"'Kadan' is everywhere, 'fox' is walking all over the mountains; 'Master' has his car stolen, and 'crocodile' is traveling all over the country; 'Goldlion' is sad! Sad! Sad!"
Text | Zhou Qi
Editor | Jintang
Operation | Yifan
At the end of 2020, leading anchors fell over one after another. First, Kuaishou's "No. 1 Brother" Simba was defeated by the fake bird's nest incident. Later, Douyin's "No. 1 Brother" Luo Yonghao caused another controversy and sold fake woolen sweaters.
Luo Yonghao said in the video that fakes have nothing to do with the brand. Picture/Video screenshot
From "a hole" to the proliferation of fakes
"That's Pierre Cardin."
In 1994, Zhao Benshan and Fan In Wei Wei's sketch "My Son is Old", Fan Wei, who plays the son, mentioned this clothing brand founded in Paris, France, and highly praised it. Zhao Benshan lifted his pants, lowered his head half-way, and replied with raised eyes, "It's not stuck in the crotch."
Picture/screenshot of video material
Pierre Cardin walking on the streets of China . Picture/Screenshot of "Beijing Memory"
Reduced to the root of the word between "two tests"
Another often seen name is Valentino, which was originally a brand in 1960 A clothing brand founded in Rome, Italy, the global average unit price of high-end ready-to-wear is now higher than that of Dior, Chanel and other luxury goods. Its full name is VALENTINO GARAVANI, and Valentino is one of its transliterations.
In the late 1990s, after Pierre Cardin led the trend, more and more brands came to China to test the waters. In 1993, Valentino Gravani, the founder of the Valentino brand, held a large-scale exhibition in Beijing with his high-end fashion and ready-to-wear, but he did not enter China immediately at that time.
In 1993, Valentino Gravani took a photo at the Great Wall. Figure / cfp
In the early days, due to trade and tax restrictions, the sales channels of luxury brands were extremely complicated. Most brands adopt a mixed model of direct sales in first-tier cities and development by agents in second- and third-tier cities. This also makes luxury goods retail extremely chaotic to a certain extent, with price gaps and easy counterfeiting.
It was not until 2004 that foreign brands were no longer restricted from opening chain stores, and luxury brands abandoned the trading companies and hosting companies that brought them to mainland China and began to expand independently. This year, the Shanghai Municipal Government even required all the first floors along Nanjing Road to be replaced with brand stores, and the shopping malls had no choice but to lease the space to luxury brands.
But the damage is already there. Dai Chunhua, chief consultant of Guangzhou Baichuan Road Consulting, once analyzed in an interview that in the past decade or so of the development of China's fashion industry, agents' lax behavior has undermined or even killed many international brands. Agents always choose to maximize their profits and do not protect them. brand, so many brands were made into country brands.
"'Kadan' is everywhere, 'fox' is walking all over the mountains; 'Master' has his car stolen, and 'crocodile' is traveling across the country; 'Goldlion' is sad! Sad! Sad!" A song at that time The doggerel depicts how well-known international brands are being copied in China.
But there is one brand that is not afraid of copycats, and that is Hugh Hefner's Playboy.
Although Hugh has also expanded Playboy's clothing and other products outside of the media, when it comes to Playboy, the most famous ones are still the photos in its magazines. However, this does not affect the preference of Chinese businesses for the Playboy brand. The New York Times reported in 2013 that China contributed 40% of Playboy’s sales the year before that. But instead of selling magazines, Playboy has authorized the company to put the Bunny logo on T-shirts, handbags, clothing, shoes and accessories.
Playboy has been working hard to get rid of its vulgar image and transform into a brand management company. However, the rabbit ear logo is still one of the 20 most recognized brands in the world and is frequently used by Chinese merchants. Reasons for wishing to obtain authorization. Current CEO Scott Flanders once said in an interview with the South China Morning Post: “Even if we have not published a magazine in China, people still know what bunny girls are, but in the eyes of Asian consumers, our image is related to pornography. It doesn’t matter much.”
Playboy’s bunny ears logo is extremely recognizable. Picture / cfp
Huahua Company may not care whether the brand is damaged in China, but for Valentino, the damage is really unexpected.
In 2004, the then Valentino global CEO Micheli Norsa announced the "China Development Strategy" and officially entered the Chinese market for the first time.
At that time, Micheli Norsa did not understand that Valentino had already been completely copied and turned into an all-purpose brand, and many small manufacturers started to play side projects. At that time, more than 200 combinations could be derived in the form of "xxx? Valentino" and "Valentino? Some people even pieced together Valentino? Jordan.
By just adding prefixes and suffixes, these brands can appear on Silk Street in Beijing, Xiangyang Road in Shanghai, Baima Clothing City in Guangzhou, and Yiwu Clothing Wholesale Market, playing the role of an internationally renowned brand.
