The Same Japanese Clothing Brand Joys And Sorrows Are Not Interlinked

Article reprinted from wechat public account: new game editor: Lei Yunting Author: Zhang Yeyou

It's the same brand as Japan's shimatology and shimaosong.

A few days ago, UNIQLO's parent company, fastsell, announced its full year results for the fiscal year 2020 to the end of August. Its net profit was 90.3 billion yen, down 44.4% year-on-year, and its revenue was 2.01 trillion yen, down 12.3%. Despite the decline in performance due to the impact of the epidemic, UNIQLO is still full of confidence and confidence in the Chinese market. By the end of August, UNIQLO had 767 stores in China and 764 stores in Japan. Liu Jingzheng, President and President of Fast Retailing, said that more stores would be opened in China next, with 3000 stores expected to be opened according to China's population.

Just after June this year, UNIQLO maintained an average monthly growth rate of seven stores, while Japanese clothing brands such as Earth Music & Ecology and Shimamura quietly withdrew from the Chinese market. Shimamura was once considered a competitor of UNIQLO in China. Now, it is a pity that it has gone to the field of "five yuan sale".

In recent years, the styles and positioning of overseas brands entering the Chinese market may be different, but the reasons for them to withdraw from the Chinese market are almost the same, which is nothing but poor management and acclimatization. Maybe it's time to learn from UNIQLO, which is still in the Chinese market, but whose business is in crisis.

one

"Ice and fire" of Japanese clothing brands

Asiaberand, a professional brand organization, recently released the list of "top 500 Asian brands 2020". The top clothing group is UNIQLO's parent company fast sale group, with a brand value index of 905.13, ranking 33rd in the total list.

On the one hand, UNIQLO has made great progress, and on the other hand, many Japanese clothing brands have been in constant failure in the Chinese market.

According to the incomplete statistics of mirror entertainment, Japanese clothing brands that have withdrawn from the Chinese market in recent years include Shimamura (a household name in Japan), earthmusic & ecology, samansa MoS2 and other brands of Japanese fashion group stripe international, as well as fast fashion brand honeys, department store brand Itokin and fashion group adastria Collection point, a multi brand clothing collection store.

The explanation given by Earth Music & Ecology when it withdrew from the Chinese market was that "the epidemic spread all over the world and had a great impact on the retail industry." However, Yang Dayun, an investor in the fashion industry, once revealed that before withdrawing from the market, the Earth Music & Ecology market had shrunk seriously, which had affected the survival of brands. If funds were invested to maintain them during the epidemic period, greater losses would be caused. In addition, the group's sales have been declining since 2013, according to Honeywell's financial data.

Compared with the number of UNIQLO stores in China is still rising, we can see that the epidemic situation is only a catalyst. The reason for these brands to withdraw from the market is to start with "whether there is a market, whether they can survive".

As a number of Japanese enlightenment clothing brands in the early and high school period of post-90s, Earth Music & Ecology and honeys were the original intention of girls who love Mori clothing. These two brands are not only for students, but also for young white-collar consumers. Now they withdraw from the Chinese market, not because Mori is out of date. Taobao stores, which also focus on forest products, have been paying close attention to 2.43 million yuan, nearly double that before Earth Music & ecology was delisted.

It is worth noting that the price range of non-stop is mostly between 100-300 yuan, while the price range of Earth Music & ecology is between 300-600 yuan. Many old fans say that "the price is more and more expensive". By contrast, this kind of domestic original brand can be described as a better cost-effective choice. Nowadays, young people's tastes are changing, and their choices of clothing types are becoming more and more diversified. Not only forest brands, but also European and American fast fashion brands, national fashion brands and designer brands are scrambling for survival space belonging to Earth Music & Ecology and honeys.

Compared with Earth Music & Ecology and honeyys, UNIQLO, which is also a Japanese brand, can sing all the way because of its smaller tonality and positioning limitations.

