Brand Concerns Apparel Industry Sustainable Fashion, Gimmick Or New Business Opportunities?



In the Chinese market, it is not consumers but brands that are not prepared for sustainable fashion.

In recent years, sustainable development

It has become one of the main trends in the global apparel industry.

This concept originated from the introduction and prevalence of "sustainable development" in the discussion of global economic issues, and was introduced into fashion discourse system.

With the awakening of global consumer awareness, more and more brands are beginning to adapt to this trend. Luxury brand Gucci parent company opened the cloud early and released the 2025 plan with sustainable development as the foothold. The world's largest luxury brand Louis Vuitton parent LVMH is also carrying out sustainable development research with the central Saint Martin and other institutions, and has signed relevant commitments agreement in the group's energy conservation and emission reduction. The fast fashion brand represented by H&M began to participate in the practice of sustainable fashion through recycling old clothes and publishing environmental protection series.

In 2009, the Copenhagen fashion summit Copenhagen Fashion Summit, known as the "fashion Davos forum", was held for the first time. It invited the main decision-makers and opinion leaders of the global fashion industry to focus on fashion related environmental, social and moral issues, which has aroused more and more brand concerns.

Since the beginning of its creation, it has discussed the direction of the industry's macro issues and market participants. The summit is considered to be the focus of authoritative opinions on sustainable fashion issues, and is also the main promoter of sustainable fashion in the past 10 years.

Also in 2009, Eco-Age, a sustainable fashion organization founded by Livia Firth, encouraged sustainable design forces by hosting the Green Carpet Award green carpet award.

Meanwhile, Fashion Revolution, a nonprofit organization founded after the collapse of the Rana Plaza Rana square in Bangladesh in 2013, has achieved considerable results in urging fashion brands to improve supply chain pparency and labor rights by publishing annual fashion pparency index report.

But in the past 10 years of sustainable fashion concept promotion, China, as a key player of global fashion, is almost completely absent.

Over the past 20 years, China's role in the global fashion industry has gradually changed from productivity to consumption.

At first, China moved the clothing manufacturing industry to the southeast coast with cheap labor force and low cost. After the demographic dividend period, China shifted from a large garment manufacturing country to a key consumer market.

The mainstream view of the Chinese market is that the Chinese clothing market is still in the period of consumerism, and consumers' consumption desire is strong, but the consumption consciousness is not mature enough.

Since sustainable fashion is considered to be a reflection of "anti consumerism" to a certain extent, it is still too early to promote sustainable fashion.

Not only that, from the point of view of production, many domestic clothing brands are still in the extensive operation stage, and the requirements of sustainable development are beyond the scope of their capacity.

From the point of view of communication, Chinese fashion media, due to the short and fast development time, is influenced by the rapid change of readers' reading habits, which lacks depth of communication content, depends heavily on star culture, and lacks the media environment and content soil for the in-depth reporting of sustainable fashion.

Therefore, the absence of China in the discussion of international sustainable fashion is also possible.

Photo: 2018 Copenhagen fashion Summit

However, the 2018 Copenhagen fashion summit, which just closed in May 16th, seems to indicate some changes for China.

Ye Xiaowei, editor in chief of yehyehyeh, who is the editor of China's most avant-garde fashion magazine at the weekend, hosted a group discussion on the topic of sustainable fashion in China at the summit. He invited Pan Chuying, chief executive officer of China retail department of Yida group, Datana, deputy general manager of the brand division of Ordos group, and the representative of Robby Gu, vice president of investment and innovation, three major domestic apparel group representatives.

This is Ye Xiaowei's invitation to speak for third years. Not only is she the first time to chair the group discussion this year, but also the first time that the domestic clothing brand has reached a sustainable fashion international discussion platform, which means to some extent that the domestic clothing brand has already sprouted in the sustainable fashion and has made preliminary practice.

The three domestic apparel groups represent three different types of fashion brands in the Chinese market.

As one of the largest high-end cotton shirt manufacturers in China, Yida group has factories in China, Malaysia, Vietnam, Mauritius and Sri Lanka to supply shirts for high-end brands such as Hugo Boss and Tommy Hilfiger, and also owns PYE and ten private brands such as Shi. Its business range extends from cotton cultivation to the whole industrial chain of spinning, weaving, dyeing, finishing, garment making, exporting and retailing. It is a typical representative of the current supply chain situation of China's apparel industry.

In China, the 30 year history of China's cashmere brand, Erdos, is also a traditional cashmere vertical industry chain group from the grassland, sheep, and wool, and finally to the garment industry. Currently, it has 4 brands for different customer segments, ERDOS, Ordos 1980, 1436 and BLUE ERDOS.

Jiangnan Buyi group was founded in Hangzhou in 1997. It mainly has 5 clothing brands, including women's wear JNBY, men's wear CROQUIS sketches, children's wear JNBY by JNBY and Pomme de Terre Peng Ma and high-end women's wear less. The group will extend its tentacles to the home domain, and has created JNBY HOME and paradox two home brands.

Comparatively speaking, Yida textile has more experience in connecting with the international fashion industry chain and luxury brand, and has accumulated more experience in the global supply chain. The challenge lies in the higher demand of the global sustainable fashion for the production environment, pparency and efficiency of the supply chain.

Erdos represents the traditional Chinese popular brand, which is branded on the national sentiment and focuses on the local community.

The supply and production processes have profound experience in domestic retailing and channel construction. The challenge now lies in upgrading traditional brands.

Jiangnan cloth clothing more represents the new generation of Chinese clothing brand, the designer brand matrix attacks the niche market, more focuses on product design and packaging, brand image shaping, interaction with consumers and other terminal market strategy.

