Storytelling women's clothing brand, clothing companies guess the answer to the dress

“In medieval Russia, talented young painters and beautiful royal ballerinas met in a performance returning to celebrate the general’s victory. In the next few encounters and appointments, they spawned sincere love, and at the same time the generals Asked the tsar to give the actress a request to marry him, in order to get rid of the fate of the tease and the arrangement of the imperial concubine, the painter and the actress helped the artist and the actress to disguise themselves as peasant couples who sent vegetables to the palace and escaped the court. , to the freedom and happiness ... "If you buy a piece of clothing and you see a story on the tag that interprets the design inspiration and philosophy of the dress, will you be tempted?

"A story-telling brand" is the biggest impression that the answer is left to consumers. The original designer brand created in 2004 is to capture the connotation and life of each garment through a similar moving story, quickly capturing the hearts of many female consumers. In just a few years, the answer has been established in more than 560 stores across the country, becoming one of the cutting-edge brands in the women's wear market.

Wei Lifang, executive managing director of Guangzhou Guess Clothing Co., Ltd., attributed the success of the answer to two points. One is to give the brand cultural connotation, design according to the theme of the story, insist on personality, adhere to the original, and the other is the concept of win-win with the terminal channel business.

However, to continue the success, they also face many practical problems, such as how to improve the profitability of single stores, how to better control the terminal, to achieve a win-win situation between agents, franchisees and companies, how to solve the development of the company In the process of encountering the shortage of high-end professionals, how to expand e-commerce in a unique way to attract online shoppers who prefer "80s, 90s" and so on.

Light asset operations

It is assumed that at the beginning of the creation of apparel, it will adopt a mode of asset-light operation, concentrate on designing R&D and market operations, and outsource production to partner manufacturers. This mode of light assets, so that the answer to the brand can quickly spread in the market.

At the end of 2003, Ding Yong, the chairman of Guess Apparel, called Wei Lifang and proposed the idea of ​​starting a women's clothing brand. As a designer, Ding Yong was also responsible for the design of another brand. He was already well-known within the circle. According to Wei Lifang, he already had a group of “fan customers”, and when he officially launched the “mystery” brand in 2004, A group of customers will join.

Because Ding Yong has limited energy, the designer Ding Qi Liu Xing also joined Guess Clothing in 2004 and became the design director. Wei Lifang is responsible for the market, and another shareholder Guo Guangfu is responsible for production and administration.

There are roughly two trends in the domestic clothing market: First, take the popular route, but the quality and taste are not high; the other is advanced customization, high-end, unique style but extremely expensive. Liu Xing has made a middle ground trying to capture consumers' hearts with reasonable prices and unique styles.

They target the target consumer group to intellectual women between the ages of 25 and 35 in the city. "This group is pursuing fashion, freedom, and personality. It wants to be different from others, and it can attract the attention of others, but it is not strange and unassuming."

It is assumed that at the beginning of the creation of apparel, it will adopt a mode of asset-light operation, concentrate on designing R&D and market operations, and outsource production to partner manufacturers.

“Production of this piece is the one we are not good at and will face many difficult issues such as recruitment, management, etc., and it will outsource it to people who are good at it. We will concentrate on designing and selling.” Wei Lifang said, but guessing that clothing will Fabrics and designs are provided to the factory and QA quality inspections are performed. The factory is only responsible for production.

In order to ensure the quality of products and the rapid response of suppliers, it is assumed that the apparel will adopt hierarchical management of these upstream factories and that they can upgrade each other, adopt different policy support for different levels of suppliers, and formulate a strict elimination system. This is somewhat similar to Metersbonwe. Metersbonwe, which also conducts asset-light operations, has four levels of upstream suppliers, forming a set of competitive mechanisms to keep the entire supplier network alive.

In the downstream channels, it is assumed that more than 90% of apparel is outsourced, and the number of self-operated stores is less than 10% of the total number of specialized stores. Guess costumes become a brand and market operator, as well as resource integrators. This mode of light assets, so that the answer to the brand can quickly spread in the market.

Using culture to give brand soul

“The story of moving is told in the language of clothing, and the way of creativity is used to lead the natural and cultural lifestyle. This is the most profound brand cultural connotation of the answer.” Wei Lifang said that the answer will have a theme story each season, divided by the series of stories. Each piece of clothing has a name associated with the story. This is a special feature of each piece of clothing and is one of the reasons for attracting many “mystery friends”.

“The circus is a place where joy is brought to others to bring bitterness to them. The little girl NANA and the bear live here. They are the most popular performers. Today is a clown. Tomorrow is a tightrope and sometimes a weird car. On throwing colorful balls, day after day, there is almost no rest.

