Can Gap'S Basic Funds Sell Well?

Nanjing West Road in Shanghai is like a time capsule for apparel retailing, and several big international companies.

The brand often opens the flagship store of two or three levels here.

It's more like that.

The weathervane of ups and downs is open and closed every day at the naked eye.

From the "Nanjing West Road" subway station, there is a family on the right hand side.

Flagship store, Martha's department store on the left hand side is the three storey building.

Now, Martha department store has been closed, and will gradually withdraw from the Chinese market.

Gap is also facing renovation.

However, the Gap in Nanjing West Road will not disappear. It will soon open a Gap flagship store in the original department store of Martha. At the same time, it will also be the headquarters office of Gap in Greater China.

As a representative of fast fashion, besides Zara, H&M and UNIQLO, people will also calculate the American leisure style Gap.

But because of its too late entry into the Chinese market and its lack of competitive advantage in terms of product and price, today's Gap is outdated in China.

According to the world clothing and shoe net, since 2015, Gap has experienced terrible performance decline worldwide.

For a long time, Gap saved themselves by closing stores and laying off workers.

It seems that people's impression is that the door of Gap store is always placed with "on sale" sign. In the minds of consumers, Gap is becoming more and more like a discount brand.

However, Gap once was a popular fashion brand in the world.

When it was founded in San Francisco in 1969, it was the anti - cultural movement in the United States. Gap symbolized the resistance of young people to the thought of the old generation.

Khaki trousers, jeans, shirts and Logo hat T became the symbol of Gap.

In 80s and 90s twentieth Century, people couldn't get access to the more high-end fashion, so Gap became the fashion that people could easily get.

Gap, with its strong American culture, lost its cultural soil after its entry into China.

In the early Chinese market, people's impression of Gap is only abstract "American leisure wind". Just like Esprit, it represents a way of life.

In pursuit of a certain identity, the initial Gap grew quite well in China.

However, in the years since Gap 2010 entered China, the rapid development of social media and e-commerce has made fashion easy to get. In contrast, the lack of a basic culture of Gap has almost become the "ugly" pronoun.

On the other hand, UNIQLO also makes the basic funds in the same kind of competition.

However, people's basic price is cheap, and they will also use high-tech materials to make gimmicks -- fast drying materials, fleece material and heating materials.

Another brand that makes good faith in basic funds is Everlane.

Although it can only be purchased through online shop channels, the monochrome price is quite high, but it still can not prevent it from getting angry on all kinds of social networking sites.

It pursues "Radical Transparency" (radical pparency). It will tell you the cost raw material price, labor price, tax and fee of a skirt straightforwardly.

By contrast, the expensive Gap has nothing to tell you about its basic life.

"Keep the curiosity of customers, let him come to your store to see what new things are coming out."

Davidson Hudson of Editorialist said.

However, for most consumers, "I don't know what to buy in the store."

Perhaps in order to catch more younger generation, Gap is also trying to pform its product design.

But the designers of Gap are uneasy to understand fashion. In recent years, the color of the store is becoming more and more colorful, but it can be seen in a variety of strange flowers and patterns.

Gap, who once wanted to imitate H&M and Scandinavian, has not only attracted young customers, but also scared away generations of customers.

Gap has always stressed the environmental protection of the production process, but to some extent, it has also restricted the brand new speed.

Zara has garment factories all over the world, which can quickly cope with the changing fashion trend. This "vertical integration" mode enables fast fashion brands to continuously deliver new clothing to stores, and is usually small batch and multiple batches.

The time required for Gap to start designing and entering new products is ten months, three times that of Zara.

Forbes has predicted that Gap is "one of the ten fashion brands most likely to disappear in the next ten years", and also includes sexy marketing routes to A&F.

However, A&F is recently reorganizing its assets to find new buyers, while Gap's earnings in the first quarter of 2017 also showed a small increase.

This may be related to the recent restructuring of Gap, including the continued closure of some poor performing shops, the development of e-commerce and mobile payment in the Chinese market, and the launching of digital fitting rooms in online stores.

The way and direction are all right, but Gap needs to give more reasons to convince consumers to pay for the most expensive basic store.

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