Domestic shoe and clothing brands have had a good time.

At that time, Huang Bo showed off in the movie "Crazy Stone" that he was wearing "the brand, Baleno!"

Chu Yuxun was taken to Meters by Duan Mulei Bonwe was heartbroken and murmured to himself, "Standing in front of the mirror, I don't even know who the girl is inside..."

At that time, dozens of security guards were hired for the opening of Jeanswest's new store. The influx of people is comparable to what you get when Uniqlo sells co-branded models now;

Daphne’s store has SHE songs on loop, and if you want to listen to Jay Chou, you have to go to Metersbonwe;

If you wear Giordano and Yichun to school, you will definitely attract jealous and envious eyes;

And Ai Lian has not yet become an adjective referring to earthy women's clothing. I only buy it because of the big S. It endorses;

...

But most good things are not strong, colorful clouds are easy to scatter and glass is brittle, and the good days of domestic brands only lasted twenty years.

As the first decade of the 21st century comes to an end, the domestic brands that were once so prosperous have also collectively aged faster. Some of them have not yet recovered from the years when they were lying down and making money, and some are still trying to return to the top, but most of them can only helplessly move towards a state of aphasia among young people.

After all, when time abandons you, it is often very stingy to even say goodbye.

1993-2012

There is a lot of money, so you can make money by opening a store

In 1993, China's first fashion magazine "Fashion" was launched, and Jeanswest also opened a store in Shanghai. The first store in mainland China also opened the golden age of domestic brands.

That year, China's per capita disposable income was just over 2,500 yuan, but a pair of Jeanswest jeans sold for hundreds of yuan, and people were still rushing to buy them.

It is said that when Jeanswest opened its first store in Qingdao, people had to queue up to shop. "A group of customers came in within 15 minutes and all came out with clothes in their arms." On the first day, the turnover was 10%. Tens of thousands of yuan. The inventory that was originally planned to be sold for two months was sold out in two days.

For people who have just experienced a little fashion enlightenment, domestic consumable leisure brands are in short supply.

JeansWest comes from Hong Kong and has some blue-blood aristocratic genes. At that time, Hong Kong was a symbol of fashion and fancy. As long as you put on Jeans Vessey, you could transform into a Hong Kong man and woman who are free and easy to love and hate, and who are unparalleled in the limelight.

Those who have tasted the benefits include Giordano, Baleno and Bossini, who are also from Hong Kong and later known as the three fashion giants. Metersbonwe and Semir, who were born in Wenzhou, although they were completely shrouded in the shadow of their Hong Kong brothers when they first came out of society and could only serve as followers, they soon became independent.

Uniqlo entered China to open stores as early as 2002, but under the strong squeeze of major domestic giants, there was no breathing room at all. In 2005, 2 of Uniqlo's 9 stores in China were closed.

After entering the 21st century, the sales of various domestic brands have continued to rise, and they have ushered in a rapid wave of store openings.

According to statistics, around 2012, there were 4,404 Baleno stores and 5,220 Metersbonwe stores.

Domestic women's shoes are even more popular. At its peak, Daphne had a maximum of 6,881 stores and sold 50 million pairs of shoes every year. On average, one pair of every five pairs of Chinese women's shoes sold was Daphne.

From 2011 to 2012, Belle opened an average of 2-3 new stores every day, with the number of stores exceeding 12,000.

What is this concept? For comparison, as of the first half of 2017, all ZARA's Chinese stores totaled only more than 700.

Not only are the data available, domestic brands are also truly embedded in the youthful memories of a generation.

In a Hupu post about Baleno, a JR recalled his first close contact with Baleno, "I still remember the first year of college in 1998, when I frugally bought a new one. Baleno. Walking on campus, I feel like I am being watched by everyone, and I feel proud..."

For many people born in the 80s and 90s, this feeling of wearing a domestic brand for the first time may even be It’s even more unforgettable than the first time I bought an international brand a few years later.

Guo Jingming, a young man who had not yet been immersed in luxury culture, also cast a longing glance at the luxury world at that time.

