Clothing Brand Culture Construction Is Not The Logic Thinking Of Pop Fashion

It is one of the largest primary clothing wholesale markets in China. As early as before the birth of the Internet, Sijiqing, a wholesaler, together with some old Hangzhou brands such as Jiebai, Baida and Hangzhou tower, jointly built the business chassis of Hangzhou women's wear industry and became an important cradle of Chinese clothing brands in the early years.

When the era entered the new century, the rise of the Internet brought a new period of development for the women's wear industry which had become the pillar industry of Hangzhou at that time.

In the first few years of the rise of e-commerce, the supply of many clothing stores on Taobao came from Sijiqing. As low as 9 yuan and 9 yuan, the low price and various styles open up a new world for consumers who have just contacted the Internet.

It can be said that Sijiqing, together with Taoxi clothing at that time, witnessed the consumption upgrading of a generation, and quickly put the clothing industry on the fast track of development.

During this period, with the rapid development of China's Internet, China's clothing industry also gradually from ignorant to a great period of development.

Almost around 2010, some Taoxi clothing stores that used to rely on Sijiqing to make low-end volume products began to try to design their own and find factories to produce them. Under the double dividend of e-commerce dividend and the development of clothing industry, these brands gradually had their first group of audience groups, and became the larger "Taobao brand" at that time.

This is also an important trend of industry differentiation of clothing brands: one type continued the early low-cost popular line, the other type of businesses began to move towards the brand line.

Although Sijiqing still plays an important role in the clothing industry, the pioneers of China's clothing industry enlightened by Sijiqing are no longer satisfied with being dealers, but begin to explore their own brand road of Chinese clothing.

This trend has also become more apparent in recent years. A typical example is that if you pay attention to the annual double 11 sales list, you can clearly feel that some of the clothing brands that used to rely on low-cost volume models have left the market.

This is no accident. In the context of consumption upgrading and the rise of domestic products, the merchants who used to rely on Sijiqing to do the volume payment alone can not really build their own moat. Under the general trend of the times, the productivity is constantly upgrading, and it is the general trend of the clothing industry to build a brand road with wider moat.

For brands, even though large-scale marketing and direct broadcast of traffic platforms can be sold for a short time, this is not really the core competitiveness. On the contrary, those brands with characteristics and internal cultivation (such as women's clothing brands such as qigege, yinman, pomelo Meiyi, etc.) live better.

Perhaps "blockbuster logic" is a product of the last era. It is more and more urgent to say goodbye to the logic of low price and quantity explosion left by history and look for the future of clothing industry under the background of a new round of reshuffle.

　 　01

Clothing industry goes to a fork in the road

　　 China's clothing industry may have entered a new dangerous cycle

Relevant research institutions pointed out that, in recent years, the clothing industry is facing the pressure of transformation and upgrading, and the growth rate of industrial scale has been declining. Clothing consumption has also changed from the single consumption demand of shelter from the cold to the consumption trend of fashion, culture, brand and image.

To some extent, these changes also put forward higher requirements for the whole clothing industry. But for the clothing industry, it is not easy to grasp this round of demand change.

Clothing industry has inherent problems.

"The clothing industry is even better." Mitu Hongzhi once said this in the history of business model. "Speed asymmetry" is the fundamental contradiction of the clothing industry. The value chain of the clothing industry is longer than that of other industries, but the various links are relatively scattered. For example, the dye factory is only responsible for dyes, the weaving factory is only responsible for weaving, the clothing factory is responsible for planning and design, and the sewing factory is only responsible for cutting and sewing, But the process usually takes about two years.

This naturally results in: most of the changes in the value chain of clothing enterprises can not keep up with the external trend.

Before that, the rise of Taobao and tmall accelerated the transformation and iteration speed of Hangzhou garment industry and even China's clothing industry. The rapid expansion of the industry market, to a certain extent, covered the gap inside and outside the industry. However, with the slowdown of the overall market growth, the contradiction between external demand and internal supply has become increasingly apparent.

The number of consumers in the clothing industry pursuing more Yuan Long Tail demand may be expanding at an unexpected speed. A group of data from Taobao and tmall show that there are more than 200 million post-95s on Taobao and tmall. Among them, more than 60 million of them are pioneers in clothing. In terms of growth rate and customer price, their performance is far beyond the average value of the market.

Strangely, the demand has become larger and more, but China's clothing industry has not seen rapid growth. Moreover, the relevant data show that the number of textile and garment industrial enterprises above the designated size is continuously decreasing, which means that the small and medium-sized enterprises that used to rely on the production of standard basic products may be facing more fierce competition and forced to withdraw or transform in the competition.

Industrial upgrading is imminent. The logic of "9 yuan 9 package" is obviously not a magic drug to solve this problem.

　　02

"Blockbuster logic", a product of the last era

But some people did believe that logic can solve all problems.

