xiao, Wang Dalu, Zhu Yawen, etc.