In the summer, the bear fell ill. Only the soil on the Andean mountain in his hometown can save it. NANA decided to take it away before the boss sold the bear. The way home was from summer to winter, and the NANA and the dying bear were rescued by the kind Inca at the foot of the mountain, and later they heard their happy laughter in the mountains..."

This fall, Guangzhou Guess Clothing Co., Ltd.'s brand "answers" tells the story of the little girl NANA and Cubs in the circus. “Life gives us all kinds of opportunities, and the ultimate control power is still in our own hands. When faced with many choices, it is better to be brave enough to try, explore, and do what you want to do. The goal of recognition continues all the way, like the main character of the story NANA. Perhaps the journey is very difficult, but her active and optimistic heart eventually regains her happiness." Guess the director of costume design, Liu Xing, interprets the meaning of this story.

At the China International Fashion Week held in Beijing in 2008, Liu Xing held the first private press conference. The theme of the conference was “Wake up”. The inspiration came from the Wenchuan earthquake and their husband Ding Yong’s visit to Sichuan. This is the first time she has touched the word death in her theme. However, in Liu Xing's view, death is not terrible. She wants to see death as the return or sublimation of the soul. This encourages people to bravely face life after the earthquake.

“The story of moving is told in the language of clothing, and the way of creativity is used to lead the natural and cultural lifestyle. This is the most profound brand cultural connotation of the answer.” Wei Lifang said that the answer will have a theme story each season, divided by the series of stories. Each piece of clothing has a name associated with the story. This is a special feature of each piece of clothing and is one of the reasons for attracting many “mystery friends”.

“Brand culture is very important, and no culture is like no soul.” Giving the brand cultural connotation, according to the theme of the story design, adhere to individuality, adhere to the original, has always been the answer to the magic weapon. So, how does the design team of the mystery find out one theme story after another?

According to reports, each story theme is decided by the director of design each season according to his inspiration. A season, a movie, a novel, a trip will bring her inspiration, and may become the theme of the "answer". After the direction of the theme is determined, the following designers are free to play. Imagine that costumes will often organize designers to go abroad to learn about the wind and learn, so that they can experience the local culture and find inspiration during the tour.

“In the process, our designers will naturally combine some art and clothing. For example, last year they went to Spain to see the unique features of the local building, and printed the mosaic image on the clothing. There are many interesting curves. It is applied to clothing, and then a text description on the tag is conveyed to the consumer.” Wei Lifang said that the design must not be learned from books, it is not a closed door, and designers must be given free and broad design space.

According to reports, the launch cycle of new products is 120 days to 130 days. This is a bit long for the clothing industry that needs rapid response. However, Wei Lifang said that the designer's original brand is different from the brand that takes the market. The biggest difference is that there are His own unique style. Unlike some brands that are always following the market, what the market is doing is a matter of homogeneity. The answer has its own characteristics. As long as we insist on originality and not plagiarize, it will still be welcomed by the market.

"Culture should be the soul of a brand. Only the brand that follows the imitation has no vitality. And others can only imitate our money, but they cannot imitate our soul and culture."

In Wei Lifang's view, the "answer" to the consumer is not just a clothing, a brand, but more importantly, a lifestyle and a dress concept.

"The answer to the mystery is natural, free, and self-loving. In terms of materials, based on natural, environmentally friendly, comfortable cotton-based fabrics, blending some silk, wool, high-tech synthetic materials." Wei Lifang said, the answer is In a state, she hopes that consumers will be more relaxed and peaceful when they put on their clothes. Instead of wearing a suit, they will feel tight and feel like they are going to negotiate.

Win-win with channel providers

Terminal management is not easy for every company, but it is not fatal. Customers are all realistic. Only by making them make money can companies grow together.

In the national expansion of the mystery, it is conjectured that costumes mainly use agents, franchises, direct sales, and e-commerce.

The agency model mainly focuses on the northeast, north, northwest and southwest regions that are relatively far from the headquarters. They will select regional agents with relatively strong local channels and professional management teams for market development and management. "For this part of the agents, I guess that costumes will require them to operate in a corporatized manner, regularly train agents, teach them how to recruit, manage and evaluate the following franchisees, and how to carry out corporatization operations." Wei Lifang said that these There are more than a dozen stores that have less than a dozen stores.

In Guangzhou, Shanghai, Hangzhou and other places, direct sales and franchise are the mainstays. According to reports, there are only more than 30 directly-operated stores in the answer, which is less than 10% of the total number of stores. Wei Lifang’s goal is to raise this figure to 30%.

Any company that develops markets in the form of chain stores will encounter terminal management problems regardless of the industry. It is guessed that clothing is no exception.

