Fast Fashion Market: The Gap Between UNIQLO And Ara

Recently, UNIQLO ushered in her highlight. From an unknown clothing brand (relative to the international famous brand), crush the former clothing giant Zara (parent company INDITEX), which is famous for its fast fashion. On February 16, this year, UNIQLO won the title of "the largest clothing company in the world in total market value" from Zara with 10.8725 trillion yen (calculated by closing price).

As of November 2020, UNIQLO has 2298 stores worldwide, with 60% in Asia (excluding Japan). Mainland China has 791 stores, second only to 815 in Japan. Zara accounts for only about 20% of its stores in Asia.

Not long ago, Zara's parent company INDITEX also confirmed that it would close all its physical stores in China for its three brands, Bershka, pull & Bear and Stradivarius.

In the summer of 2017, the market value of FMCG and INDITEX was about 4 times different, and the market structure has changed dramatically in just four years.

Compared with Zara, which was founded in 1975, UNIQLO, as a "rising star", is obviously more flexible in the current market environment. In the eyes of contemporary consumers, it seems to be both unexpected and reasonable.

This is like, a class came to a plain cut in students, appearance is very ordinary, at first very humble, but for a long time, but with her unique characteristics counter attack become the class of female students.

According to the majority of UNIQLO road powder customers said: "UNIQLO cost-effective super high.". Super high here means that consumers are more satisfied with UNIQLO than other clothing brands in terms of the core clothing price and quality demand.

So, how does UNIQLO achieve a good reputation of "super high cost performance"? This also depends on the idea of the founder of UNIQLO, Mr. Yanai, when he founded UNIQLO. Liujing believes that developing and providing cheap and high-quality clothing is the most important factor to occupy the market. From UNIQLO's first store in Hiroshima, Liujing has been practicing the concept of high cost-effective clothing.

Of course, it would be biased to think that the founder's worship of good quality and low price has created UNIQLO's market position. After all, every entrepreneur wants to use this method to win the market, but it seems to be very difficult to practice. So, how does UNIQLO really implement "high quality and low price"? Here are a few points worth referring to.

1. Early cheating gap, to basic casual clothing for cost-effective laid the foundation

Starting from the late 1960s, gap, a popular and cost-effective leisure clothing brand in the U.S. market in the 1980s and 1990s, Patrick Robinson, its design director, once said: "for gap, the most important point of design is to fit, fit and fit again." This sentence sounds familiar to me - it turns out that UNIQLO's highly publicized slogan is completely consistent with the concept of gap.

With the rapid development of economy and the subsequent burst of economic bubble, pragmatism began to prevail, and the fashion concept emphasizing practicality took root. Catching up with the fashion is no longer the mainstream. It is replaced by the concept of personalization, comfort and pleasing oneself.

More importantly, in the past decade, with the penetration of the Internet into personal life and the popularity of mobile phones, people have become more and more inclined to "house life". More spare time is spent on mobile phones, and less attention is paid to how to "appear" in the street. Over time, the beauty of simple and simple image is more recognized. Comfortable and high texture leisure style has long been in the ascendant.

2. Can always do "high cost performance" slightly better than peers

Since the reform and opening up, China's urbanization rate has increased from 18% to 56.1%. As early as 2018, China's urban permanent population reached 831 million, an increase of 17.9 million over the previous year, and the urbanization rate reached 59.58%. With the great improvement of China's economic level and urbanization level, people's demand for fast-paced, high-efficiency clothing and food, housing and transportation come in parallel.

The growing urban population size and efficient rhythm of life provide a huge market space for clothing brands which win by price performance ratio.

This is also the fundamental reason why fast fashion brands, such as HM and Zara, have enjoyed great popularity for a while. However, compared with fast fashion brands, UNIQLO has a better performance price ratio.

In the environment of everyone's pursuit of life efficiency, people no longer need too much clothes. Choosing clothes and buying clothes need to occupy unnecessary time expenditure. The same is true for finishing clothes and throwing clothes. However, UNIQLO's clothes are durable, versatile and classic in style, and the price is relatively low. In this regard, UNIQLO's clothes are superior to those of Zara and other fast fashion brands.

