China Women's Wear: Get Rid of "Single Shop Shopping" Era

“It is still too early to talk about brand internationalization in China's apparel industry.” This is not just the opinion of Miao Hongbing, chairman of the Beijing-based White-collar Fashion Co., Ltd., the first-line Chinese women's wear brand, but also the common view of many industry practitioners.

Nowadays, all the major brands in the world have started to lay out in China. For many high-end women's wear brands, this is undoubtedly a huge impact. Although it has a certain reputation in the country and even some of them have already reached the international stage, there is obviously a gap between local brands and those international big brands in terms of brand accumulation, marketing capabilities, etc. This gap is currently difficult to leapfrog.

For China's haute couture, it is like a primary school student who suddenly meets many college students to challenge. Today, with the fall of local brands, these apparel brands are even more anxious than ever.

Precise positioning, improve purchasing rate instantly

For clothing, especially women, there is no so-called loyalty. Open any woman's wardrobe, it is almost impossible to see the all-match brand - this is the characteristics of women's wear. So for women's brands, loyalty is not the only standard to pursue.

"For us high-end women's wear, we are more committed to improving the probability that consumers will decide to buy in a flash." Li Yujie, executive vice president of Beijing Biqi Fashion Co., Ltd., spoke during an exclusive interview with a reporter from China Business Journal. , Accurate brand positioning, beautiful store design, and the pursuit of various perfect details have all become ways to increase this probability.

Biqi is an established Hong Kong brand and was established in 1999. He had a good sales performance in Beijing Yansha Mall and gained high-end consumer recognition. However, in the following years, the brand's own poor management and internal reasons caused the reputation to decline. After the strategic adjustment in 2009 and the introduction of a new management team, the development momentum of Biqi Fashion began to be strong. Brand image, product design and sales performance all showed historic improvement and growth.

Brand positioning is the most important step, and the obscure positioning of too many clothing brands has led to the bottleneck of brand development. Looking at the so-called positioning of many domestic brands, nothing but age, occupation, etc. to give the positioning, such as to 20-year-old vitality girls, 30-year-old female white-collar workers and so on. "This position is actually applicable to many brands, completely unable to make their own brands stand out, but also to make this brand's managers cause strategic ambiguity." Li Yujie pointed out to reporters, the style position that Bhie now proposes is "the comfort of elegant women" Realm", based on this position, BI Qi boldly uses beautiful patterns, even subdivided its consumer groups into the "inner-light of the female crowd", in order to make consumers want to buy print patterns, or more sun dress, The first time I think of the Biqi brand.

This brand positioning makes BI Qi stand out in the new round of competition. In the past two years, a new round of shuffling in the fashion industry is underway. In the past, sales channels such as shopping malls were highly sought after by the public, and no strict selection was made in brand entry. This also led to the homogenization of shopping malls. With the declining department store industry, shopping malls have begun to attach importance to brand selection. At the same time, a large number of brands with small scale of operation and poor product design have been washed by mainstream shopping malls. The clear brand positioning of Biqi has just won the opportunity to re-develop in this context. This also prompted Biqi to develop a diametrically opposed development strategy with many clothing manufacturers this year - quickly expand the store.

“This is not a risky decision. In our view, at this time, excellent channels such as shopping malls urgently require high-quality brands to settle in. They can give brands better choices in terms of price position, so we choose expansion and layout at this time. Compared with the past, it can save a lot of expenses." Li Yujie explained to reporters.

Nowadays, in order to cope with the bad economic situation, BI Qi has adopted a new brand strategy. While doing a good job of direct sales stores, it has properly introduced franchisees. “We will only introduce a few well-run local distributors. These distributors are actually stronger than ours in marketing capabilities, and they all have good local shopping mall resources.” Li Yujie analyzed with reporters that this way not only broke through his own business Bottlenecks, but also can use local dealers to quickly open the brand in the local visibility.

Increased competition, choose to stick to difficulties

For Haute Couture, the marketing strategies adopted by many domestic brands are "single shop shopping" expansion.

For sportswear, popular clothing, etc., because the style or size of the tailoring requirements is not so strict, each style can make 10 kinds of sizes, while meeting the different body needs of North and South China and even Chinese and foreign groups, it can often be used a lot Develop dealer models.

However, for women's wear, each style must have a strict ratio, such as the proportion of the waist and shoulder can not be easily changed, so often can only design 3 to 4 sizes, suitable for a certain body size, so that Such brands cannot develop agents on a large scale, which leads to the fact that the brand can only develop in depth and cannot expand in a short time. Many of these brands take the form of direct storefronts, which is the so-called "single shop shopping style", that is, each store should be as eye-catching as possible, occupy a good position, fight the sales of single stores in order to improve the overall sales performance of the brand.

