“ It only takes 14 days from design to launch, 15 days to 30 days to implement the circulation. In fact, the overall efficiency of the supply chain is improving, not limited to fast fashion. ”
After entering the Chinese market for 15 years, Zara's parent company announced the closure of a large number of stores of its brands. Fast fashion has made room for shopping centers. Some fashion companies with Internet and c2m genes are also becoming new favorites of shopping centers. Yan Ming, founder and CEO of looknow, a collection store of trendy brands, has publicly shared a set of data: the flagship store of looknow, located on Yongkang road in Shanghai, had 4000 people entering the store in a single day during May Day, and about half of the customers in the deal came from xiaohongshu. "It's very hard to imagine for a mall," Yan said Looknow has never been launched in xiaohongshu. On the contrary, xiaohongshu bloggers urgently need more novel offline stores to punch in and produce content, which means that the more offline channels can produce unique content, the greater the value. Under the public's comments on clothing categories in Chengdu and Xuhui District of Shanghai, lownow's offline buyer's shop often tops the list. On May 15, icy, the main designer brand, opened the largest flagship store in South China in wanxiangtiandi, Shenzhen. The latter, with the theme of "inspiration garden", has created a new generation of stores combining multiple experiences such as scenery, retail, band performance and fragrance, In the early days of its opening, it has become a "online red shop" for shopping centers.
Fashion bloggers taking photos in icy stores
Why are more and more designer brands entering the first-line shopping centers? What are the reasons behind the ebb of fast fashion and what trend is emerging? Are designer brands subverting fast fashion?
From Zara's non copyright consciousness
You may also have such a question. What is the difference between the so-called designer brand and fast fashion? Is it just a marketing method for brand to raise the price by emphasizing designer? Why can UNIQLO continue to push u series, + J series and other famous designers' joint brands even though they are both fast fashion prices? In the past decade or so, under the advantage of scale, the power of fashion discourse has been in the hands of fast fashion giants such as Zara. They use the concept of "fashion democratization" to mass produce large-scale designs, reduce prices and make them affordable to more people. It sounds good. Consumers who value price will also pay for it. However, the "design copyright" has been ignored by the fast fashion giants. The most obvious manifestation is that you never know who the designer is behind a piece of Zara's clothes, because, after all, Zara probably doesn't own the copyright of the clothing. According to the founder of icy Gu Yingying, INDITEX group is going through a turning point from China's large-scale store withdrawal, which also gives icy such a platform opportunity to pay attention to design copyright. On the one hand, the lack of Zara design gene has caused it to be criticized in the industry. On the other hand, Chinese consumers, represented by the post-90s and post-00s, have gradually established their confidence in domestic products, They pursue individuality and sense of design, and have the ability to pay for genuine products from designers. "The whole consumption era has gone from an era of chasing popularity and big brands to an era of pursuing design and personality expression." According to Gu Yingying Consumer Research Institute, the most distinctive label Zara brings to consumers is "fashion", because all along, fast fashion has made all the "most popular elements" of big brands into affordable clothes, but in the era of personalization, absolute popularity will bring loss to consumers. How to price the designer brand scientifically?
From Raffles Shanghai to wanxiangtiandi in Shenzhen to Fangcao in Beijing, the flagship store of icy is located in the core business district of first tier cities, with an area of more than 300 square meters. Gu Yingying, the founder of icy, clearly feels the strong support of commercial real estate for new species such as icy, which also allows icy to use more space for user experience and brand building, There is no need to be trapped by the "plateau efficiency" index. On the other hand, single brand stores are often limited by fixed aesthetic styles, leading to the failure to significantly increase the rate of entering stores. As a collection store of designer brands, icy can play the advantage of "changeable style", change the store theme and setting regularly, and become the "freshness manufacturing machine" of shopping centers. In the upstream, icy also contracts new designers every year to form a "continuous and competitive design ecology", so as to continuously evolve and iterate. However, in order to solve the core problem that the designer brand is "superior" and difficult to be accepted by the public, it is still necessary to find the most scientific price band. In this regard, Gu Yingying once mentioned such a "cruel fact" in a public share in 2018. The real independent designer brand actually serves the people over 40 years old in the third and fourth tier cities. The reason behind the phenomenon lies in the pricing, because all the designer products were priced at 3000-6000 yuan. Because the factory can't make mass production, the independent designer must set the unit price to 3000-6000 yuan, in order to maintain the operation, get the plate fee of next year to design the next year's products. In the price range of 3000-6000 yuan in the first and second tier cities, consumers have more choices. In addition to domestic independent designer brands, there are foreign mature designer brands, light luxury brands and luxury brands in discount period. After repeated verification, icy finally set the price between 500 and 3000 yuan, becoming the only one that retains the copyright of top designers, New consumer brands that are affordable to the public. Why "500 to 3000 yuan"? Gu Yingying said that the reason is that when the profit space of the original is rationalized, plagiarism and Shanzhai can lose their living space. "In the field of clothing, to copy exactly the same, the cost is very high. He may have copied the pattern, but the material is inferior. At this time, consumers will make a choice." After the improvement of supply chain
In the past decade or so, fast fashion such as Zara has been praised for its "speed" -- from design, production to sales, it takes an average of three weeks. Fast fashion brands can have 15-20 collections a year, while the whole process of traditional brand shipping takes 4-6 months, and there are only two collections a year. The pursuit of speed and efficiency, faster players are also emerging. In 2017, the "super fast fashion" that can complete the design and production in 1-2 weeks appeared, representing the players boohoo.com, ASOs and missguide to "crush" Zara and H & M at a faster speed. In 2020, with the emergence of "invisible giant" sheen in China's clothing supply chain, the speed record will be refreshed again. According to a person familiar with the matter to Reuters, sheen only takes three days from design to production. Gu Yingying said that on the whole, 14 days is already the average level of China's supply chain. "It only takes 14 days from design to launch, and 15 to 30 days to do the circulation. In fact, this is the overall efficiency of the supply chain is improving, not limited to fast fashion." The improvement of supply chain efficiency makes the advantages of "flexible supply chain" applied in designer brands. This is specifically reflected in the fact that there will be data feedback four days after a single item in icy is put on the shelves, and then the goods will be layered, the order will be turned over and the inventory operation will be carried out. In addition, the AI selection system can also carry out analysis through image recognition technology, rating the commodities from season fit degree, fashion index, historical sales of similar models, and tmall market label search index, and calculate the recommended first order quantity. China's clothing supply chain represented by sheen represents a brand-new efficiency. In terms of speed, it is faster than "super fast". At the end of design, production and sales, China's supply chain is also realizing the communication and cooperation of the whole industry chain in a digital way, which enables global consumers to truly enjoy the cost-effectiveness of clothing, and at the same time, When the designer brands represented by icy can be mass produced on a larger scale and break the circle, design can be regarded as a link of the industrial chain, which is also taken seriously. When zaras lose their competitive advantage from the two key dimensions of "price" and "design", a post fast fashion era may really come.
