Market Prospect: The Way To The Future Rise Of Clothing Industry

As Zara, H & M, and UNIQLO are becoming less popular in China, a number of brands such as Li Ning, more than thirteen and bosie are gaining momentum, and the spring of domestic brands is back.

The last spring of domestic clothing brands can be traced back to 2009. At that time, the industry was in the seller's market. Enterprises expanded rapidly through the wholesale mode, and the growth of the number of stores was the main driving force of performance growth.

But with At the end of 2011, the rapid growth of the industry stopped abruptly. The clothing industry has turned into a buyer's market, and the extensive growth mode of enterprises relying on virtual high prices and channel expansion fails. International brands focusing on fashion design catch domestic consumers who prefer big brands and are increasingly picky, and usher in rapid growth.

The change of clothing industry in recent two years is not reflected in the overall growth rate, but in a new round of outbreak of domestic strong brands. Beaster, ubras, more than thirteen other new forces from 0 to 1 speed up, Li Ning, Anta, Tebu and other old brands of consumer recognition continues to soar.

At the same time, domestic brands not only pay more attention to their own cultural attributes, but also make fundamental innovations in product R & D design, cost performance and flexible supply chain. From this point of view, the arrival of the spring has a different significance from the past, it contains more profound changes, but also more thorough.

The outbreak of new powers

In 2021, bosie has become a popular project for investors.

In the four years since its establishment, bosie has successively won six rounds of financing, including star institutions such as station B, Zhenge fund, Jinshajiang venture capital, Qingshan capital and Wuyuan capital.

According to 36 krypton, after missing out on bosie's angel round investment, AI Xiao, VP of Castle Peak capital, snatched up the project from a large number of waiting for opportunities by giving the valuation of the company to Liu Guangyao, founder of bosie.

Bosie is special in that it is a brand focusing on asexual fashion. Under the general environment of slowing down the overall growth, bosie's performance is extremely excellent - the first year's sales exceeded 10 million yuan, maintaining a 200% growth for three consecutive years, and the sales volume in 2021 is expected to exceed 700 million yuan.

The rise of bosie is strongly related to "young people". Liu Guangyao, the founder of bosie, was born in generation Z in 1995. Among bosie's customers, 70% are born after 95 and 20% are born after 00.

A prominent feature of post-95 trend consumption is "de sexualization". Behind this consumption trend is the new generation's new value proposition of self-awareness. Clothing is used to show the decline of gender composition, and it is more to please oneself and pursue physical comfort without losing appearance and style.

Bosie's actions in creating a fit for Z generation's consumption concept and shopping behavior mainly include:

1) generation Z was resonated with non gender label;

2) adopt a young team of designers to meet the aesthetic trend with rich creative design that can continuously bring fresh feeling;

3) the cultural elements drawn from the eight major arts, historical stories, mythological texts and even sculptures reflect the spiritual world of young people;

4) through in-depth cooperation with the new generation idol Peng Yuchang, releasing the co branded products of little prince and Doraemon, and creating the same model of stars, we can create the brand image and tap the fan economy at the same time;

5) take offline flash store as a fashion clock in point to attract offline consumers with heavy experience and feed back online traffic.

Coincidentally, beaster, who has followed the above path and achieved sales growth, is also targeting fashion brands, and its consumption target is mainly generation Z. During the "double 11" period in 2021, the turnover of beaster's official flagship store exceeded 200 million yuan, and the industry ranking rose from the ninth in the same period in 2020 to the eighth.

With generation Z as the center and trend sensitivity as the radius, and looking outward, bosie and beast are not the only brands that have achieved sales explosion in the past two years.

In the field of underwear, the new generation of no size underwear brands represented by ubras echo the voice of women's pursuit of equal rights in recent years. In design, it breaks the traditional women's underwear, which blindly pursues the effect of gathering and fullness, while neglecting the sense of bondage and redundancy in the wearing experience, as well as the pain point of steel ring's continuous compression on the chest and damaging health, which is sought after by female consumers. During the period of 2021 double 11, the total turnover of ubras exceeded 500 million yuan, ranking top 2 of tmall underwear category.

