Clothing Fast Selling Brands Are Reshuffling, Focusing On The Market Prospect Of "Fast Fashion"

Recently, gap and H & M, the top brands of fast-selling clothing, have been exposed to the news that "they are fined for selling inferior clothes". This makes people quite curious about the fast selling clothing industry. What's wrong with this?

In fact, if you search for relevant information, you can find an amazing industry reality - the survival status of fast-selling brands is not as good as before: many brands, such as new look, Forever 21, Old Navy, ESPRIT, have been defeated in China; After that, gap, H & M and Zara were deeply trapped in the negative public opinion.

The development of local fast-selling brands is also not optimistic. Meibang clothing (MetS Bonwe) also issued a poor performance announcement of "a loss of 125 million yuan in the first three quarters" in these days, and lashabel of China's Zara also issued a risk warning announcement.

In fact, the above situation, though unexpected, is also reasonable.

After all, in view of the main consumers of the "post-90s" and "post-00s", according to their preference of more personalized, differentiated and niche consumers, we can not only explore the first-hand cheap source of the minority in the factory studio, but also closely follow the steps of major wear bloggers to buy more personalized fashion designs.

In contrast, those fast-selling brands that once dominated the offline market with batch quantitative "fast fashion" clothing are really "not fragrant enough" only by low price.

　　 Fast selling giants at home and abroad are all defeated

Gap, H & M and Zara, the top brands of fast-selling clothing, should be happy to usher in the most important consumer season of the double 11 of the year. Unexpectedly, they would "roll over" due to quality problems at the last critical moment.

According to relevant media reports, H & M affiliated company Haines Morris (Shanghai) Commercial Co., Ltd. was fined 90000 yuan for suspected production and sales of substandard products. It is worth noting that the company has been fined 30 times in total according to the company's app check.

At the same time, gap (Shanghai) Commercial Co., Ltd., another gap affiliated company of FMCG clothing brand, also added an administrative penalty information. Due to its production and sales of unqualified products, the illegal income was confiscated by Shanghai Jing'an District market supervision and Administration Bureau, with an illegal income of 55704250 yuan and a fine of 39664991 yuan, totaling about 45000 yuan.

A few days earlier, Zara's affiliated company Sala commercial (Shanghai) Co., Ltd. was also exposed to the negative information of two new administrative penalties. The reason of punishment is to pass off unqualified products as qualified products, and the result is to confiscate the illegal income of about 50000 yuan and fine 240000 yuan. According to the company's information, Zara was fined 7 times for selling unqualified products.

Zara, gap, H & M, the first echelon of fast-selling clothing brands, one by one, fall into the "quality" strange circle, quite a sense of sight that can earn several waves of "fast money" to earn several waves. Although the outside world does not understand the real reason why they persist in "product quality", it is undoubtedly consuming the trust of consumers.

Of course, although the actual quality of the goods is questionable, at least these brands can participate in this double 11 competition, and a considerable number of competitors from overseas have been out of the Chinese market in the past two or three years.

For example, in December 2018, new look's more than 100 stores in China were closed and announced their complete withdrawal from the Chinese market; In May 2019, all offline stores of Forever 21 have been cleared, and they have also completely withdrawn from the Chinese market; In 2020, the Dutch brand C & A and the British brand superdry also abandoned the Chinese market.

Moreover, some data show that Zara and H & M are actually shrinking their battle lines: before 2017, the number of Zara stores in China has maintained a double-digit growth, but by 2017, the number of new stores has dropped to six. By January 2020, Zara's brands pull & bear, Bershka and Stradivarius have all closed their stores in the Chinese market; H & M's situation is not so bad. Compared with the previous year, the number of new stores opened by H & M in 2017 was cut down directly, and 10 stores were closed in 2019.

Is it just "imported products" that have this experience? Facts have proved that the development of domestic fast selling brands is not optimistic.

On the evening of October 28, Meibang clothing announced that the company's revenue in the first three quarters of 2021 was 1.932 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 28.15%; The net loss was 125 million yuan. In the third quarter, revenue was 556 million yuan, down 48.9% year on year; The net loss was 85.7955 million yuan.

Also on October 28, lashabel, once known as the "Chinese version of Zara," also issued a risk warning notice. According to the announcement, the company has added two new cases, involving 58 cases in total, with a total amount of 530 million yuan.

It can be seen that the whole domestic "fast fashion" market and related brands at home and abroad have ushered in an unprecedented recession.

　　 "New fashion" of low price trend in live broadcasting room

"Most of the audience of" fast fashion "was born in the 1970s and 1980s. Now it has been more than 10 years. Now, there are two completely different consumer classes, and consumption has changed from brand marketing driven to consumer driven." in view of the collective failure of the above-mentioned "fast fashion" brands, Ma Gang, an expert in the clothing retail industry, believes that the contemporary people do not understand the market Fashion brands that don't know about consumers can't survive.

From the perspective of consumers, the delisting of "fast fashion" brands such as new look and Forever 21 has a great relationship with the transformation of consumers. When the new generation such as "post-90s" and "post-00s" become the main consumer groups of clothing, brands need to communicate with each other through multiple channels to fully cater to their preferences of pursuing personalization, differentiation and niche.

In this case, how to consolidate the market position of "fast fashion" brand, obtain more new generation users, and thus generate greater sales volume, is the number one problem in front of "fast fashion" brand. However, it is obvious that gap, H & M, Zara, metsbawi, La charbelle and other brands have not given very good answers.

