In the past ten years, we have seen that local brands such as Disu, Mo & Co., Zhihe, and Neiwai are not willing to be manufacturing companies without brand premiums, and are committed to competing in the competitive landscape where international brands continue to penetrate the Chinese market. Have your own place. Most of these brands have successfully kept up with the fashion trends led by overseas brands. Now young girls in metropolitan cities will match Balenciaga with Di Su, and more mature ladies will match Zhihe clothes with Hermès bags. In terms of women’s clothing, we see that their aesthetics have broken the boundaries of geography and brand.
However, China’s men’s clothing brands have not shown such momentum. Instead, they have been sinking under the squeeze of international brands, using e-commerce as their main position, or their positioning has been vague, and they have been unable to build on their brand power. and business failure. Why do these men’s clothes lack the charm and courage of women’s clothes?
Men’s clothing is the most mature market segment in the domestic clothing industry. Production, management, branding and marketing are gradually becoming more reasonable and perfect. In addition, the new generation of male consumers pay more attention to personal image and dress. , and the growing sense of fashion has played an important role in promoting the growth of the men’s clothing industry. In addition, gender-neutral clothing has gradually become popular, and female consumers also tend to buy more fashionable men’s clothing, which has also given impetus to the growth of the men’s clothing market.
The polarization of the men’s clothing market
makes it difficult for local men’s clothing brands to break through the cracks
According to Tian According to the best-selling brand list released by Mao on November 11, Uniqlo came out on top in the men’s clothing category, followed by GXG, Bosideng, Mark Huafei, Heilan House and Peacebird. Many of these brands, which are seen as exclusive to young people in small towns, are almost impossible to find in first-tier cities.
In this era where content is king, after years of research and polishing on products, UNIQLO has successfully built “Produced by UNIQLO” into the most powerful brand identity.
At the just-concluded CIIE, Uniqlo, which participated in the exhibition for the first time, used 10 innovative exhibition areas and various devices to vividly demonstrate the brand’s six major clothing technologies. During Double 11, the classic series of products that incorporate various technologies were very popular, which once again confirmed the product strength of UNIQLO supported by its technological capabilities. There is no doubt that UNIQLO is using its strong product power to interpret “classic, that is, eternity.”
Tmall’s data cannot fully reflect the entire market. According to Euromonitor’s latest report, in China’s men’s clothing industry in 2019, the top three brands in terms of market share were Heilan House, Adidas, and Uniqlo, with market shares of 4.7%, 2.4%, and 2.3% respectively. Heilan House has ranked first in market share for six consecutive years and has a solid leading position in the men’s clothing industry.
However, there are also local men’s clothing brands that have made breakthroughs in the market: Jiangnan Buyi’s Kuaishu has captured a blank space in Chinese men’s clothing with its unique and precise brand positioning and emphasis on product research and development. It is one of many women’s clothing brands. What you want to consider when preparing to enter the men’s clothing market. The success of Sketch can be summarized as forward-looking and design-first branding operations.
A trendy men’s clothing brand owned by a domestic group, it once replicated Zara’s model by copying big brands and selling them at low prices, but it failed to “copy” the essence of Zara and could not compete with Zara men’s clothing. With its fast speed and sensitivity to fashion trends, it has gradually lost its competitiveness. In this model, local brand UR once considered itself a “student” of Zara, and now it is catching up with its styles, design details and aesthetics that are more suitable for Chinese people.
Of course, there is another old and new brand that has been discussed for a long time – China Li Ning.
Is national fashion the only way out for men’s clothing?
In 2018, Li Ning launched a new brand “China Li Ning”, which reversed the brand’s decline in one fell swoop, refreshed people’s perception of an old brand, and won a lot of young fans. As a pioneer of domestic sports brands, Li Ning has developed rapidly in recent years. Since the beginning of this year, Li Ning’s stock price has risen by more than 200%, and its market value has exceeded HK$60 billion, a 9-year high, making it an outstanding stock in the MSCI AC Asia Pacific Index.
Li Ning’s growth in recent years is not only due to the effective integration of Chinese elements and its own sports genes, which has significantly improved its recognition, but also the digital transformation of new retail has helped Li Ning achieve higher revenue from all channels. increase.
