The Real Dilemma Of Hanfu Industry

It's no surprise to wear Hanfu on the street.

After several years of high public attention and young people's favor, Hanfu quickly burst out of the circle and stood on the tuyere. On the supply side, Tianyan data shows that in 2019, there are thousands of Hanfu related registered enterprises, with a year-on-year increase of 175%. On the demand side, according to the iResearch report, the sales scale of Chinese Hanfu market will increase from 190 million yuan to 6.36 billion yuan from 2015 to 2020, and the scale is expected to exceed 10 billion yuan in 2021.

Capital has long been moved. More than thirteen, head Hanfu brands, such as returning to the Han and Tang Dynasties, Huachang Jiuzhou, zhiyuji, and three pits collection brands including Hanfu such as shiyiguangnian, Shiyu and wanhuajing, etc. have obtained financing. Even the national style photography brand pan women's Square, which makes cross-border Hanfu, has become a favorite of capital.

With the scale of 10 billion, the love of young people and the rise of national tide, the prospect of Hanfu industry is very good and extremely prosperous. but The reality seems to be much more "cool" than the pageant described in the report.

Since 2020, the market indexes (Baidu Index, tremor index, etc.) of Hanfu, the main brands of Hanfu and relevant principals have shown an obvious downward trend. In addition, according to the statistics of Hanfu information, the top 10 sellers of Taobao will have a total sales value of nearly 900 million yuan in 2020, but this figure is also lower than that in 2019.

There are a lot of restrictions in the industry, and there are many problems under the upsurge.

Source: unsplash

Shanzhai is in the past, but it is trapped in the quagmire of "price war"

Once the most prominent problem in the Hanfu industry was Shanzhai.

Because of their inborn nature of circle, the Han clothing lovers who call each other "tongpao" not only like a certain piece of clothing or accessories, but also identify with the circle culture and identity. As a result, core consumers have a strong brand awareness and are extremely sensitive to design and layout issues. The "Shanzheng battle" often appears in many social news with the phenomenon that "wearing Shanzhai Hanfu is criticized in the street".

In fact, it's not difficult to understand the problem of Hanfu's counterfeiting. The industry is hot and the consumption is soaring. Many garment industry practitioners who are capable of manufacturing but lack of brand awareness are trying to get a share of it. It is obviously the most economical and labor-saving way to make money without making original design and copying directly. In addition, the Hanfu was originally designed with ancient elements. It is difficult to directly identify the imitation of some styles, patterns and patterns after "fine-tuning" as plagiarism.

　　 In 2019, there will be a turning point in the problem of Shanzhai in the industry. Hanshang Hualian, a famous brand of Hanfu in the head, sued many merchants in Caoxian County who directly plagiarized the original products. This incident has played a very strong deterrent role in the Hanfu industry. Therefore, Caoxian Hanfu was directly pulled into the bottom of the industry's contempt chain.

As the risk of plagiarism intensifies, brand awareness in the industry has been awakened. A founder of Hanfu community platform told Shenxiang, The year of 2019 is not only a peak of Hanfu industry, but also a dividing point. After 2019, "Shanzheng battle" is no longer the core issue of the industry. Businesses that started by plagiarism and only focused on making quick money may not have paid attention to "original design" in the past, but after considering this link, they actually found that it is neither expensive nor difficult to do original design.

"Everyone is buying design drafts." According to the founder of the platform, at present, the number of people participating in the design of Hanfu is uneven, and the number of fans is far more than that of professional designers. There are quite a lot of design drafts produced by hobbies. If you open the Hanfu related post bar or community, you can see that many people are "peddling" the design draft. And that's why The price of the design draft is very low. The simple one can be bought out for several hundred yuan, and the one with more sense of design can be bought out by only one or two thousand yuan. Some brands even need to send sample clothes to designers, or give a certain share after product sales, so they can get the design draft without spending money.

