Swimsuit Industry Brand Competition Is Becoming More And More Intense

On Taobao, 80%.

From the same place - Huludao, Liaoning.

This is a sexy selling business. Starting from foreign trade, Huludao sells swimsuits to the whole world and gradually becomes a famous swimwear industrial belt in China.

The data show that in 2014, more than 150 million swimsuits were produced in the year, and the annual output value was 10 billion 80 million yuan, accounting for 38.7% of the total output of the country.

The real reason for people to get to know Huludao is Taobao.

According to the world clothing and shoe net, the early Taobao swimsuit merchants mostly hatched from the soil, and they directly contacted domestic consumers through the platform.

With the upgrading of consumption and relying on the resource advantages of the supply chain of the industrial belt, the swimsuit businesses in Huludao began to upgrade their brands.

For example, it is called Taobao swimsuit.

The "little peach swimsuit" of the originator gradually pformed from the original channel merchant to create its own brand "at this moment"; the rising swimsuit brand "juvenile Qi" also formed its own unique style.

It is not just businessmen in Huludao who are upgrading brand names. The swimsuit industry of Taobao is showing a new scene -- brand competition is becoming more and more intense, relying on original design and corporatization management to rise rapidly.

In May, we gathered with a group of Taobao swimsuit merchants in Huludao. Some of them were local Aboriginal merchants. Some came from Ningbo and Xiamen.

In the 10 hours of chatting, a clear trend is that Taobao swimsuit is no longer just a single product, it is becoming more branding.

Zhou Jia, who is a local swimsuit business leader in Huludao, was once called the "Taobao swimsuit" in 2005.

But this has become the past tense.

At the beginning of this year, Zhou Jia's own brand "on-line" was changed from the original Taobao store to a small, clear and sweet breeze.

Swimming with Zhou Jia

From the beginning of 2013, more and more latecomers wanted to make a recognizable swimsuit brand.

In the eyes of different brands, swimsuits have different meanings to consumers.

In the view of Zhang Xiaoai, the founder of the "love Mo Xi" brand, the trend of swimsuit dress is a major trend. Another Taobao swimsuit brand "Li Xiao rice" aims to put swimsuits on the street. While in Huludao, "girls' time" is more like a brand buyer shop. It needs to provide consumers with richer swimsuit styles.

They converged into a swimsuit business, the product positioning, founder background and geographical differences, leading to brand management tactics also have different factions.

Buyers: choosing money is king, but how to strengthen brand awareness?

Swimsuit businessmen in Huludao are most worried about products. Local factories and stalls with high competition are always able to solve the problem of selecting money.

Small factories are flexible in operation and short in production cycle. Large factories do foreign trade orders, and the quality is guaranteed.

Relying on the advantages of different sizes of factories, relying on relatively mature industrial belt, the earliest Taobao buyers who bought the sea first made the first pot of gold quickly through flexible selection.

When Zhang Yan decided to start Taobao business in 2013, the early dividend disappeared, and the channel operators were at the crossroads of pformation and upgrading: left to the left -- still choosing money as the king and moving to the right -- forming an independent brand style.

The "girls' time" is the most typical operation mode in Huludao, and sustained and stable factory resources promote the growth of shops.

In addition to the stall brand of sales cooperation, he also made full use of the surrounding factory resources.

Factories in the industrial belt often talk about business through friendship, which is directly related to the new priority and low price concessions.

For the local businessmen, the advantages of the industrial belt are more obvious.

But on the other hand, compared to general shops, "girls' time" is more like a precise location buyer shop.

"Card dace" is one of the brands, girl style, but highlights the trend of personality.

Although there is no uniform brand, girls choose the money in this unified style and tonality. While delivering the same brand value, they provide consumers with multiple choices and become one of the fast-growing brand shops.

Among them is one of the main brands.

Zhang Yan frankly said that we could put the funds for storing goods and research and development on the promotion. If we encounter bad sales volume, we can be "capricious" to go on the shelf. Every year, we will keep on the new 300 models.

In the face of brand pformation, Xiao Jia made a series of adjustments.