Rumor has it that UNIQLO's jeans and Levis' pants can be produced on the same line, but the price is out of bounds. In fact, there are only more than 70 permanent OEM factories around the world, all of which are top-notch in this industry (compared with Zara's more than 1000 generation factories in the world, it is difficult to control the quality).

UNIQLO, which is famous for its high cost performance, has netizens comment on Zhihu: "UNIQLO style is simple, most of them belong to basic style, and they will not be out of fashion for a long time." "After a few times of shopping this year, there are some small surprises. The clothes have a sense of design, which is good-looking, durable and easy to take care of.".

This also represents the demand for clothing of a large part of consumers at this stage.

In short, compared with other fast fashion brands, consumers find that fast fashion brands bring themselves into the whirlpool of constantly updating their wardrobes. UNIQLO next door, however, with the basic versatile pieces and excellent texture, greatly saves the time of clothing purchase. These features can save time, which is very necessary for the consumers who pursue high efficiency and fast pace.

3. UNIQLO marketing planning is unique, focusing on "cost performance" to create store marketing.

UNIQLO is worth learning from in brand marketing, especially the marketing effect of stores: the ubiquitous copywriting poster - scene style dressing poster combined with copywriting with professional terms is like "silent shopping guide" in the eyes of customers. And these poster copywriting, intentionally or unintentionally, also set the tone of meticulous, high-quality and grade for the brand.

From the copywriting, we can also see that UNIQLO uses technology, performance and fabric selection to compact the sense of quality on the tall and tall, uses the ubiquitous marketing copy to present the sense of grade of the brand, and then creates the surprise that customers want to "try and see" with the low-cost sense, so as to lead to impulsive consumption and the spread of conceptual propaganda terms such as "ut" and "HEATTECH" To accumulate word-of-mouth effect.

From UNIQLO's stores, we can also see that offline stores are combining with online stores' graphic presentation to produce a unique sales effect. It is no wonder that a humble clothing brand, with its strong planning ability behind it, will gradually become the object of consumers' pursuit.

There is no doubt that UNIQLO clearly knows the current clothing consumption demand, and also knows how to let the physical store make the marketing effect of ＂ and does not miss any opportunity to show itself.

What's more, it is also an important point for the successful marketing of the products to release the publicity information about the cooperation between the international famous designers who are similar to the smell and taste and promote the products to sell well. For example, since 2009, UNIQLO cooperated with legendary fashion designer Jil sander (signed a designer Consultant Agreement) to launch the "+ J" concept clothing, which once sold well. In 2020, UNIQLO will launch the "+ J" series of products again, which will be a big fire here. UNIQLO relies on the cooperation of well-known designers to create popular models and create brand influence. UNIQLO has had to applaud its marketing ability from tasting the sweetness to being familiar with it.

At present, in the numerous other clothing brands, planning and marketing can be made so easily. It is no exaggeration to say that there is no second clothing market. Of course, this is also determined by UNIQLO's decades of accumulation and internal details. It is not easy to learn to "draw a gourd like a gourd".

4. UNIQLO's spring is still on its way

"As consumers become more thrifty, the importance of brand and product quality becomes more and more prominent," UNIQLO founder Liu Jingzheng told Japanese media in early 2021. Consumers will choose high quality and reliable brands. At the same time, due to the growth of leisure wear demand and remote work, the days of formal wear are gone, and the era of daily wear officially comes. When we want to make everyday wear, people will choose clothes that are suitable for work and home, durable and can be matched in many ways. It's no longer necessary to wear clothes that are lost in a year. "

From this paragraph, we can see that Mr. liujingzheng has a thorough grasp of the consumers under the pulse of the times, and also strongly proves the advantages of UNIQLO and Liujing's full confidence in its future potential.

If UNIQLO has come to the fore now, its great spring is already on its way.