News such as the bankruptcy of Forever21 and the withdrawal of NEW LOOK from China have raised questions about the future of fast fashion. During the epidemic, the global economy suffered a setback, and many people felt that Zara and H&M would follow in their footsteps.
Indeed, the performance of fast fashion has been unsatisfactory in the past two years. However, market saturation and performance plunge do not mean that fast fashion will decline.
Why can’t you live without fast fashion?
The reason why most fast fashion stores are located in shopping malls The first floor is because it allows consumers to come in and hang out and guide traffic inside the mall. Until now, fast fashion brands have been “sharp tools” used by shopping malls to attract customers.
Why is fast fashion always said to be losing money, but consumers are still inseparable from fast fashion?
The reason is actually because fast fashion is “fast” enough.
Fast fashion is not limited to the fashion trends of each season, always pay attention to the latest fashion styles. While fashion magazines are still previewing the fashion trends of the season, Zara, H&M and other brands are already displaying these new products in their windows.
In order to ensure the freshness and scarcity of brand products, designers of fast fashion brands selected products from Paris and Milan fashion shows respectively. Get inspiration from online, and then create a lot of creations, so that there are more styles but less quantity. More than 20,000 fashion styles are launched every year.
According to data: Zara can design a piece of clothing every 20 minutes, “production takes 7 days, and is released in 14 days” The speed of “on the shelves in 30 days” can be called a “model worker” in the fast fashion industry.
The speed of fast fashion allows people to approach world trends at low cost. Its “hard, fast, low” model is undoubtedly successful.
Secondly, it is cheap.
It’s hard not to be tempted by the big red “SALE” in a fast fashion store. High street fashion brands often sell hundreds of clothes, but you can buy them in fast fashion for less than 200.
To sum up, fast fashion still occupies an important position in the clothing market. But how to operate it specifically to make it irreplaceable requires each brand to work hard from different angles.
What kind of fast fashion does the market need?
Fast fashion is not “only fast but never broken”. After all, the decline in performance of brands such as Zara, H&M and Uniqlo is an unchanging fact. Brands need more innovation and change to meet the needs of the market to the greatest extent in order to reconstruct the “kingdom” of fast fashion.
To talk about how to reconstruct, let’s first take a look at what obstacles fast fashion has encountered before:
1. Consumers begin to pay more attention to personalization;
2. Rents increase, Store operating costs increase;
3. European and American fast fashion brands do not have enough localized marketing;
4. Excessive pursuit of fashion, resulting in Plagiarism occurs frequently.
In response to the above questions, we can get the answer to what fast fashion the market needs.
01
More personalized
Consumers are no longer satisfied with simple fashion and avant-garde. They need products that are more personalized and can better highlight their own style. How to capture the hearts of Generation Z consumers through personalization has become a required course for major brands.
For example, H&M previously collaborated with Chinese designer Angel Chen on a Chinese style series, and invited Zhang Yixing and supermodel Liu Wen to appear in an advertisement, which created quite a buzz at the time.
02
Embrace online
The large-scale closure of fast fashion stores is because the rental cost is too high, and brands have to make adjustments to save money.
Since offline is not possible, developing e-commerce marketing online has become the next focus of fast fashion brands .
Inditex Group, the parent company of Zara, has invested 1 billion euros to vigorously develop the digital field, with the goal of increasing the proportion of e-commerce revenue from 14% to 25% in 2022. Currently, Zara has cooperated with Tmall to open new retail stores and launched services such as “order online and pick up offline” to develop online channels.
03
Focus on quality
In order to “rush for time”, most fast fashion brands do not pursue quality much, thus losing many consumers who pay attention to quality.
UR discovered the gap in “quality” of fast fashion and launched the concept of “fast luxury” to break the high street fashion The gap between fast fashion and fast fashion retains consumer interest. Let personalized, diversified designs and localized versions and styles become brand advantages.
Consumers indeed cannot leave fast fashion, but brands need to further innovation. Only in this way can we truly meet the needs of consumers and create an undefeated fast fashion “empire”. </p