In the field of minority clothing, the Z generation's recognition of animation game content consumption, the rise of national cultural identity, and the national aesthetic under the guidance of mainstream media bring about the exploration of personalized clothing, film and television clothing and traditional national clothing. Due to their strong aesthetic attributes, social attributes and cultural added value, Sankeng costume, JK uniform and Lolita are rapidly emerging from the circle.

Among them, new brands such as weaving department, sennu tribe, pcmy, ajanam, lynee and more than thirteen have become the leaders in the subdivision field because of their good product experience, premium ability, operation ability and brand awareness, which stimulate the enthusiasm of the public to consume, and the market attention continues to soar.

In the field of environmental protection materials and clothing, the concept of low-carbon, sustainable development and animal protection is in the ascendant. Natural plant fiber has gradually replaced animal leather and chemical fiber in many industrial scenes.

As the concept of environmental protection in developed countries in Europe and the United States has a wider audience and a higher degree of attention, foreign clothing brands started to explore environmental protection materials earlier.

At the beginning of its establishment in 2016, allbirds, a leisure brand of natural materials, first selected New Zealand Merino wool as its fabric, then extended to natural materials such as eucalyptus in South Africa and sugarcane in Brazil to make full use of the material characteristics. In 2021, allbirds successfully listed on NASDAQ with a market value of $2 billion.

Domestic environmental protection clothing brand also is sprouting. In October last year, the clothing brand "yougeshu" invested by Challenger capital and Jinyan assets mainly focused on the concept of health and environmental protection. According to the interview materials from the consumer sector, the main components of the material and packaging bag used by a tree are natural materials such as cotton, hemp and recycled fiber.

According to the data provided by Li Jian, founder of youkeshu, its brand sales volume has reached 1 billion yuan in 2021. The support of domestic consumers for environmental protection material clothing can be seen.

Old brands compete for a new look

In the first quarter of last year, after the H & M boycott of Xinjiang long staple cotton event was sent to hot search, Nike, Adidas and other overseas big brands have stood in line, which has been strongly criticized by domestic consumers.

In the storm, many domestic brands such as Li Ning, Anta and Tebu responded quickly and supported Xinjiang cotton, which not only promoted consumers' attention and favor of domestic brands, but also improved the market acceptance and share of domestic brands, which laid a long-term effect.

At the same time, the rise of domestic old brands has become an obvious trend. The opposition between the old domestic brands and the international brands is not limited to the attitude of Xinjiang cotton. In the past two years, the status of domestic brands is approaching from the follower to the rival with enough strength.

　　 Original design level

Behind the trend are the changes of power, social culture, lifestyle, aesthetic fashion and production level. Its formation is a group resonance, each trend is the result of multi-party game, the trend reflects not only goods, but also social class and group classification. However, for the moment, the discourse power of the trend is still in the hands of international big brands.

In order to enhance their own trend attribute and brand status, domestic leading clothing brands choose local talent training, and attach equal importance to the introduction of overseas designers and cooperation with overseas design teams, so as to stimulate design vitality and create a brand image of high-end quality, young and fashionable.

For example, Anta's FIA, a high-end sports and fashion brand, has cooperated with Jason Wu, former creative director of Hugo Boss, Ginny Hilfiger, founder of Tommy Hilfiger, and salehe bembury, President of Versace design, etc., and made many appearances in Milan fashion week, Shanghai Fashion Week and Shenzhen fashion week, so as to create an aesthetic leading position, compete for the right of fashion discourse, and realize its fashion image and status.

　　 Science and technology promotion

"Science and technology fashion" is becoming a new pronoun of domestic leading brands.

The consumption habits of the main consumer groups represented by generation Z have changed quietly. Compared with the Post-70s and 80s, generation Z has better material conditions in the process of growing up. At the same time, class solidifies and social mobility deteriorates. Personalized, novel and in-depth experience that allows generation Z to explore more freely can arouse their curiosity and favor and generate consumption behavior.

In order to meet the needs of Z generation, the old brand clothing brands combine the sense of technology and fashion to improve the product quality through fabric upgrading, function upgrading, and technology empowerment according to the detailed needs of different application scenarios, so as to make many traditional categories radiate new vitality.