Tuyuan: Hanfu related post bar

Small and medium-sized brands with low-cost simple design draft, you can quickly type into the production link. Large brands with more emphasis on uniqueness and sense of design can also be screened by professional designers after collecting a large number of design drafts, and then choose the appropriate fabric and process, and then make a pattern.

Such "threshold free" original design may be difficult to be accepted by consumers when Hanfu was still a minority group and the dispute over the shape was quite sharp. However, with the rapid development of Hanfu, it has become a market-oriented trend to make Chinese elements and wear more everyday Hanfu. Most brands will not worry about whether the layout is absolutely compliant, which makes the design more difficult again.

Although the problem of Shanzhai is no longer prominent, after 2019, the industry has ushered in new problems—— "Price war" 。

At one time, the impression left to the public was that the production of Hanfu was time-consuming and focused on technology, so the price was on the high side, and 500 yuan was already a low price. But now open the e-commerce platform, dozens of Yuan Hanfu is everywhere, even the three digit Hanfu is mostly in the price range of 100-300 yuan.

Photo source: pinduoduo

The emergence of low-cost Hanfu is naturally inseparable from those garment practitioners who have great advantages in the supply chain. Different from the early brands founded by their interests, these businesses regard Hanfu as a conventional "business" rather than a special "hobby". How to use their own advantages to reduce costs and expand sales are the most basic ideas from the perspective of doing business.

Cao county is the most typical case. With the accumulation of performance service industry foundation over the years, Caoxian has no difficulty in "transforming and upgrading" to the Hanfu industry, and because the industrial cluster still maintains its low-cost advantage. In the local area, family workshops can also realize the mode of "shop in front of the factory after the factory".

　　 Many businesses will Hanfu prices from more than 500 yuan in the high-end price down, but low-cost competition also began, which has brought a very big impact on the Hanfu industry.

First of all, the overall gross profit of the industry is reduced, and the meager profits make many original small brands and small studios face great survival pressure. In order to survive, businesses must further reduce costs, which can easily fall into a vicious cycle of reducing product quality. Some big brands originally only take the high-end line, and they may go to the low-end in the price war, so it is difficult to establish a brand.

secondly, Low price competition is damaging the reputation of the industry as a whole. When the extremely low-cost and low-quality products occupy most of the market, consumers may think that "preferential value is superior" in the short-term, but in the long-term, they will form a stereotype of the industry as a whole. And the long-term low profit means that the industry will continue to lack of funds to invest in brand building, and the development path will only be narrower and narrower.

Sales problems are still unsolved, breaking the circle is still in progress

In the market competition in which many small businesses focus on price war, many problems in the sales of Hanfu are more prominent.

First of all, online sales, Hanfu business to face is Long sales cycle and poor quality control These two issues are often mentioned.

The long sales cycle, on the one hand, is really due to the relatively complex process of Hanfu itself, time-consuming, the overall production cycle has been lengthened. On the other hand, it is also because the audience range of Hanfu is relatively small, and its sales volume is still "small", so businesses can't order and produce in large quantities like other conventional clothing, and the upstream OEM is not good at receiving orders.

Now, the overall gross profit of the industry is depressed, and businesses will not choose to bear the risk of overstock. Therefore, Hanfu can only adopt the mode of pre-sale + final payment for a long time, and determine the production volume in reverse by the sales volume.

Photo source: more than 13 years, back to the Han and Tang Dynasties, Han Shang Hualian Taobao flagship store

　　 The mode of cooperation with the substitute factory has also laid a hidden danger for the quality control problems. Small brand businesses find a small generation of factories, the level of production technology is originally limited, if you want to lower costs, production technology and quality can not be forced. Although big brands can choose to work with more professional OEM factories, they need "one to many" cooperation because of more SKUs. As a result, it is more expensive and difficult to communicate with factories or go deep into production.