“I was in the second grade of junior high school. I got my first pair of LINING sneakers. I began to think that Giordano and Baleno were famous brand clothes. At that time, there was no Metersbonwe or Semir. I once used my pocket money that I had saved for a long time to buy a Giordano vest for 98 yuan."

How can domestic brands build tall buildings from the ground?

A big reason is the close integration of domestic brands and trendy culture. Each family is willing to spend a lot of money to hire young people's favorite kings and queens to endorse them, striving to prove that their own shirts are a must-have for fashionable people.

Baleno has Andy Lau and Sister Fei, Yi Chun has Cecilia Cheung and Louis Koo, Metersbonwe has Jay Chou, Wilber Pan and Angela Chang, and Tang Shi and Daphne have invited the youthful and energetic SHE.

Take a Baleno bag to carry books to school, not to mention it will be more respectable

Only Cecilia Cheung can match the pure pink and green colors

It’s a pity for us young people Even though they don’t understand this truth

Although it is a Wenzhou brand, Semir’s spokespersons are all Hong Kong stars

For those born in the 2000s, these are already sunset stars, but they are born in the 1980s. The memories of those born in the 1990s include the posters plastered all over the room and the singles looping on the walkman.

In 2010, Fanke advertising, represented by celebrities such as Han Han and Wang Luodan, came out. This young brand, which was founded only three years ago, immediately captured the hearts of the majority of literary and artistic youths and became famous among a large number of domestic veterans. A small breakout was achieved in the siege of eldest brother.

Although the designs of these brands seem unremarkable today, and even after covering the trademarks, it is difficult to distinguish each other, but under the influence of celebrities selling goods, they were once really pursued by young men and women. of white moonlight.

On the other hand, for brands, the domestic shoe and apparel market is in the ascendant and there are many niches. As long as they are popular among young people, they will be guests in mainstream business circles. If you go to Paris Printemps, which was still a shopping destination for fashionable people at that time, you will find that the women's shoes on the first floor are almost monopolized by domestic brands.

When mom takes you to the mall, you pick and choose in the women’s shoe section on the first floor. In fact, most of the brands are affiliated with Belle

It has good business district resources, and the competition is not yet high. In the fierce market environment, as well as the endorsement of superstars whose ability to carry goods exceeds that of Yang Mi, domestic brands that take the popular route are sure to win every time they open a store. If you open more stores, you will make more money. When they sink to second-, third- and fourth-tier cities, they can also be immediately supported by young people in small towns.

2012 is a very important year for domestic brands. In this year, the number of stores opened by brands set a new record, but they also prospered and declined.

If you still remember, this year was widely rumored to be the year of the end of the world. Of course, the earth was not destroyed in the end, but since then, most domestic brands have begun to face the doomsday situation of life and death.

On April 12, 2012, Metersbonwe, located in a prime location on Huaihai Road, closed its doors.

2012-2019

Suffering enemies from both sides, falling off the altar

To discuss why domestic brands have turned from prosperity to decline, two time points are crucial.

One is in 2006. ZARA entered China, and UNIQLO, which had undergone strategic adjustments and a facelift, also returned to the market. Although fast fashion is an imported product, China's long-term desire to become more fashionable has provided fertile soil for their growth.

On February 24, 2006, ZARA’s first mainland China flagship store was unveiled on Nanjing West Road, Shanghai.

The other one was in 2009. Taobao held the first Double Eleven Shopping Festival, with 27 brands participating, with sales totaling 50 million yuan. This number has doubled nine years later, reaching 213.5 billion.

Fast fashion and e-commerce are the two strongest opponents of domestic brands, which not only brings more intense competition, but also brings changes in consumers.

Everyone began to read more fashion magazines, receive more cutting-edge trend information, and gradually realized that those of us who considered ourselves trendy in the past had really never seen much of the world.

As China’s fashion gap opens up, fast fashion and e-commerce have also provided more diverse and sometimes cheaper choices for increasingly picky Chinese consumers.

Although fast fashion stores do not play pop music BGM and do not invite domestic superstars to perform, they focus on cool-toned store decoration, follow the international cutting-edge trend design, and the frequency of new products twice a week , all of which make people unconsciously step into the store to experience the high-end products while shopping, and at the same time see what new products are on the shelves.

