Peace Bird: Never Hang Its Wings At First, But Fight Its Wings At Last

At the end of the 1960s, when four young people from Great Britain burst into the birthplace of pop culture with psychedelic rock, no one would have thought that their unique way of dressing would cause a huge shock in the fashion world.

In this hippie movement, style defines everything. But esprit, a clothing brand based in San Francisco of the United States, is operating in reverse and returning to the product itself. Many years later, someone said, "what I admire most is esprit, which can be described as worship. People's clothes are so fashionable and elegant. "

It is Zhang Jiangping, chairman of taipingbird group, who has a place in China's fast fashion industry. Today, looking up to others is history. On the last day of August, taipingniao, which has been founded for more than 20 years, handed in a "mid-term answer sheet" that others can look up to.

On August 31, taipingniao released its semi annual performance report, saying that in the first half of 2021, its operating revenue reached 5.01 billion yuan, with a year-on-year increase of 55.9%; The net profit was 410 million yuan, up 240.5% year on year; The net amount of non net deduction was 290 million yuan, with a year-on-year increase of 420.0%. A number of data have reached the "best semi annual report" since the listing.

At present, the national tide is surging, and the domestic clothing industry is in a high business cycle. With Zara, gap, Forever 21, etc., losing China one after another, fast fashion brands such as taipingbird also usher in new window opportunities.

Similar to many local fashion brands, taipingniao has gone through a long way of "copying operation" under the synchronous improvement of performance and consumer confidence. Whether it's Nike's virtual operation, Zara's fast response supply chain, or UNIQLO's parent company's express sales group, they have only brought short-term prosperity to this old clothing enterprise.

But this time, the peacebirds chose to be themselves. In 2020, taipingniao put forward the strategy of "focusing on fashion, data-driven, whole network retail", trying to become an enterprise with a sense of scientific and technological fashion.

Taipingniao's transformation road is proving an irrefutable truth: no change, no business.

Virtual management like Nike

When did the change start? In Zhejiang, the fertile land with commercial genes, the first to wake up is not the Taiping bird, but metsbawi. At that time, Zhou Chengjian, the founder of Meibang, who had just made his first pot of gold, began to learn from Nike when most garment manufacturers were still thinking about the future of OEM. In the 1990s, when China's clothing industry was seriously saturated with market, it took the lead in changing the traditional "one-stop" business model of the clothing industry, and opened a vigorous road of virtual management.

Later, this virtual wind swept across the country, and imitators not only included Shanshan and taipingniao, the giants of yongpai clothing, but also gradually crossed the border to Chunlan and cygnet who sold household appliances. In essence, this brand-new business model is that the enterprise is gradually climbing to the two ends of the "smile curve", changing the previous "one-stop" mode of clothing industry from design, production to sales. By retaining the core innovative functions of the enterprise, it can give full play to its advantages.

Now, looking back at this wave of "virtual management" from Zhejiang, it is the inevitable outcome of the development of market economy. As for the operation mode of this light asset, the integrator is actually the giant Nike on the other side of the ocean. In the 1980s, in the face of the huge market demand, Nike through the "production outsourcing" way, through the manufacturers all over the world to support the continuous flow of product creativity, feed the different needs of consumers.

For Pacific bird, learning from Nike's virtual operation also helped it overcome the first hurdle. In 1998, the Asian financial crisis came quietly, and Zhejiang garment industry fell into the dilemma of cutting back orders and sharply reducing demand. At that time, due to the heavy asset model, taipingniao, which had just been established for three years, faced the crisis of capital chain fracture. In order to seek loans, Zhang Jiangping went to the major banks every day and even had to sell the factory buildings“ 1998 was our most painful period. At that time, the environment was bad, and the banks could only reduce lending. Compared with large enterprises, the credit pressure of small and medium-sized enterprises is very big. " Looking back on this experience later, he still felt very painful.

Through "forced", taipingniao has stripped off assets and turned into asset light mode, which has laid the first differentiation of China's clothing industry chain. From the economic point of view, "from the real to the virtual" indicates the trend of specialization in China's clothing industry: Sales belong to distributors, production to OEM factories, R & D and design to brand companies.

This brings taipingniao opportunities for transformation and upgrading, and also makes Zhang Jiangping realize the importance of "cash is king". This can be seen from the financial reports in recent years.

From 2015 to 2020, the growth rate of net operating cash flow of taipingniao has twists and turns, but it will gradually resume growth after 2016 - the growth rate will reach 32.9% in 2020. At the same time, the proportion of net operating cash flow to operating income has also been basically maintained at about 10% after 2016, reflecting the good operation of cash flow of the company.