On the one hand, UNIQLO faces all ages, with almost no distinction between men, women and children. In this positioning, UNIQLO has few rivals in the domestic market. Among all the Japanese clothing brands entering the Chinese market, UNIQLO, which pays attention to fabrics and functions, is also worthy of its price performance. This is also the reason why even the "Chinese men who don't like to buy clothes" love UNIQLO very much. In 2019, UNIQLO ranked first in the list of men's clothing transactions released by tmall.com.

On the other hand, UNIQLO is not a forest department. Its style is extremely simple and popular among young people in recent years, which also continues UNIQLO's consistent positioning of "keeping the classic style forever". Among the reasons why young people like UNIQLO, "classic style is more versatile" is always at the forefront. After all, at the moment when the social scene of young people is gradually diversified, the attribute of "versatile" means cost performance, practicability and possibility. There are few affordable clothing brands that meet these conditions.

The size and popularity of a brand's consumers are the key factors that determine its profitability. Therefore, although UNIQLO has been in China for a short time than Itokin, its sales in Greater China now account for a quarter of the performance of UNIQLO's parent company. As a result, UNIQLO has become more and more strong under the epidemic situation, while Earth Music & ecology is hard to sustain.

Revenue is related to the long-term layout of the brand.

The costs that overseas brands need to pay in the Chinese market are not only the rental cost of opening stores, the labor cost of online and offline, but also the production cost. Before honeys withdrew from the Chinese market, nearly 90% of the goods were produced in China, and Itokin department store also set up its own factory in China. In recent years, the continuous rise of human cost in China's manufacturing industry has brought great pressure on the profit growth of enterprises, which is also one of the important reasons for many enterprises to move out of China. For Earth Music & ecology, honeyys, etc., which are already in short supply, this is an unbearable burden.

Of course, there are still many Japanese clothing brands remaining in the Chinese market, such as Moussy and sly under Baroque Japan; mark style, Murua, emoda, gyda, ungrid, jouetie; snidel, Lily brown, Mila Owen, and majestic Legg, w closet, and nice clap, which are owned by fashion retailer Baroque Japan; and mark style, Murua, emoda, gyda, ungrid and jouetie; snidel, Lily brown, Mila Owen, and majestic legend, w closet, and nice clap, etc.

Many of these brands entered China late, such as evris and jouetie, which only entered the Chinese market in 2017. Compared with Earth Music & Ecology and honeyys, most of these brands are in the middle of the line, with bigger brands and more cutting-edge design trends. Among them, sly and snidel have been frequent cover visitors of Japanese magazines "vivi" and "pinky", and Japanese model nishiko Suhara once served as the spokesman of sly.

Although the development of these latecomers in the Chinese market still needs time to test, and they are hard to compete with the size of UNIQLO in China, there is no doubt that these brands are more popular with young people who are following the trend than Earth Music & Ecology and honeyys.

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Learn from UNIQLO and ZARA

This year, the epidemic is indeed the black swan of the Communist Party of China. The emergence of the epidemic has made the offline clothing retailing in a bad situation worse, and directly led to the withdrawal of Japanese clothing brands such as Earth Music & ecology, Shimamura, and old navy, an American clothing brand. However, before the outbreak, the American fast fashion brand Forever 21, the British brand Topshop, the British high street clothing brand new look, and the American Apparel of American high street clothing successively withdrew from the Chinese market.

As the saying goes, foreign monks are fond of chanting sutras, which may be applicable when overseas brands flooded into China in large quantities at the early stage. At that time, Taobao brand had not yet risen in scale, new fashion brands had not entered the eyes of consumers, and e-commerce did not develop in full swing. Today, these products and operations are not enough localized overseas brands, can only face the market rule of survival of the fittest.

Old Navy and Itokin are both negative cases of localization.

The positioning of Old Navy, an American national brand, is similar to UNIQLO. However, while UNIQLO opened stores in China with high frequency to expand its coverage and influence, Old Navy has been moving forward at a high speed until delisting. Old Navy has only opened more than a dozen stores in China.