In China's diversified fashion apparel market, the different brands' position of differentiation will obviously have different interpretations of sustainable fashion.

Figure: Yida group's own brand ten, such as one of its stores.

Erdos hopes to optimize the vertical supply chain, strengthen product tracking and forecasting, and control inventory more accurately, so as to reduce resource idle and waste.

Datana stressed that "one of the biggest challenges in the fashion industry is how to increase the rate of commodity sales and reduce unnecessary inventory."

The online market is becoming a solution to this problem.

With the continuous improvement of China's electricity supplier market and logistics, Ordos can sell products online and offline simultaneously, and continuously improve product sales efficiency after mastering data.

Beyond the commercial dimension, Erdos, as the national brand of the flagship quality, is also trying to enhance the sustainability of products by emphasizing product durability and emotional value, such as providing product recovery and repair services in stores.

Photo: Ordos 1980 cashmere Lifestyle Exhibition

It is worth noting that the Yida group and Erdos, which have vertical supply chains, have touched sustainable fashion in many aspects of the industrial chain, from production to design, from emotional value to sales, not just a single level.

The practice of sustainable fashion in Jiangnan Buyi represents the needs of the new batch of domestic commercial brands.

Robby Gu throws an important view at the summit.

The emphasis is not only on moral requirements, but also on business considerations.

The traditional view is that sustainable development is usually based on the premise of sacrificing commercial interests.

Robby Gu's view clearly provides a brand new perspective for Chinese fashion brands to understand sustainable fashion.

He further explained that Jiangnan cloth's original choice of using natural environmental fabric is to prevent competitors from plagiarism.

The higher price of environmental protection fabric is different from other products in quality, and also guarantees the uniqueness of the brand.

With the rise of literature and art in the field of film and music in the 2010 or so, the art dress style that Jiangnan cloth dress first made was very avant-garde at that time, and quickly attracted a group of consumers with independent aesthetic attitudes.

Since then, with the trend of consumption upgrading in the Chinese market in recent years, consumers are becoming more and more concerned about brand value. These consumers who are more willing to pay for valuable brands are almost the target of all high-end brands.

In fact, the harmony between sustainable fashion and business considerations is necessary for Jiangnan cloth, because the latter is experiencing the most rapid development of business value in the brand history.

According to the fashion headline data, the net profit of Jiangnan Buyi on the first half of the fiscal year has soared by 37%, and its loyal fans have contributed 1 billion 100 million of the revenue. Since this year, the share price has risen 100% in the south of the Yangtze River. The market value is about 10 billion Hong Kong dollars, which is 3 times the market value when it was listed in 2016.

On the other hand, Jiangnan Buyi's interpretation of sustainable fashion is also a return to the product, which is to make the product more unique and attractive.

This coincides with Pan Chuying's view. "I don't think consumers are willing to spend more money simply because they are sustainable, nor do they think consumers will refuse to buy a product because they do not meet the sustainable standards."

In the final analysis, the clothing enterprise's mission is to produce attractive products.

It also reveals the foundation of sustainable fashion, that is, the design ability of products and clothing brands.

Back to the initial question, is it premature to talk about sustainable fashion in China? From the consumer level, consumer escalation has made middle-class consumers willing to accept attractive sustainable products.

ICICLE, founded in 1997, has been committed to becoming a representative high-end environmental brand in China in recent years. It mainly provides high quality and easy to handle natural pure commuter for middle class women.

It is noteworthy that ICICLE also has the first environmental baby packaging brand ECO BABE in China.

More emphasis on the concept of niche designer brand also emerged many brands that reflect sustainability, such as the "recycled clothes bank" created by designer Zhang Na and reused for old clothes to become the brand theme. It was founded by the central Wang Tianmo graduate Wang Tianmo, and set up the Museum of Friendship of the designer's Jinzhou craftsmen team. The MS MIN, which started with Taobao's business but molded the sustainable brand concept in Xiamen's slow pace life, put the studio on the foot of Shenzhen's Phoenix Tree and won the FFIXXED STUDIOS of the Italy Y.E.S environmental protection fashion award.

In addition, with the further popularization of the Internet and changes in the consumption habits of young people, there has also been a rental business in the Chinese market. APP two or three, the appearance of two or three can not only provide more clothing styles, but also a fashionable and environmentally friendly way of life.

Overall, Chinese enterprises are still lagging behind in the sustainable fashion product innovation, and there are more and more third party organizations, hoping to help them develop from the perspective of communication and channel distribution.

Last year, Kai Yun group and Shanghai fashion week entered into cooperation. The former opened the "open innovation luxury laboratory" in Shanghai fashion week and released the WeChat applet of My EP&L, the environmental profit and loss computing tool.

This means that Western Luxury groups are also beginning to pay attention to the sustainable fashion opportunities in the Chinese market. The latter, as a luxury brand, is now playing an important role in the policy making of luxury goods groups.

In view of the fact that China's sustainable design forces are still lacking and lack of innovation, Ye Xiaowei set up the first domestic creative culture consulting organization yehyehyeh in 2017, trying to provide solutions for domestic brands with creativity and value.

Earlier, she also held a Celebrate Fashion Sustainability dinner under the support of Kai Yun group to help Chinese independent designers integrate into the international sustainable fashion discussion and create more responsible design through creativity.

Obviously, whether from the perspective of production, consumption or dissemination, China's sustainable fashion has started. Once people get through the bridge between sustainable fashion and business logic, this concept may be a new opportunity for domestic clothing brands.

Especially in today's economically active China.

Sustainable

What is lacking is not mature market conditions, but innovative business models and truly attractive products.