Nowadays, the "little ck" stores that are still doing well are also decorated in high-end Normcore colors.

This can't help but remind people of the famous advertising slogan, "Go shopping twice a year." "Heilan Home, there is a new feeling every time." This sentence actually implies the operating model of many domestic brands: long new product cycle, slow response to trend trends, and no attention to changes in public fashion tastes. . At this point, they are not even as good as Taobao celebrity stores.

According to data from fashion business media LADYMAX, ZARA’s process from design, production to shelves only takes an average of 2 weeks, and the shortest can be compressed to 7 days. Products arrive in stores within 24 hours in Europe, and only 36-72 hours globally. In contrast, it takes several months for a domestic brand to move from production to shelf, and by this time the fashion trend has already shifted.

In the fashion world, speed is king. ZARA can produce 12,000 styles a year, which is equivalent to the cumulative number of domestic brands today.

Even so, the smooth sailing over the past two decades has long made domestic brands proud of themselves and no longer have a sense of crisis: Since they can sell products no matter how poorly designed they are, few are willing to make drastic reforms. .

The thigh that brands once rushed to embrace in department stores is also mud.

In order to survive, shopping malls hope to turn to fast fashion brands that attract more customers, or luxury brands that raise the level of the mall. Domestic brands have become abandoned, but younger shopping malls are not willing to take over. After 2012, various domestic brands began to fall into a wave of store closures.

Baleno closed 1,600 stores in three years, Metersbonwe closed 800 stores in 2014 alone, and Daphne closed more than 3,000 stores in total, and its market value also dropped from HK$17 billion to only HK$17 billion in 2018. The remaining HK$700 million.

Domestic brands that once were all over the streets have had to move their stores to the suburbs, to the urban-rural fringe, and to small towns. But even today’s young people in small towns no longer care about these brands. I prefer to buy the same style from internet celebrities on Taobao.

The plummeting sales volume has directly led to the continuous increase in unsalable goods, followed by a sharp rise in management expenses. The huge inventory of oil bottles has made it even more difficult for domestic brands. In order to reduce inventory, some brands choose to cut labels and sell them, while others choose to destroy them directly.

Daphne can be sold for as low as 25 yuan a pair on Pinduoduo, probably because of the consideration of clearing inventory.

So the star effect that domestic brands were once so proud of doesn’t work either?

In fact, it is not the star power that has expired, but the former die-hard fans. As they enter society, they become more rational in their consumption, and rarely pay for their idols' impulses - they would rather stay up late to brush up on data for Jay Chou than to wear the tacky Metersbonwe again.

Metersbonwe certainly does not want to surrender. The brand's high-end line Me&City directly benchmarks against ZARA, and has gone deep into the ZARA factory to study, trying to imitate its supply chain model, and is more mature in design style.

All Metersbonwe has done is to regain lost adult customers, but in the face of ZARA, which operates more calmly and has already established a strong presence, Me & City obviously has no advantage.

Having said all this, the biggest crux of domestic brands still lies in design. The same style, using old molds to slightly change the style and then launching new products are boring - even copying big brands is slower and uglier than fast fashion and Taobao stores. The once-lauded qualities such as "Baleno" can no longer be an excuse for its design to stagnate.

It is true that in recent years there have been growing calls to boycott fast fashion "weekly clothes", but when the price is similar, people are still more willing to choose products with good design and inferior quality rather than products with similar prices. Items that are of decent quality but you don’t want to wear out at all.

The days when people were stupid and had too much money are gone forever, and it has become increasingly difficult for Chinese consumers to fool them.

Can fast fashion and e-commerce bring a catfish effect to "Baleno" people

Some brands thought they had no choice but to voluntarily withdraw from the competition or shift the battlefield.

Baleno has basically withdrawn from the mainstream business districts of first-tier cities and sells discounted models in the outer ring. In the Baleno online store, cheap T-shirts cost 20 yuan each, which is much lower than Uniqlo, the affordable benchmark among urban men and women.