Itokin entered China in 1995, six years earlier than UNIQLO. It had 300 stores in China at most. However, it did not pay enough attention to the rapid development of online retail market. It was not until 2011 that the Taobao flagship store of Itokin department store was officially put into operation, and the online operation right was represented by a third party company, so the group could not flexibly conduct online business Adjustment and management, and finally announced the closure of stores in 2012.

From this point of view, the failure of many overseas brands in China stems from the survival pressure brought by the fierce competition environment, but more to blame on their own Buddhism, that is, they failed to take a correct attitude in the development and really understand the Chinese market. Unfortunately, Buddhism may lead to failure, especially for overseas brands.

In contrast, UNIQLO's success in the Chinese market is closely related to its strong localization ability. John C Jay, the global creative director of Fast Retailing, once said in an interview that when he goes to a place, he will learn about the local culture and the life of the local people. This is also UNIQLO's global concept. Looking at UNIQLO's operations in the global market, UNIQLO's integration with contemporary art in the United States, the fashion concept conveyed in France, and the emphasis on local color and traditional culture in China are all practicing this concept.

In terms of the combination of products and local culture, UNIQLO has launched six dialect versions of magic advertisements for basic down garments. According to the clothing needs of different regions, UNIQLO introduced the wearing methods of down garments. It also cooperated with China Soong Ching Ling Foundation to move Chinese Miao embroidery culture into UNIQLO stores. At the same time, UNIQLO has also adapted to China's consumer culture. In 2017, UNIQLO started to jointly launch ar red packets with Alipay, providing digital interactive screens in physical stores, trying to bring consumers a one-stop shopping experience.

In terms of marketing, UNIQLO UNIQLO's Greater China CMO once said that 70% - 80% of UNIQLO's marketing strategies in China follow the global marketing strategy, but they will formulate different focuses based on different regional cultures under the global strategy.

In 2014, UNIQLO began to build a digital marketing team, and successively operated we media on wechat, microblog, xiaohongshu and other social platforms where young people gather. On the little red book, the number of popular UNIQLO diaries and topics reached 86.61 million. Many bloggers of little red book shared their own experience of dressing under the topic, among which the number of popular articles was tens of thousands. In the sharing of these bloggers, UNIQLO's classic models can be commuting, retro, fashionable, British and full of variety. Nowadays, there are not a few UNIQLO products that can be understood and purchased through these KOL information.

Compared with UNIQLO, many Japanese clothing brands have not made enough efforts in marketing. For example, the main promotion position of earthmusic & ecology has always been microblog, but its content is mostly new products, clothing sharing, discount activity notice, etc., which is slightly official and rigid compared with UNIQLO's KOL marketing.

In addition to UNIQLO, the "multi line simultaneous entry" of H & M parent company Hennes & Mauritz AB and Zara parent company INDITEX group in China market is also worth learning from. In recent years, fast fashion brands such as H & M and Zara have been cooling down in the domestic market, partly because the emerging middle class has begun to give up cheap clothing and pursue more quality clothing. Therefore, Hennes & Mauritz and INDITEX group quickly established arket and Massimo dutti, which are medium and high-end terminal brands, and have been promoted to the Chinese market. Now, Massimo The number of dutti flagship stores has reached 4.11 million.

Localization is crucial to all overseas brands entering China, not limited to the field of clothing. In the past year or two, Starbucks, which has few competitors in the coffee industry, has begun to take a girl's style, launching Cherry Blossom cups and cat's paw cups; KFC, which has penetrated into the third and fourth tier small cities, has recently sold snail powder; IKEA, which has been stationed in the suburbs, has also begun to move closer to the city center. Although it is not in the same competitive field, it shows that overseas brands attach importance to localization.

Although China's consumer market has become mature, in the field of clothing, the trend of the trend has been changing, and the online and offline retail environment is also rebuilding, which puts forward higher requirements for overseas brands. Therefore, the overseas brands, whether they have entered China or are about to enter China, should fully understand the Chinese market, study consumers' preferences, and adapt to the changes in China's consumption environment and consumption culture, so as to have a long-term foothold.