The industry has never really recognized this view. On the contrary, the Italian development path is the common hope of the industry.

A detailed study of the development path of Italian clothing industry shows that the market has been able to produce a large number of clothing brands (such as Gucci, Prada, Giorgio Armani, etc.). Apart from the historical reasons that it is the birthplace of the Renaissance, there are four key points

1. The design concept of walking in the forefront of the times;

2. Unique and advanced designers;

3. Advanced production technology and superior raw materials;

4. Good service attitude.

Most of these key reasons need to be attributed to the trend forecast, supply chain and other hard power of clothing industry. However, the mode of low price volume cannot become the core competitiveness of any mature market in the world.

So the question is, how does this idea spread?

In the view of relevant industry insiders, although the root of this logic can be traced back to the "logic of exploding money" in the early stage of e-commerce, in recent years, live broadcasting and other forms of sales have led businesses to misjudge the flow only theory, which may be the core reason.

From the perspective of the development history of China's clothing industry in the past 20 years, from Sijiqing to 9.9 yuan package post, to today's clothing ecology, the pop up logic has been proved to be eliminated by history, and now it is again used as a lifesaver by some businesses and platforms, which is against the times and can not solve the industry problems.

Just as no one would think Yiwu could replace Italy in the field of clothing, clothing has never been a flow business. From the industrial point of view, single product explosion is the most effective way to trigger the "scale effect". However, as a non-standard industry, the concentration of SKU's traffic business is not conducive to the establishment of clothing brands' own moat.

　　03

Clothing industry should "work hard"

Returning to the essence of the industry and striving for brand building has become the consensus of the industry. But at the practical level, it is not easy to get through.

On the supply side, there are mainly two dimensions. The first is to grasp the trend in the design level.

Taking women's clothing brands as an example, although the people often ridicule "women's money is easy to earn", they ignore "women's heart, undersea needle." Businessmen think that good styles may not be liked by consumers. Women's clothing is difficult to test. It is not that the way of testing money is difficult. However, the investment of energy and capital makes most small and medium-sized sellers unable to afford it, or even fall into a wrong way, and become popular for the sake of popular money.

Second, it lies in the integration ability of the supply chain and the rapid landing of the products.

Taking gap, a well-known clothing brand, as an example, its success in the United States can be attributed to the application of vertical integration model. Gap adopts the outsourcing mode of production, which is designed and ordered by the shop itself. More importantly, gap's "internal strength" is its supply chain depth: 1. It directly purchases from Asian factories, which greatly reduces the cost; 2. Have a perfect supply management system, such as inventory time control within 49 days, every two months must launch new models.

It can be seen that grasping the trend and quickly turning it into products is the key for a clothing brand to build a moat on the supply side.

Not only that, on the basis of high-quality products, it is the last step and the key step to combine public domain with private domain, turn "flow" into "reserved quantity", and establish private domain and precipitate brand.

Whether in the supply side or in the operation side, the choice of channels is very important. In fact, only a mature platform like Taoxi can have a more complete ecology and support the long-term growth of clothing brands.

There is no shortcut to be a brand. In the era of live broadcast flooding, some brands are too obsessed with "creating blockbusters". In the field of clothing, they cut leeks with low-cost shrinkage items, and trade low-cost products for the market. Obviously, they are unable to establish brands and build moats.

A clothing industry personage disclosed that there are some bad signs in the industry. Taking a domestic head merchant as an example, since the start of live broadcasting with goods, they are keen to make special contributions for live broadcasting rooms. The material used is greatly reduced and the style is copied from the old style, which is for the sake of cheap momentum. The strong bad marketing smell is the common fault of players like them. They spend their minds on the surface, but ignore the real core of the clothing industry: channels, products and supply chain.

An industry observer said that for high-quality clothing sellers, there are bound to be a burst of money, but often do not deliberately ask for "pop up". The sales distribution of SKU in the store is generally in a healthy state.

In fact, to say goodbye to the pure logic of pop up is in line with the normal development law of the clothing industry.

Clothing consumption is highly personalized, and the problems that can be solved by single product explosion are limited. It is impossible to generate brand mind through single product diversion to brand private domain, and it is also impossible to meet the long tail demand of most consumers, which is closer to one-off sale.

Clothing products have their own business cycle. It is a very long link how to realize the new product explosion, mental precipitation, and make users re purchase. The outbreak of one or two links can not really form the long-term competitiveness of the brand.

Today, Taoxi is still the main business position of clothing business, the reason is that. Multi platform operation has become the norm, but it is Taobao tmall that leads fashion and style, and enables new businesses to continuously upgrade from 0 to 1 and from 1 to 100.

To some extent, we can only build our own moat only if we can build our own brand in Taoxi. In the new round of industry reshuffle, whether the clothing business can survive and live well still remains the most critical main battlefield.