"These" fast fashion "enterprises encounter the bottleneck of channel expansion, and further expansion needs the support of sinking the market." Zhang Junhao, an analyst of Guoxin Securities textile and garment industry, said in this process, they not only faced with the problems of increasing management difficulty and cost rise, but also some "fast fashion" brands have not upgraded their products in recent years, It will also face the attack of some Internet red brands and local traditional brands.

The most typical is the rise of live delivery, which has developed a new consumption scene for the "post-90s" and "post-00s".

"I recently paid attention to the live broadcasting room of a clothing factory. They are doing pre-sale activities on November 11. Although some of them are not in stock, they may have to wait for a few days, but the price and version are very good, so it can be accommodated for a while." Yinyin, who once bought a single for H & M and Zara, is now recalling the low-priced fashion items he has purchased, I don't think that the clothes produced by these unknown factories are worse than the famous brands.

With the quality problems of H & M, Zara and other fast-selling brands repeatedly exposed, Yinyin gave them up completely. "Cost performance is the main reason why I choose them. Since I can't guarantee the quality, I'll change them."

Of course, Yinyin does not deny that she sometimes "steps on thunder" when shopping in the live broadcasting room. After all, she can't check the actual quality in the first time like offline shopping, but she doesn't think it's a big problem, "Most businesses will provide 7-day return and exchange service, which is just a little troublesome. But when I think of the price, I think I can try it. If I get a good dress at a low price, that kind of accomplishment is really cool."

Different from Yinyin, Nanqi pays more attention to the trends of fashion bloggers. "There is a blogger in my follow list who evaluates which versions are suitable for small people. She occasionally pushes some niche brand stores with better quality to fans. I think this is more reliable."

In addition, some bloggers who focus on the fashion market in Japan, South Korea and Europe and the United States regularly get new products from overseas markets to solicit fans' opinions. Once they are approved by fans, they will contact the factory for mass production, "In this case, the actual style and level depends on the blogger's personal aesthetic, even for their own word-of-mouth, the quality is generally not bad."

Although this "copy" behavior is suspected of plagiarism, Nanqi feels that compared with the "fast fashion" brands who have been in the cloud of "plagiarism" for many years, no one is more noble than others.

Based on the change of consumer behavior, a clothing practitioner also told zinc scale that many source factories and small and medium-sized brand manufacturers have taken action to actively cater to this new consumption trend. "Now there are too many live broadcasting in small factories. In the past, many Taobao stores have gradually turned to the head short video platform to do live delivery and bring goods."

On the one hand, small and medium-sized brands are actively exploring the prosperity of live broadcasting business, on the other hand, it is the decline of "fast fashion" giants, which can not help but send out a sigh of "the times have changed".

　　 How to get out of the "fast fashion" Besieged City?

"In the second half of last year, we found that more than half of the clothing enterprises did not want to go back (offline)." Guan Yu, a CMO of youzan, said, "because they found that shopping guides do live broadcasting, brands do live broadcasting, and shopping guides directly reach consumers... It seems that they can bring different business increments."

According to the "2021 clothing retail industry insight report", during the epidemic period, private sector operation once became the life-saving straw for clothing enterprises. Clothing enterprises frequently increase the size of private areas, live broadcast and other new retail ways have gradually become a new way for each brand to achieve growth.

According to the report, there is a special sample of businesses, which have both physical stores and private markets. The research on the sample data of these businesses shows that in Q1 of 2021, the private sales volume of these businesses increased by 492.2% year on year, far higher than the same period in 2019 and 2020. During this period, the domestic epidemic situation has been under control.

Zinc scale see, some "fast fashion" brands also get such inspiration, have tried to do live with goods.

For example, on a certain head short video platform, H & M's blue V certification official account number of fans is 23000, Zara's fan number is 139000, Mets Bangwei has accumulated 475000 fans, and different stores of La Chabel have certified several live broadcasting rooms, with fans ranging from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands.

However, the number of viewers is generally less than 1000, while the number of online users of MetS Bangwei studio is only two digits. This data can even be hung up by some unknown small anchors, not to mention the layout of taipingniao, Evely and other traditional local brands earlier.

Comparing the users who watched the live broadcast of these brands in the same period of time, it was found that nearly 2000 people took part in the official live broadcasting room of Taiping bird with 2.27 million fans, while Evely, with 1.29 million fans, attracted 90000 people to watch the live broadcast.

It may be a new business growth curve for the "fast fashion" brand to manage the private desire flow well, but the layout of the selfish desire flow is not a matter of eager for success, and the more critical problem is that the market leaves them little time to change their marketing ideas.

Among them, there are large-scale closures, such as Zara. According to relevant information, INDITEX, Zara's parent company, has proposed the largest store closure plan in history after surrendering a quarterly loss of 409 million euros (about 3.2 billion yuan). It will close up to 1200 stores in 2021, mainly for small stores of Zara, Massimo dutti and pull & bear, as well as stores with profitability less than 260000 euro.

Or massive losses, like La chapel. It is reported that from 2018 to 2020, La chapel's non net profit deduction has not been able to become positive. According to the third quarter report of 2021, at present, the total assets of La chapel are 2.89 billion yuan, but the total liabilities are nearly 4 billion yuan, and the asset liability ratio is as high as 134%.

In the end, no one is sure whether we can survive the "bottleneck period" of this industry by the performance converted from private sector operation.