Chinese clothing will open private steward mode

In 2014, the Chinese garment industry was affected by factors such as the slowdown in the domestic economy, the market continued to be sluggish, domestic sales continued to slow down, turnover and net profit continued to decline, ushered in the winter of the industry. According to the statistics of iFunny iFind, as of October 30, 30 clothing listed companies announced the 2014 third quarterly report, and nearly 60% had a year-on-year decline in performance. Among them, men's wear brands are almost falling, becoming the most sluggish branch of China's garment industry.

Why domestic clothing brands enter the winter period

In addition to the impact of the large economic environment, China's garment industry has been facing pressures of high inventory and high rents, and the deep-seated causes of the continuous decline in the overall performance of the industry are concentrated on the fact that traditional marketing models are no longer adapted to changes in the external environment.

As of September 2013, H&M, Uniqlo, ZARA, MUJI, GAP, C&A and other fast fashion brands had opened more than 150 stores in China in 2013. The total number of UNIQLO stores in Huamen has reached 231, with H&M and ZARA being 151 respectively. Home and 136, MUJI180, GAP63 home (see Figure 1-1). Foreign fast fashion brands continue to occupy the Chinese market, undoubtedly causing great impact on domestic brands, mainly reflected in the impact on domestic consumption and marketing environment.

Taking fast fashion on behalf of the brand ZARA as an example, it takes "low-cost, fast and stylish" as the core value and follows the most cutting-edge and rapid international fashion. ZARA will refurbish the product every 4-5 days, and will be located in the prosperous city or the core area, often close to international brands, store design style is similar to the international brand. This novel, stylish and versatile style is also applicable to the style of other fast fashion brands, maximizing consumer desire for shopping.

On the other hand, China's first-line apparel brands, even if they have the style of testing fast-fashion brands like Taiping Bird and N&Q, are not suitable for all brands, just like new bottled old wines. These brands still use the traditional marketing model. From the perspective of the entire internal marketing concept, domestic apparel brands still follow the quarterly schedule of design, new product launches, and ordering sessions, which are simply unable to meet the current consumer pursuit of fashion.

In addition to obsolete concepts, domestic first-line brands also face the problem of lengthy sales chains. Products from production to clients have experienced too many links and brought a lot of unnecessary costs. Take the Taiping bird as an example, the sales terminal's rent accounted for 30% of sales and inventory accounted for 20-30%, resulting in high costs have to cause high pricing.

2014 is the industry's recognized traditional retail industry 020 years. In the face of the impact of e-commerce, China's apparel industry has to change the traditional sales channels to reduce the intermediate links, and this has caused a wave of "store closure." Insiders pointed out that since last year, after the sports brand launched a large-scale store closure, men's clothing companies also set off a large-scale "off store tide."

Despite public information, the total trade volume of Tmall's “Double 11” shopping carnival in 2014 was as high as RMB 57.1 billion, but the sales channels of the aforementioned e-commerce vendors are not universal. At present, online clothing sales are still mainly based on stocks. Although there are preferential prices but outdated models and slow product replacement, it not only results in the stagnation of online sales, but also affects the image of the brand.

Huang Mingrui, chairman of RT-Mart China and chief executive officer of Feiniu.com, once stated that traditional retailers “do not wait for the transition to die, and the transition is to find death.” Despite the e-commerce model of domestic men’s clothing that embraces the Internet, it is still ushering in continuous decline in performance. Winter.

Closing loss stores and using e-commerce at the same time, these seemingly cost-reducing channels to gain competitive prices at a low price still leave domestic apparel brands ineffective. In the era of personalization of the Internet, how to satisfy consumers’ pursuit of fashion and quality, how to explore the new online and offline marketing model of 020 to reduce the intermediate links in sales and reduce costs is a central issue in the current domestic apparel industry. It is also the biggest challenge faced by men’s wear brands with the worst performance decline.

"Private Customization" or Opportunity for Men's High-end Routes

The men's wear brand that takes the high-end line faces the sudden change of marketing environment. If you simply rely on past activities such as engaging in activities, advertising, looking for endorsements, and ordering, you will no longer be able to adapt to current consumption characteristics. The use of private customized personalized services for high-end customers not only meets the customer's pursuit of fashion and quality, but also evades the high inventory costs, homogenization of product competition, or become a new opportunity for men's high-end line transformation.

According to the forecast of the Ministry of Commerce, China will become the world's largest luxury goods market by 2014, and its share will be about 23% of the global total. In the past, Chinese consumers (especially male consumers) did not require too much clothing, but nowadays, with the overall improvement of living standards and the constant impact and renewal of social concepts, customers’ demands for personalization are increasing day by day. This makes it more tailor-made. Fit, personalized, and at the same time pay attention to fashionable private custom clothing unlimited business opportunities.

In the men's tailoring market, the world's top menswear brand service providers brought top menswear tailored services to mainland China, leading the trend of men's clothing customization, and formed a good brand development trend based on ready-to-wear and customized services. Since 2011, the top brands in the world to launch customized services include Hermès and Burberry.