For example, hire Ali professional managers to join the building team, adjust the organizational structure, establish Hangzhou branch, strengthen operation and data analysis ability, strengthen the designer's strength, break through the original industry belt swimming suit design's unitary and regular form.

When brand buyer shops encounter bottlenecks, this is probably what Zhang Yan will do in the future.

Data Pie: how do old drivers of electronic commerce feed products with data?

"Li Xiao rice" is a typical data pie. It comes from Ningbo, Zhejiang, which has a strong electricity supplier.

This is closely related to the founder.

Prior to the establishment of the brand, Lao Guo has nearly 6 or 7 years of experience in the operation of bathing suits, and has gradually represented several online swimsuit brands at home and abroad.

At the same time, he is a direct train lecturer at an electrical school.

In 2015, Lao Guo officially registered "Li Xiaofan".

In the early days of brand building, Lao Guo mainly introduced new ways such as through-train, drilling and exhibition, Taobao passenger and so on.

Even so, in the first year of Li Xiaofan's creation, the effect of data-driven practice was not obvious. "In those 4 designs, 2 of them were in stock, and the product was still sold by the factory itself."

2016 became the year of Li Xiaofan's reform.

Although a single design cycle lasted for 6-10 months, Lao Guo still insisted on originality.

Finally, the new 7 sections of the year were all turned over, and the original design accounted for 55% of the sales.

By this year, Lao Guo began to have a reproducible methodology.

"Data will eventually return to products."

He said.

The through-train data provide key words for swimsuit search, such as conservative, small breasts, students, sports and so on.

Some key words continue to develop into a trend and other keywords tend to be saturated.

Next, Lao Guo combined them into key word lists, surge tables and other large data sets, and adjusted weekly and accumulated.

These low-level data become Li Xiaofan's criteria for choosing money and designing, and become the basic logic of data feeding.

Of course, the birth of products does not depend solely on this part of the search data.

Although Lao Guo believes in data theory, he has not abandoned the control of brand tonal and product design, but constantly excavated the value and meaning that the brand wanted to convey.

Tonality is the second hand to participate in screening products.

Lao Guo said that the team will get inspiration and design elements from more than 200 foreign swimsuit websites and more than 300 home and abroad garment websites.

Generally through the 3-5 election, the last remaining 20 pieces, then the proofing, upper body test.

In 2017, the four original products, one of the 20 days with the factory order three times, 1000 pieces per piece, it is a good attempt.

"Data + tonality" not only promotes product design and style modification, but also gradually helps to clarify the brand style and position it as a literary style of petty bourgeoisie.

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Product faction: how to defend the right to speak by product strength

After many years of trade in underwear and pajamas, Zhang Xiaoai founded the swimsuit brand "Ai Xi Xi" in 2012, and decided to build a long-term brand business.

Fujian is the birthplace of many well-known local sports brands.

Located at the source of sports fabrics, AI Xi Xi is one of the few brands who dare to build factories and stick to original ones.

Zhang Xiaoai's electricity supplier company is only more than 10, but designers, editions, photographers and so on should be all inclusive.

Compared with the convenience of the selection mode, the production cycle is longer, usually 2-3 months.

Vacation is becoming one of the scenarios for consumers to buy swimsuits, which means that swimsuits are not just a swimming list but a social tool for making beautiful pictures.

In the design stage, Zhang Xiaoai will take into account the multiple scenes of the swimsuit, and the positioning is simple and practical.

But even a most basic conjoined swimsuit, AI Sixi will go through multiple checks.

First of all, considering that girls worry about body problems, AI Xi will use the design to adjust the waist, chest, thigh and other different parts, in order to achieve the effect of thin.

Secondly, after the first draft, Ai Mo Xi, through further communication with the printer, will stereoscopic the image, and adjust the details of the process on the basis of aesthetics.

Again, looking for the right color pattern proofing, the company girls will try it on and examine every detail.

A new sample garment is sometimes repeated more than ten times.

In 2013, with the increasing number of fans, Zhang Xiaoai delineated more than 10 thousand active fans through the construction group to provide services for the old customers. In turn, fans will provide inspiration and product feedback.

From this time on, Zhang Xiaoai gradually cleared up user portraits. Most of them are young mothers around 30 years old. They love fashion and often take family as their unit.