Taking advantage of young domestic consumers’ love for domestic brands, Li Ning’s market and product teams target potential consumers, design products that suit the tastes of young consumers, and continue to transform into new retail.
However, in my opinion, China’s Li Ning’s success may only be temporary, as it relies on the dividends of Generation Z. If Made in China wants to transform, create brand premium, and generate real competitiveness on the stage of competing with international brands, it mustLet manufacturing be upgraded in the direction of R&D and brand building respectively.
Many clothing brands that were regarded as trend symbols for Chinese young people more than ten years ago have frequently followed the example of China’s Lining and made transformations into national fashion styles. But this convergence does not help them establish their own unique brand image positioning.
From a manufacturing company to a brand company
In the field of rebranding, Bosideng may be on a more stable path than Li Ning.
The cooperation with Jean Paul Gaultier in the past two seasons has boosted the brand’s fashion expression. It’s a pity that the brand’s visual system and the brand slogan of “sold in 72 countries” are still 20 years ago. Also stuck in the stage of shouting slogans is Jiumu Wang. Jiumu Wang, known as the “King of Pants”, completed a wave of marketing as “the world’s leading men’s pants expert” in September this year. According to sales data statistics from 1990 to 2019, Jiumuwang men’s pants have sold a total of 100 million pairs. In 2019, they even set a record of “one piece sold every 7 seconds”. They were finally recognized by authoritative professional data institutions and won the market position of “global sales leader”. Jiumuwang’s sales performance and the high-profile update of its brand strategy at this time also illustrate that in the so-called poor market environment, there are still brands that can grow rapidly. However, the impression left by Jiumuwang’s products is still vague.
In fact, there are two reasons why it is difficult for many domestic men’s clothing brands to become bigger and stronger. One is external factors. The most important reason is internal reasons. 95% of men’s clothing companies on the market are only OEM companies. Some companies that seem to have brands have yet to design clothes suitable for the Chinese body shape after being active in the market for several years. If you want to gain a foothold in the clothing market, attitude and technology are the two core things that every company must rely on. If we just rely on the low-price strategy, we will reach a deadlock, and will instead retreat further and further in the apparel market.
When a local men’s clothing brand truly realizes that it is driven by manufacturing and creativity, the company will take on a completely different look. At present, the men’s clothing brands that control China’s sinking market have basically not woken up. They are playing a game of capital, supply chain and channels, and the cost-effectiveness for consumers is the core value of their business. No wonder there was once a popular public account article jokingly saying that Chinese men’s aesthetics have been delayed by these brands. Manufacturing companies have felt the pressure to transform into brand companies, which is an unstoppable trend. Some of them are embarking on another track by launching or acquiring new brands, or are struggling to explore various possibilities for internal transformation. However, it is difficult for a business with annual sales of several billions to fundamentally change its operating thinking and model. The cost of self-subversion is too high.
Social media has completely changed the way brands and consumers communicate, and e-commerce has completely subverted the geographical restrictions on purchasing.
Twenty years ago, Metersbonwe became a household name through this. Why are once-sudden brands now seen as outdated? Perhaps it is because the strong inertia accumulated in the previous era makes it difficult to brake or turn around.
The most recent priority for Metersbonwe founder Zhou Chengjian is to form a young innovation team born in the 1990s and think like the target consumers. He said: “According to the thinking of young people today, we should not be a men’s clothing brand or a women’s clothing brand, we should be a youth brand, pan-age, pan-gender. The brand must form a power of community worship, and the brand and consumers must form an affiliation. This is the long-term value that the brand should create, and it is also something we value more.”
We seem to have seen a strong vision for change, but are the entire industry and market ready?
The rise of a new generation of consumers has triggered new personalized consumption and ushered in new opportunities for the development of traditional men’s clothing brands. In the clothing market, although the recovery rate of the men’s clothing industry has shown slow growth, However, traditional men’s clothing companies are constantly looking for new ways to increase their market share, such as cross-border operations, personalized designs, and the release of joint models. They are using a novel model to make the traditional men’s clothing industry become trendy and provide opportunities for the men’s clothing industry. Transformation and upgrading bring good results. </p