For example, Hailan home's three proofs T-shirt uses lotus leaf bionic hydrophobic technology to avoid water, oil and stains from entering the fiber, which solves the pain point of white T-shirt pollution. The water repellent fabric is added to the Samma cloud down jacket to keep it super light and thin, so that the thermal properties can be further improved. With the configuration of "double-layer carbon board + Li Ning technology + Li Ning technology", Li Ning Jue Ying spring speed running shoes combine structural shock absorption with material shock absorption, so that the running shoes have better shock absorption and rebound ability, and effectively reduce the injury risk of knee joint and ankle joint.

　　 Product and brand matrix

For the enterprises that rely on a single category and brand, once the core products fall into crisis and it is difficult to recover the situation, the growth and operational stability of enterprises will be greatly reduced. To become a diversified product and brand can help enterprises get rid of the above predicament and serve more consumers with the advantages of supply chain and multi brand operation ability. This kind of advantage and ability will be strengthened with the increase of enterprise's market share, become the moat of enterprise, achieve more long-term and stable expansion, and inject imagination space into the capital level.

In addition, with the generation change of consumption upgrading, new consumption demands such as health, safety and environmental protection are constantly emerging. At the same time, consumers pay more attention to experience and spiritual consumption, and prefer popular products and online brands. Enterprises need to explore and meet the demand preference of the main force of the new generation of consumption, and also need new products and new brands to meet the freshness of consumers.

In recent years, domestic leading brands have become familiar with the strategy of multi brand and multi product matrix to create the second growth curve. For example, Li Ning split out of China's Li Ning and Li-Ning 1990 product lines, realizing the upgrading from mass functional sports to high-end sports fashion. Tebu has many brands, such as Tebu, gasway, Paladin, sokoni, Melo and so on. Its products cover many fields, such as mass sports, fashion sports and professional sports, to meet the consumer's multi scene consumption demand. With the acquisition of German high-end women's clothing brand Laur è L, French designer brand iro Paris and American luxury fashion brand ed hardy in Greater China, Goliath has made the group develop into a high-end fashion brand.

　　 Supply chain level

The international mature fast response flexible supply chain model is taking root in China.

Based on the characteristics of local market, taipingniao, bosden, SEMAR and other brands adopt the mode of combining futures and spot in the middle of the supply chain to reduce the inventory risk - during the order meeting, a small amount of counter quarterly basic funds is placed with the suppliers, and combined with the daily sales situation of the downstream, the products are flexibly tracked in the peak season, and the production is determined according to the sales, so as to reduce the inventory backlog.

These measures enable enterprises to accelerate product iteration, optimize upstream capacity distribution and improve the overall efficiency of the supply chain while improving sales performance.

In 2021, even under the impact of the epidemic, the retail flow of Anta, Tebu and 361 degree has achieved a year-on-year growth of more than double-digit in Anta, Tebu and 361 degrees.

The end

As a traditional industry, clothing industry was once considered as the saline land of capital, and few brands can get the support of investment institutions.

But since 2019, many clothing enterprises have become the object of capital pursuit. Star institutions such as Jingwei China, Hillhead venture capital, Shunwei capital, Zhenge fund, Zhongwei capital, bilibilibili, bubble mart and other star institutions have entered the board. Fashion brands MO & Co, bosie, duopu culture, beast, sports fashion brands focus on sports, particle feeder, poly vivi, Maia active. A small number of clothing brands have returned to the Han and Tang Dynasties, more than thirteen, and bubble Mart Poetry and 10000 flower mirrors... Have been financing.

The reasons are: the rise of the middle class and the increase of high net worth people have opened up the space for the growth of middle and high-end consumption, urbanization has driven the development of the sinking market, and the superposition of two factors has driven the rise of industry volume and price; The consumption behavior of generation Z is significantly different from that of the Post-70s and 80s. Although clothing is still optional consumption, it is endowed with more attributes such as social currency, value proposition, emotional dependence, etc., and its attraction to the crowd is strengthened; The arrival of national tide and health concept has injected new opportunities into the industry; Digitalization makes the supply chain reform possible, the risk of overstocking of enterprises is reduced, and the business model tends to the Internet companies.

In this spring, no one knows the future of the clothing industry, but it is certain that this will be a battle to win for the real rise of domestic brands.