The only news about Baleno in recent years is also sad. In 2016 - ten years after Huang Bo said that line, Baleno was sold by its parent company Deyongjia Group Co., Ltd. at a price of 250 million yuan due to continuous losses and hopeless transformation.

Giordano is better. Although the markets in mainland China, Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan continue to be sluggish, revenue in Southeast Asia has surged and performance has been stable. Indonesia and Thailand have become Giordano's most profitable markets.

The fates of the former "Wenzhou heroes" were different.

Metersbonwe is still struggling. It spent 50 million to sponsor the first season of "Qi Pa Shuo" and then renewed it for two more seasons.

Anyone who has watched "Qi Pa Shuo" should be deeply impressed by Ma Dong's fancy placement of "youfan" advertisements. This is a fashion matching experience launched by Metersbonwe for change. platform.

However, even with the word-of-mouth bombing in a variety show with 880 million views, the downloads of Youfan app in several major mobile phone markets still have not exceeded 1 million. In 2017, Metersbonwe sadly removed “Youfan” from its shelves.

Semir has shifted its focus to the field of children's clothing in recent years, which can be regarded as a differentiated route.

In 2018, Semir also joined hands with independent designers to go on the New York Fashion Week T stage and brought a rather interesting Chinglish series, which is quite attractive to young people who pursue freshness. .

There are many people like Semir who hope to reshape their brand by integrating with international standards.

Peacebird has transformed into a national trend, focusing on youth culture, following fashion and doing co-branding. In February 2018, it went to New York Fashion Week.

In the 2019 spring and summer series, Peacebird also collaborated with emerging artists Trouble Andrew and Reilly to recreate Sesame Street comics.

Daphne also followed the convention that international brands must first change their logo when transforming, and abandoned its Chinese name, leaving only "DAPHNE" with simple lines, in order to reinvent itself and abandon the public's perception of the brand as low-end women. Shoe stereotypes.

In 2016, Daphne invested in the talent show "Bee Girls", but ultimately suffered a loss of HK$74.41 million.

In August 2017, Daphne launched a cooperation series with the internationally renowned buyer store Opening Ceremony, hoping to leverage the power of international fashion. Unfortunately, Opening Ceremony is not well-known in China, and the design of this cooperation series is also different. It is difficult to judge whether it has the potential to become a hit.

On the one hand, she is elevating her character, while on the other hand, she is crazily discounting. Daphne’s road to self-rescue is full of girlish entanglements.

In comparison, Belle is much smarter. Although the former "shoe king" delisted from the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in 2017, which attracted sighs, in fact Belle did not put all its chips on women's shoes.

Belle’s investment in the niche design brand Initial and the purchase of majority stakes in the parent companies of Moussy and Sly all demonstrate Belle’s determination to enter the apparel field. At this time, it is a very wise choice not to put all your eggs in the same basket.

Other brands have not given up the competition. After resolving billions of debts and clearing out its huge inventory, Vancl returned to business and started selling its popular literary T-shirts again. Heilan House invested 100 million in UR, known as the "Chinese version of ZARA", and its intention to learn from fast fashion is obvious.

Although the general trend is over, traditional domestic brands are still trying to make a comeback. As for the result, only time and actual sales will tell.

As we watch the ups and downs of the "Balenos" from the sidelines, we occasionally think of ourselves walking around Metersbonwe twice more just to listen to two more Jay Chou songs, and we will never forget that piece. What does Giordano, who bought it after saving for a long time, mean to the young self. Although we feel regretful, we are probably still willing to admit that we "loved".

But those once glorious domestic brands should also understand one thing: consumers will not pay only for feelings throughout their lives.

References:

1. The development history of cool fashion, Youth Windfall Development Association

2. Goodbye? Childhood memories of Jeanswest and Wen Daomi

3. Why can’t China produce Zara? LADYMAX

4. Why hasn’t Daphne recovered yet? LADYMAX

5. The domestic shoe brand is screwed up, LADYMAX

6. Belle is officially delisted, why is the old women’s shoe on the first floor of the department store no longer good? Curiosity Daily

7. Metersbonwe suffered a loss in the first half of the year, and the weird theory of naming the name does not work. Curiosity Daily

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