Therefore, Valentino’s first trial in China did not go well. In the eyes of many people at the time, this brand was like Pierre Cardin at that time, and it was rampant. In addition, another reason is that in addition to VALENTINO GARAVANI, there are two major foreign brands, MRAIO VALENTINO and GIOVANNI VALENTINO. The three signed a "gentleman's agreement" for brand use, which made it impossible for the brand to use the name "Valentino" in the market at that time. Registration in China also gives counterfeiters an opportunity. In the end, Valentino was defeated by various copycats in China and had to evacuate after three years.
"Valentino" is always on clearance and on sale on the street. Picture/video screenshot
For some time afterwards, due to Valentino’s internal difficulties, it had no time to take into account the brand’s legitimate rights and interests in China. Until 2009, the new CEO and fashion brand director Stefano Sassi announced that Asia and emerging markets will become Valentino's new targets for development.
In November 2009, Valentino opened a new store in Plaza 66 in Shanghai, testing the waters for the second time and returning to China. This time they all operated a direct sales model, deliberately keeping a distance from the "domestic Valentino", and even many of them At that time, they directly changed the transliteration and called it Valentino.
Three major copycats, defeated in China
"Generally, customers who buy our products do not say Valentino, nor do they buy when they are called Valentino." A few years ago, a Valentino store clerk said in an interview Li said that she had been working there for almost a year at that time. From time to time, consumers would lament: "The old Valentino is now like this?" When they reached the level of luxury brands, Playboy and Pierre Cardin fell step by step.
Today, Playboy has as many as 350 registered trademarks in China, including "PLAYBOY", "Playboy" and rabbit image trademarks. In the past 20 years, Playboy's general agent in China has changed frequently, which has also caused many trademark disputes.
In January 2019, American Playboy issued a brand authorization termination letter to its original licensee and Chinese general agent Shanghai Feimeng Enterprise Management Co., Ltd., and the expiration date of the original signed contract should be 2025 June of the year. Therefore, Shanghai Feimeng Company took Playboy Company to court and claimed 200 million yuan.
While the dispute was still unresolved, Huahua Company licensed the brand to another Shanghai company.
The impact of this series of operations is that there are more and more "playboys" in the market, and it is difficult to distinguish between true and false.
For Pierre Cardin, it is not only difficult to distinguish between authenticity and fakeness, but also a dilemma. When the strong sense of freshness in the early years faded and the market became more open and commercialized, the dividends brought by the times were quickly taken away by the times. This brand was almost killed due to its wrong business strategy and being surrounded by copycats. Own.
Pierre Cardin likes to call himself the first socialist in the fashion industry. He has popularized his business methods. The core of his business strategy is brand transfer agency.
The chief representative of Pierre Cardin in China stated in 2013 that Pierre Cardin would “grant the rights to local companies for operation, and the company will produce and sell them. We will provide technical support, mainly It’s design. Designers will provide guidance and communication with agents and provide design drawings twice a year.”
In its heyday, Pierre Cardin had 800 franchised stores around the world. Authorization also leads to a wide variety of products. In the Chinese market, there were 24 agents in 2009 alone, with more than 800 products including men's clothing, jeans, children's clothing, bags, ties, umbrellas, towels, etc.
However, considering profits and return on investment, domestic merchants have drastically reduced prices and quality standards of their products, which has also led to Pierre Cardin already withdrawing from the ranks of luxury goods in China. Pierre Cardin, who wrote "clearance sale", is no longer the French "PIERRE CARDIN".
In addition to agents, there are also endless copycats. If the counterfeit Valentino took advantage of the "bonus period" when the brand tested water twice and retreated, then for the counterfeit Pierre Cardin, the timeline is even longer, from the late 1980s to today.
It is precisely because of the proliferation of agents and copycats that Pierre Cardin is getting cheaper and cheaper in the Chinese market. There are signs in supermarkets offering 20% ??off for 200 yuan, and you can find all kinds of products by just searching online. Clothes of all kinds and prices. Pierre Cardin himself had no room for recovery. In 2009, he packaged and sold the operation and management rights of some products in mainland China to Wenzhou Chenglong Co., Ltd. composed of Wenzhou businessmen Pan Changhai, Sun Xiaofei, Chen Xiaofei and others. The price was 37 million euros (approximately 370 million yuan at the time).
Perhaps no one is familiar with the name and boss of this Wenzhou company, but they own almost all the clothing "aces" in third- and fourth-tier towns, including "Goldlion", "Cardin Road", Italian Dupont Clothing and "Cardile Crocodile".
Therefore, Pierre Cardin's letting go also made it fall more quickly. For several consecutive years, Pierre Cardin has been named by the China Consumers Association due to issues such as cashmere content, dye fastness, and filling quality.
The filling quality deviation rate of Pierre Cardin silk quilts does not meet the standard requirements. Picture / Consumers Association Information
In 2018, Pierre Cardin held a fashion show on the Great Wall to commemorate his 40-year relationship with China. Unfortunately, the response was not as good as before.
In the market, only rumors of the past about luxury goods remain. Consumers’ memories of Pierre Cardin’s crisp suits have faded, and many people will only choose Pierre Cardin’s thermal underwear. and thick socks, and the cuff labels that had to be exposed in those years have been printed on the edge of the underwear, and many people put them in their autumn pants and covered them up.