After capturing their parent-child needs, AI began to expand to mother child products in 2014, and became a key operation strategy after a year.

At present, parentage has accounted for about half of the total turnover, and children swimsuit also brings higher profits.

In addition to the operational community, Zhang Xiaoai also valued the opportunity to communicate directly with consumers, such as collecting more demand data through customer service.

"Customer service can be retained in real time and many times, so as to improve the retention of users, and also the reasons for the clear loss."

At present, the average recovery time of AI Xi Xi is maintained in 5-10 seconds, and silent turnover accounts for 80%.

The front end embodies product strength and back-end customer service guarantee. When the return rate of industry is generally 10%-13%, the return rate of AI Xi is even less than 7%.

Despite insistence on originality, the design requirements are very high, but AI Xi is still new every week, averaging about 200 SKU a year.

However, self built supply chain also means higher cost and inventory risk.

"At present, there are twenty thousand stocks, and we need to find suitable outlets."

Zhang Xiaoai said frankly.

Diverse possibilities of niche businesses

When underwear becomes an investment outlet and becomes a way of life, swimsuit is also gradually moving into more and more diverse life scenes.

The decision time for consumers to buy swimsuits is shortened and the frequency is increasing.

J.ChristopherBurch, chairman of the board of directors of Burch Creative Capital, said earlier: "people tend to buy only one month or even a week before holidays, and many people will buy them during their vacation."

Compared with the home property of underwear, swimsuits are more "sunny" and even become a social standard for holiday scenes.

"Swimsuits are very popular now. Consumers are crazy about showing off swimsuits on Instagram when they are on holiday."

But on the other hand, there are many beautiful underwear shops under the line, but buying swimsuits is still a little shy.

Therefore, the electricity supplier has become the first choice for many swimsuit brands, and is also one of the main channels for them to directly contact consumers at present.

Zhang Yan, Lao Guo and Zhang Xiaoai are all thinking about how to unite all kinds of forces under the minority category to gather more traffic.

They all thought of the content marketing tool on Amoy platform.

In Zhang Xiaoai's view, besides the micro panning, the entire store can carry the content.

In addition, thematic, column based live broadcast is also an effective channel to convey brand stories.

Previously, AI has tried an outdoor live broadcast, reaching more than 10 thousand people in 2 hours.

Starting from 2016, Lao Guo also clearly felt that the development of a single through train mode was limited, and a more diversified operation strategy was needed.

Content has become one of the future operational priorities of Ali retail platform, which is also a challenge for Lao Guo.

Apart from the content, some brands who are reluctant to continue to plough deep swimsuits are planning to extend to more relevant scenes, such as diving, yoga, sports outdoor, etc., to find more potential for brand diversification.

In addition, Li Xiaofan and other brands intend to move towards offline, serving consumers with a more solid brand image and experience.

When he came to the Huludao industrial belt, Lao Guo sighed for the perfection of the supply chain.

However, although the electricity supplier is everywhere in the industrial belt, the electricity supplier's atmosphere is far less than that of the southern region.

On the one hand, it is difficult to absorb excellent operational talents. On the other hand, employees are highly mobile, so they often operate in family units.

Unlike Huludao's workshops, Ai Mo Xi and Li Xiaofan, who are located in the south, are in the white hot competitive environment of the brand, and are fully run by the company.

"If we can not rely on the industrial belt, we must have more advantages in terms of efficiency."

In the view of Lao Guo, all parts of the product must be quantified in the management of the company so as to liberate the owner himself.

Even personalization customer service links can be quantified in data and standards.

When asked by customers, the customer service system automatically answers the frequently asked questions, and can find relevant answers according to their needs.

"In Ningbo, where the cost of manpower is relatively high, it is hoped that the efficiency of customer service will be greatly improved through standardization and quantification, and at the same time, the substitution can be improved. Once the old customer service is left, the new customer service standards based on standardization will be able to get started quickly."

Lao Guo said.

On the eve of the 6-8 month of the golden age of swimsuit, these brands have already prepared for the battle.

As far as we can go, there will always be many possibilities for business.

More interesting reports, please pay attention to the world clothing shoes and hats net.