“Terminal management is not easy for every company, but it's not fatal. Customers are all realistic. Only if they make money, companies can grow together. We have specialized supervision to visit the shop. , Look at the shopping guide service, the store's furnishings are not in place, check whether you have sold other people's goods, etc.." Wei Lifang said that considering the customer's point of view is the basis for achieving win-win results. For example, when customers sell down jackets of other brands in the store, they must think in reverse and why they sell other people's things. There is no down jacket in this answer. In the cold weather, customers do not sell down jackets to sell anything? Punishment is only a means. The most important thing is to learn to reflect.

How to make customers earn money? Guess that costumes made a lot of adjustments. First, enrich product categories and styles. From head to toe, from sweaters, shirts, jackets, skirts, trousers, pantyhose to shoes, hats, scarves, gloves, and even bags, the styles are based on the theme of each quarter. “Now we have a very rich variety of products. In addition to underwear, everything else is involved. So every customer can choose the right product according to local consumption.” Wei Lifang said.

In addition, it is conjectured that costumes also produced periodicals based on the theme of each quarter, and used models to display the company's different products into different styles of clothing, and to guide guide buyers and consumers. “The answer is that some clothes can be designed in various ways. Some can be used as blouses. In turn, they can be worn as trousers. Some scarfs can also be worn as vests. If these models are displayed, they will be even better. Easy to facilitate transactions.” Wei Lifang explained that shoes and other products are not the main category of earning, and their role is to match clothes.

In fact, Liu Xing also attaches great importance to collocation. They hope that by teaching church consumers how to match, so that the value and taste of answering apparel can be reflected in consumers, thus strengthening consumer loyalty. They will also encourage franchisees to develop VIP members and cultivate loyal customers in stores through discounts, points, gifted journals, new products, and promotional messages.

Compared with some apparel brands who spend millions of dollars to organize a promotional campaign or do television commercials, it is guessed that the promotion of apparel is somewhat low-key. They also advertise through Ruili and other fashion magazines, but they are not "promoting overwhelmingly, but permeating and flowing." Wei Lifang said that the terminal store itself is the best publicity, so she would rather use these promotional expenses to subsidize support channel terminals. They will adopt different reward programs for different performances of agents and franchisees, and will continue to train customers in terms of site selection, how to calculate profit and loss, how to manage clerk, and how to strengthen loyalty of VIP customers. She hopes that the concept of channel business and corporate headquarters will be the same, and it will be regarded as one of his own businesses.

“We do not now regard expansion as the focus of our company. The current focus is on how to improve the performance of single stores.” Wei Lifang said that so far, guessing that costumes have not yet encountered a financial bottleneck, she did not consider increasing the use of capital markets. The pace of expansion will expand the number of direct-operated stores to 30%, enhance the performance of single stores, and it is the focus of her current consideration.

In addition to offline marketing, it is conjectured that apparel is also e-commerce. This is not unrelated to the target audience of the answer. “The initial consumer of the answer is more than 30 years old. Now a group of new consumers will join in. Now 80s and 90s are our consumer groups. Another habit of this group is online consumption. We are also studying this. The group's spending habits and fashion preferences are promoted through online media, Wei Lifang said. However, due to the start-up and lack of professionals in this area, the online marketing of the answer still has a lot of room to play.

In fact, the missing talents are not only professionals in the field of e-commerce. In the continuous development of the company, the bottleneck of high-end talents in marketing, design, and management will also be one of the obstacles to restricting speculation to a new level. .

Wei Lifang Business Strategy

â—Ž The answer is no spokesperson, for sports, casual brands, please spokesperson is more suitable, because it is popular, but the answer is a personalized clothing, so I think it does not require spokesperson. I am a brand that tells stories with costumes. The biggest difference between mystery and other brands is this.

â—Ž The mature consumer concept is to look for a brand with a high degree of identity and taste. Brands have DNA. Integrating culture into the design and removing the tag can allow consumers to distinguish whether the product is from a brand. This is the brand's content.

â—Ž The designer's original brand is different from the brand that takes the market. The biggest difference is that it has its own unique style. Unlike some brands that are always following the market, what the market is doing is a matter of homogeneity. The answer has its own characteristics. As long as it persists in its originality and does not copy it, it will still be welcomed by the market. Culture should be the soul of a brand. Only brands that follow the imitation are immortal. And others can only imitate our money, but they cannot imitate our soul and culture.

â—ŽWhen many brands develop to a certain degree, they will be plagued by inventory, which is good for us. Our inventory is controlled at 5%~8% every year. We use the order system to control inventory. Even if inventory is generated, we will digest it through self-operated stores. In addition, we will give customers some special policies to digest some of them through promotional activities in the market. We also recommend that customers open more stores and they will not have channels. Fear that you will pressure inventory.