Of course, some leading brands are willing to solve the problem by building their own capacity. For example, the brand returns to the Han and Tang Dynasties and builds its own cutting center, embroidery factory and sewing factory in Pengzhou City, Sichuan Province. The production cycle can be reduced to about 45 days, and the quality control can be more refined. However, this is obviously something that few brands can do, because it is not easy for the brand to go deep into the production process: the factory scale is small and its production capacity may be insufficient, so the brand still needs to find OEM; The scale of the factory is large, and the sales volume of the brand itself may not be able to support the operation of the whole factory, so it is bound to take orders from outside.

In addition to online sales, now back to the Han and Tang Dynasties, zhiyuji and many other head brands have opened offline stores.

　　 It is obviously more feasible to be a brand collection store than a single brand store. Leaving aside the most simple and direct cost of opening a store, more problems are actually focused on goods. It is not difficult to understand that there are not many SKUs of a single brand, and the new products are slow. If the SKUs are placed in the online and offline stores, consumers will have very few choices, and it is difficult for stores to guarantee the repurchase rate. At the same time, Hanfu is also a non-standard "combination" product. A suit often contains multiple accessories and items, and it is difficult to make a single brand with few SKUs offline.

Offline stores often bear many important tasks, such as customer promotion, service experience improvement and brand building. If it only appears in brand collection stores, it is difficult for a single brand to achieve brand building. However, in the eyes of Hanfu practitioners, it is still too early for the Hanfu industry to talk about "brand".

Because the threshold of design, production and sales is not high, there are many individual businesses, small studios and small brands in the Hanfu industry, and there is no obvious difference in their products, These players can only say that they have their own "brand", rather than build a brand.

In contrast, only a small number of such brands standing at the top of the pyramid can be called "brands". This is not because the capital gains glory, but because these brands have large IP with their own traffic.

　　 For those "tongpao" who are really in the Hanfu circle, the founders of the brand and the models bound by the brand for a long time may be IP. They may be the leaders of regional Hanfu associations, or they may be well-known photographers, models or bloggers in the circle.

For example, xiaodoukou, the founder of more than 13 years, has more than one million fans in station B and 5.06 million in microblog; Hanshang Hualian's model, 18000 miles in the circle, was rated as "one smile in ten miles, and the wallet breaks down."; Zhiyuji is a brand management company and star Xu Jiao jointly create. In fact, this is similar to the online Red e-commerce model: famous KOL directly acts as the spokesperson of the brand, and its fans accumulated over the years are the main purchasing force.

Because of the interest culture characteristic of Hanfu, the appeal of IP is always the key factor. This makes Now Hanfu brands want to break the circle and go to the public, not only relying on the KOL in the original circle, but also co branding with big IP in other fields. More than 13 previous joint brand models with the game "glory of the king" have received excellent response, and one of them is still the most popular one in store sales; Hanshang Hualian cooperated with zhino to launch 14 co branded Hanfu, and the sales growth was also amazing; Back to the Han and Tang Dynasties and "sword net 3" linkage, huachaoji is with "Chang'an twelve hours" joint name.

With the IP co branding of film and video games, Hanfu brand leaps out of the original circle to catch more young groups, and also promotes the consumption enthusiasm of Hanfu market. However, this is only the exclusive play of the head brand—— Because the top and influential IP resources will naturally incline to the top brands, it is difficult for small brands to seek cooperation with large IP resources.

In the view of industry insiders, the Hanfu industry is still "immature" in terms of production, sales, brand building and market development. People who make quick money in the clothing industry accelerate the development of the industry, but also disrupt the situation; But the "small and beautiful" business model does not match the exponential expansion path that capital wants. These are the problems that need to be solved in the industry behind the "great good" forecast value.

The emergence of new business models, such as Hanfu portrait, Hanfu rental experience, cultural tourism and Hanfu integration, may broaden the development ideas and profit space for the Hanfu industry, and even become an indispensable part of the industry. However, these attempts are just beginning. More professionals entering the industry and the formation of a rational competitive environment may be the key to push the industry into a positive cycle.