According to the latest financial report, the operating cash flow of Q2 taipingniao will increase to 45.104 million in 2021, with a year-on-year increase of 117.8%.

When "front store and back factory" has become a thing of the past, the virtualization business model has leapt to the mainstream. Fashion brand is moving towards design, R & D and brand operation, which means direct collision with fashion. But the fashion trend is changing rapidly, how to respond to the needs of consumers quickly has become the next urgent problem for tailors.

So, the next learning object of taipingniao officially appeared.

Learn from Zara to build fast reaction supply chain

Fashion is a circle, always in the "tide soil tide" back and forth. Nowadays, the silver element popular in fashion week was played by Pierre Cardin and others as early as 1960s. Behind the fast changing trend is the rising demand. In the trillion Red Sea of Chinese clothing, the fast fashion brands advocating efficiency first are undoubtedly at the forefront.

With Zara, gap, Forever 21 and other fast fashion brands in China, under the huge and simple English signs, the self-service shopping experience and the Bi weekly update speed have shocked Chinese clothing brands. How many days does it take for a popular top to go from design to shelf? Zara takes two weeks, gap takes two months, while most Chinese brands take six months.

The gap is exactly the supply chain model. There is a saying in the industry that "the trend depends on the flow, the life and death supply chain". A supply chain system that can quickly respond to the market demand can help the brand owners quickly grasp the consumer demand and independently adjust the production progress of upstream factories.

Zara is a typical fast response mode. With the management mode of "fast, small amount and multi style", it quickly captured the minds of consumers, which also confirmed the keen sense of founder amancio Ortega to the clothing industry. The richest man in Europe, who came out of a small fishing village, has a famous Versailles saying: "we try to make customers understand that if they see the clothes they like, they must buy them immediately. Because in a few hours or days, it's not where it was

Speed is productivity. The fast reverse supply chain brought by Zara is gradually absorbed by local garment manufacturers. Many fast fashion brands are calling for "Zara of China". But most of them seem to have learned only the skin, the most typical being La chapel. It not only learned from Zara's fast update, store expansion and price system, but also imitated Zara's store design with huge investment. However, it soon chose to close a large number of stores to "survive by breaking arms" because of inventory pressure and capital problems.

What rashabel ignored was the localization of fast reaction supply chain. This is bound to be a gradual process of reform, which can not be achieved overnight. Under the complex attribute of large and scattered clothing industry chain in China, the reform involves interest game among design end, production end and retail end. Based on its local characteristics, taipingniao has started its reform since 2017, and has built a set of fast response mode more suitable for itself in three stages combined with the Internet.

The production side took the lead in reform. Through the form of "chasing orders", taipingniao first carries out in-depth management on the "potential stocks" that may become hot money. For some styles with relatively reduced initial stock, once the sales figures show a trend of explosion, Pacific bird will reach a consensus with suppliers to carry out flexible production. The data show that: in the case of chasing orders, a certain style can be sold in 1-2 weeks, while it takes 3-4 weeks for winter clothes.

By 2018, the design side will gradually join the reform team. Through in-depth cooperation with the e-commerce platform, taipingniao has developed the ability of rapid design, rapid production and rapid delivery with the help of big data to capture the trend of hot money. It can be seen from the two dimensions of fast single share and new speed that the transformation has been effective. Take taipingniao women's clothing as an example: in 2020, the proportion of Taiping bird's fast single clothing is 50%. In terms of the new speed, during the double 11 period in 2020, the total amount of new SKUs of taipingniao brand was nearly 3000, an increase of 110% over the same period of last year.

Finally to the retail end: the characteristics of China's clothing market is that the Internet has changed everything. China's total retail sales of clothing have crossed the trillion mark. In the past five years, the share of e-commerce has been more than half, while the share of entity has declined year after year.

From the perspective of time line, Pacific bird is the first batch of tasters to actively embrace online retail. Different from the "high cold" attitude of foreign brands such as Zara, taipingbird officially entered the e-commerce field in 2008. In contrast to its peers, Metersbonwe was in 2010, while SEMA was in 2012.

Online dividends have gradually emerged in financial reports. In recent years, the proportion of taipingniao's online business revenue has remained at about 30%. In 2020, the online channel revenue of taipingniao will be 2.8 billion. In the first half of 2021, the operating revenue of online channel was 1.55 billion yuan, with a year-on-year increase of 38%.