White-collar fashion has opened several more flagship stores in the past two years: Sanlitun Art Space Store, Blue Harbor Visual Space Store, and China Trading Future Space. Each store has its own unique characteristics. However, in the face of the global economic downturn and the depressive environment of China's retail industry, Miao Hongbing told reporters frankly: “We will start to slow down the pace of opening stores from this year. At this time, we need to work harder. ."

Studying the development process of white-collar workers, it is not difficult to find that Miao Hongbing is actually a conservative person, but at the same time he is also a stubborn person. White-collar workers have never gone through a large-scale expansion in the brand development process. There are many times when they even withdraw from a mall because of Miao Hongbing’s “improper use”. Miao Hongbing explained: “Let the local brands condescend to the international brands and let us move hard, this situation is unbearable.” In Miao Hongbing’s view, Chinese brands should be more bulging, although not as good as those for the time being. International brands, but also to stick to their own attitude in the process of forbearance.

In high-end women's sales channels, shopping malls have always taken absolute advantage. Local brands are often at a disadvantage in competition with international big names. For instance, they cannot get a better position and prices are much higher than international big names. At the same time, the state has introduced tax cuts for the introduction of international brands, and these businesses have always increased taxes on such small and medium-sized businesses, which has also aggravated the development difficulties of local brands in the competition.

Even if you do not compete with big names, the channel itself is a pain in the Chinese clothing industry. The buyer’s market determines that the sales office is the boss, and it is very difficult to enter a good shopping mall – its brand is well-packaged, it has good sales performance, the bridging business needs to pay bribery, the senior people have socializing, and the shopping malls get into the market. Not to mention a good position, and after several months of poor performance and clearing, there are ridiculously high deduction points.

However, behind all this, Miao Hongbing still chooses to stick to it. Sticking to her attitude, she has always been involved in the development of white-collar brands. White-collar workers have always established themselves as high-end women's wear in China, but have also encountered some doubts during the development process. Especially when the international big names are in power, many domestic consumers cannot agree with the high pricing of white-collar domestic brands, but Miao Hongbing insists on this position.

Today, even if the overall economy is not good, Miao Hongbing still insists on sticking to his own position, preferring to develop slowly, but it must not reduce his own quality, or change the original intention of the brand. “At this time, it's very important to be good at yourself. We may need to contract our own store-opening plan, but we can focus on the existing store, allowing customers to have a more extreme experience and deepen the brand concept. We will implant them in our existing storefronts with a view to seeking greater development in the existing scale,” Miao Hongbing told reporters during his recent plan.

Gao Yan, deputy secretary-general of the China Garment Association, said: “Each clothing brand has its own cycle in the process of rising. This is related to many factors, such as the influence of the environment, consumer demand for such clothing, etc. But in any case, it is the most important to improve your own quality."

Director of Mining Houses, ** International Brand

Nowadays, for Chinese apparel brands, practitioners in the industry already have a common understanding: to do a good job of branding must first of all do a good job of basic skills. The first thing that the Chinese apparel industry needs to stand in the ranks of international outstanding brands is talent and technology. Improvement in operation, theory, and so on. However, for countries with a brand history of only 20 years, it is clear that they do not have mature capabilities.

“The brand is based on culture. Since our market is developed based on the Western standards, it loses its cultural confidence in the process of marketization. This has also led to a very unfavorable consumer environment for Chinese companies that are determined to create brands. "The CEO brand chairman and chief architect Yang Hao said.

Li Yujie also said: "We now call high-end women's clothing, previously known as dress, we can see that our current clothing culture is indeed dominated by foreign culture. In the cut, use of materials has also been accustomed to that way. Therefore, if you want to be promoted to an international brand or even recognized by Chinese consumers, you must integrate these cultures."

However, in the process of brand development, managers often encounter such questions: the location of brand establishment, the location of registered companies, the composition of investors, the composition of teams, design style, company attributes, product design, promotion, etc. Introduce international teams and business elements. Can this still be called a pure Chinese brand?

Li Yujie believes that in brand building, it needs to have enough advanced awareness and insights to operate local companies and brands with an international perspective. Making a brand strong is the only goal, and a more open international brand is more broad.

Bi Qi now often directly purchases the designs of foreign design companies and integrates their own design features to better suit Chinese consumers. “For brand building, there are three core competencies: design, market price and marketing model. In terms of price, the same level of clothing in the Chinese market has already been higher than the European and American markets. This is well-known, and the marketing ability is higher than the international big name. There is a lack of. And local brands know the most about local culture, so the only thing that can be the core strength of brand building is design.” Li Yujie said.

White-collar fashion also insists on original design from the beginning of the brand establishment. Today, with its own unique design style, it has occupied a place among Chinese high-end women's clothing.