After the top international menswear enterprises have laid out China's domestic top-level customization business, domestic high-end menswear companies have also entered the market and launched their own custom brands, such as Mayor (Yorgor's custom brand), Caldanta, Saints and Reddy Boer and other men's clothing. Brands have launched customized services. In 2014, the men's brand Announcement successfully launched a full-category custom business, and continued to extend traditional suits and other suits and suits in the customization of suits to form a custom tailored suit.

Men’s “private customization” satisfies the customer’s pursuit of personality and taste, and also reduces the inventory costs of men’s clothing companies. However, there are still major problems such as low consumer brand loyalty, huge rental and branding funds, and a single marketing promotion model.

The survey data shows that the luxury brand consumers in China are relatively mature and the European and American luxury goods market is relatively low. The repeat purchase rate is only between 10% and 20%, but the frequency of brand replacement is as high as 80% to 85%. This also exists in the men's haute couture market. If the future still focuses on selling single products instead of providing customer-centric housekeeping services, it will be difficult for customers to stick to their customers to form a fan effect.

The top men’s clothing custom industry is also facing the problem of huge capital investment. Opening 100 square meters of specialty stores in mid- to high-end shopping malls in large and medium-sized cities requires about 200-300 million yuan for early investment, and 500 yuan for high-end shopping center stores. 7 million yuan. In order to continue to build brand awareness, companies also need to invest a lot of manpower and material resources in many aspects such as product quality, R&D design, marketing network, and brand culture.

In the marketing model, the top men's brand stores mainly use the line-to-line service, distributing the stores in high-end retail channels such as high-end department stores, high-end shopping centers, and five-star hotels in large and medium-sized cities in China. This offline marketing promotion model is too single to adapt to the era of the development of the Internet.

The above problems are not intrinsically flawed. Any privately-customized brand or studio can lead the industry trend by slightly changing one or two of them. Finding the corresponding market segment and focusing on the development of brand personalization is the pain point of all industries, and the high-end “private customization” of men just captures the pain points.

Butler-style "virtual wardrobe" will become a new trend

The traditional private custom model of clothing is no longer applicable to the Internet era. Therefore, apparel tailoring companies must explore new ways of 020 marketing to compress intermediate links, approach customers and serve customers.

Based on the "private customization" model of clothing, there will be a higher-level butler-style "virtual closet" in the future, opening up the private steward model of Chinese clothing. In short, with the help of big data back-end, the company conducts image diagnosis and design for customers, enters the customer's overall 3D data, matches and recommends according to customers' preferences from the background, and can also choose any designer to create a unique design. The selected clothing will go Set up a "virtual closet," and finally customize it at any time as needed to allow users to enjoy a one-stop butler-style service.

In response to the current low consumer brand loyalty of private custom brands for men, the large amount of funds for rents and brands, and a single marketing and promotion model, this type of housekeeper “virtual wardrobe” is the traditional tailor-made customization in the tide of the mobile Internet. Innovation. "My image steward" is to use O2O's innovative model, focusing on promoting elite men's business image, and build a "virtual closet" designed for men based on a powerful database background.

How to cling to a customer to form a fan effect is a question for each brand, and the housekeeper's "virtual wardrobe" can be solved with little effort. Take the example of “my image steward” as an example. Its private customization is faced with high-end customers. It is not a fit of clothes to solve, but more to solve the customer's need for clothes – to establish a better business image. This steward-style image management is different from the traditional private customization. It pays more attention to customers rather than products, and includes the whole body wearing and matching established by the customer's business image, making it easy for customers to form dependencies.

Mobile Internet technology can move the customer's closet to a virtual space, achieving almost zero storefront offline, without having to consider the high storefront rents paid for traditional private customization. Furthermore, the "virtual closet" compresses the intermediate links from production to sales terminals, achieving zero inventory and minimizing production costs.

With respect to private customized marketing channels, the traditional use of e-commerce and offline models is no longer applicable, because these traditional models are still based on traffic-based extensive marketing, in short, product-centric weak relationship marketing. There are many problems with this type of marketing, such as high rate of returning bills and weak customer loyalty. Therefore, in the future, it will be subverted by socially based fine marketing. This new marketing model focuses more on the interaction with customers and on the provision of personalized services. Product sales are only accessories.

At present, many companies are involved in O2O's new marketing model, such as their own brand of APP, but this method requires long-term training of user groups, and for users to download APP is too much trouble. "My image steward-cloud wardrobe approach" does not follow the path of APP. It is a "virtual closet" that provides personal image butler service based on the WeChat public number. It is the first time to test the private clothing steward model. The marketing mode of this WeChat public platform is more favorable, because WeChat has a considerable user base, a fixed circle of friends and a similar taste, which facilitates the promotion of the brand and saves a lot of promotion fees.

From the traditional private custom clothing model to the use of O2O image stewards, the Chinese clothing industry will form a large-scale butler-style “virtual wardrobe” just around the corner. In the future, there will be more cloud wardrobe operating brands like “My Image Manager”, which is just one of the successful segments in the apparel industry. Custom clothing is not only used to wear on the body, the future will be a way of life, butler-style "virtual wardrobe" will make the public's life more intelligent and convenient.