In today's fast fashion brands, one is Zara which wins by category and style, and the other is UNIQLO, which is famous for its high cost performance and one-stop shopping experience. Both of them are harmonious but different, but they both construct unique business models in their own way.

Different from Zara's multi style model, UNIQLO focuses on basic models for in-depth development. Liu Jing, the founder, created the miracle that "every three people in Japan have a UNIQLO fleece jacket". Nowadays, when talking about the success of UNIQLO, most people can mention key words such as product research and development, advertising marketing, one-stop experience, etc., but what is easy to be ignored is the multi brand operation and maintenance strength behind UNIQLO's parent company fast sale group, which covers almost everything from leisure and comfort to fashion trends.

　　 Learn from fast sale to create "brand family bucket"

From the brand layout of fast sale, it is not difficult to see that Liujing is good at finding smaller opportunities in the subdivision field, taking advantage of the brand strength to position "professional women", "fashion high-end", "urban women", etc., so as to meet the personalized needs of consumers through internal incubation and acquisition.

In contrast, the brand layout of taipingniao also has something in common. According to the current brand matrix, taipingniao can be divided into two camps: one is "taipingniao men's wear", "taipingniao women's wear", "taipingniao children's wear" and "taipingniao nest", which can be called "taipingniao family bucket"; Second, positioning sub brands in the field of segmentation, mostly focusing on trends, fashion and street culture.

Although similar to most yongpai's men's wear, it is not men's wear that brings honor to taipingniao. In 1996, Zhang Jiangping registered the taipingniao trademark. As a tailor, he had hoped to make a big splash with men's clothing. However, due to the fierce competition in the men's wear market at that time, it was better to make a cake by ourselves than to share the cake. Zhang Jiangping turned around and "changed" women's clothing, in order to "dislocation competition" model, to please the female groups.

"Women's wear is more difficult than men's, which is the industry consensus." Later, Zhang Jiangping recalled the transformation and thought that it was a process of "difficulty first and then easy". In fact, compared with men's wear, the brand awareness of female consumers in the early 20th century was still in its infancy. Although some international brands have entered the first tier cities, most of them are high-end and do not match China's actual consumption power. Therefore, taipingniao, with its price advantage, quickly finds its niche market.

With the first mover advantage of e-commerce channels and the establishment of stores in the core business circle, taipingbird quickly hatched leting girls' wear, which is 18-25 years old. The latter broke into the top 10 of tmall women's wear with the performance of more than 90 million yuan in 2015, which is regarded as the "black horse" in the women's wear industry. In 2019, taipingniao acquired mg women's clothing, which is positioned as American trend, and has been incorporated into the e-commerce operation channel.

It is not difficult to find that taipingbird is good at cultivating sub brands with the help of internal platform: on the one hand, it can share resources; on the other hand, due to its precise positioning, it does not constitute direct competition with each other.

Financial report data show that: in terms of brands, after 2020, the growth rate of taipingniao's brands will rise at the same time. According to the Q2 financial report in 2021, the revenue of Pb women's wear / Pb men's wear / Ledin girls' wear / mini peace children's wear increased by 76.61% / 52.50% / 51.96% / 52.61% respectively over the same period of the same period, and the growth rate of other emerging brands also reached 58.14%.

In today's increasingly anxious "she economy" market, clothing brands not only need to please women, but also need to please her family, which is an important reason for the rise of fast selling. In UNIQLO stores, you'll find that a consumer can walk in and buy what the family needs. For the peace bird, what it hopes to do is that no matter which store it enters, it can make the whole family a beautiful scenery on the street.

Be yourself and be young

It has been more than 30 years since Pierre Cardin, the "big brother" in the Western business, entered China. 2020 is a key turning point.

Fast fashion brands, once looked up to by Chinese people, are facing the crisis of closing stores due to the epidemic situation, and the wave of domestic products is rising... A more critical trend is that some clothing brands once favored by young people are gradually falling out of favor.

Catching up is taipingniao. In terms of flattering the young people, this old brand is really all in.

To some extent, this is the real epitome of China's more complex and diverse consumption patterns. The study of Bank of China once compared the development stage of Japan and thought that China is now in the "third consumption era" of Japan and coexists with other "consumption times".

This term originated from the book "the fourth consumption era" written by Japanese writer mitsuzawa describes the "third consumption era" as an era in which many characteristics such as "personalization, diversification, differentiation and brand orientation" coexist. "It is not the popularity guided by the fashion industry, but the mutual observation of passers-by, which leads to the emergence of popularity."

Consumers have become the creators of fashion, and the change of consumer subject is echoing with China today. This means that clothing brands need not only "top-down" brand education, but also "bottom-up" deep participation if they want to be recognized by consumers.

From this point of view, taipingniao seems to have found a way to get along with the young people of this era.

The first approach adopted is Omni channel contact. At present, in addition to the traditional e-commerce platforms represented by Taobao, taipingniao has new social retail channels such as twitter, applet, dewu and station B. In the first half of 2021, the retail sales of the key layout of Shuo Yin have reached 304 million yuan.

Take Shuo Yin as an example, according to the huge amount of engine report data, in Q1 2021, among the excellent live broadcast enterprises in the tuiyin clothing industry, taipingniao women's wear ranked fourth. In the live delivery system with strong personal IP color of the anchor, it is not common for taipingniao to come out of the circle with corporate brand image.

According to cicada's data, taipingniao ranked eighth with nearly 90 million sales, surpassing Li Ning, the leader of sportswear.

After entering the official account number of tremolo taipingniao, the finance and economics department found that the logic of attracting young people is actually traceable. As of September 1, nearly 1700 short video works released by the Taiping bird official release are mostly based on the specific theme of clothing and clothing, and according to the target users, people's clothing is launched. At the same time, through the cultivation of free anchors, combined with the official activities of shaking sound, the video grass planting efficiency is improved.

The second way is to implement IP products. According to the incomplete statistics of Finance and economics, since 2020, there are nearly 20 joint brand series of taipingniao men's and women's clothing, while there are less than 15 Samma clothing and 11 MetS Bonwe. In addition to the quantitative advantage of CO branded IP, another advantage of Pacific bird in product IP operation is cross-border. Animation such as ghost blade, crayon Xiaoxin, Rick and Modi, Dali Temple log, etc., and cultural variety such as national treasure. What is more worth mentioning is its cooperation with similar brands, such as double happiness and leap.

In contrast, most IP co branding between SEMAR and metsbawi is still concentrated in the field of animation and games.

The third way is marketing scenarios. Taipingniao uses show, music festival, KOL marketing and other ways to enlarge fashion symbols offline and tap online KOL attention resources on the other hand. Offline shows are not new to fashion brands, but taipingniao combines "Music Festival" with "show" for the first time. The Birdman Festival, held in 2016, is seen as a surprise attack on the fashion industry.

In terms of KOL marketing, the star wear marketing with Ouyang Nana as the core is combined with the head bloggers in the fashion field, such as Mr. Xu in the middle of the night, to carry out centralized soft implantation before the new product release. At the same time, in order to enhance the interaction with consumers, the official taipingniao will reprint plain clothes online, forming the linkage marketing of "star + blogger + plain person".

Of course, the price of all in youth is a huge investment in cost.

Since 2016, the sales expense rate of Pacific bird has been maintained at a high level of about 35%. Another thing worth noting is that in 2020, taipingniao proposed to transform itself into a "technology fashion company", but the reality is that it has a long way to go.

According to the data, from 2016 to 2020, the proportion of R & D personnel of Pacific bird rose from 4.47% to 5.52%. In 2020, the proportion of R & D personnel of SEMAR clothing reached 26.82%.

Referring to UNIQLO's "technology fashion" enterprise positioning, its explosive polar fleece series is the starting point of UNIQLO's technology attempt. The fabric technology of this 20-year-old piece has been rated as one of the top 100 inventions in the 20th century by time magazine.

In October 2020, the taipingniao fashion center in Ningbo, Zhejiang Province was officially completed. Looking down on the fashion center, it looks like a bird's nest. In this fertile land of clothing industry, ushered in a historic moment. At the opening ceremony of the 24th Ningbo International Fashion Festival, it was found that Zhang Jiangping, chairman of Taiping bird, chairman of Youngor, and Ma Jianrong, chairman of Shenzhou International, were sitting next to each other. One is popular among young people, one is a veteran of yongpai clothing, the other is a giant of OEM enterprises.

On the day of the opening ceremony, Zhang Jiangping was the most dazzling. This year marks the 24th anniversary of the founding of the peace bird. More than 20 years ago, when he moved from Hengjie to a new factory building, Zhang Jiangping put up a slogan on the top of the building, which said "strive for the first fashion brand in China".

It took more than 20 years for this dream, and Zhang Jiangping felt that "it has been realized". However, this is not an end point. The transformation into a "technology fashion" enterprise is destined to be a protracted war for Pacific bird.

If you don't hang your wings at the beginning, you can do it at last.