With the changes in fashion trends and Chinese consumers’ dressing styles, the rapid rise of online e-commerce, and the invasion of foreign fast fashion brands such as Zara, the first generation of formal men’s wear brands are all facing the challenges of brand aging and marketing chain issues. Road rigidity and other difficulties have put user growth at a bottleneck.
But Zhejiang’s Youngor men’s clothing brand not only successfully survived the ups and downs of thirty years, but also handed over a satisfactory answer in the new era: After the outbreak, Youngor passed the micro-mall The transaction volume of live broadcasts has exceeded 500 million yuan.
This shining achievement can’t help but confuse us. At a time when the clothing industry is wailing and domestic men’s clothing brands are struggling, this is a sense of the times for most Generation Z consumers. How did the strong Youngor brand swim against the current and gain new life?
Stepping out of the small workshop
Ningbo can be said to be the birthplace of the men’s clothing industry, and the name of the “Red Gang Tailors” from Ningbo has spread throughout Shanghai. In the 1970s, Ningbo began to be dotted with small factories operated by individual craftsmen. However, a few decades later, there will be several listed companies with a market value of tens of billions, such as Youngor, Shanshan, Luo Meng, Peacebird, etc. .
News pictures: “Red Gang Tailor” talks to British “Royal Tailor”
Youngor men’s clothing brand is one of the typical representatives.
In 1979, a young man from Ningbo, Li Rucheng, had just finished his career as an educated youth and chose to become a tailor.
Li Rucheng joined the Youth Clothing Factory. The so-called clothing factory was actually just a primitive small workshop located in the basement of the stage. It only had a few household sewing machines. Its main business project was to process small parts such as vests, shorts, sleeves, etc. for other factories. The profit was also very meager, and it was closed down at one time. the edge of.
The young Li Rucheng quickly showed his business talent and saved Qingchun Garment Factory. Through cooperation with Shanghai, building its own brand, and jointly building a factory with Macau Nam Kwong Company, Youth Garment Factory gradually became bigger and stronger, transforming into today’s “Youngor”, and the young man Li Rucheng also became what he is today. The head of Youngor.
New brand positioning
After 40 years of ups and downs, The former Youth Garment Factory of Caotai Group has long been transformed into one of China’s top 500 companies spanning textiles, clothing, real estate, investment and trade, with more than 50,000 employees and an annual output of 50 million shirts.
But past achievements did not make Younger blindly arrogant and ignore the hidden crisis in front of him.
With the changes of the times, the fashion of advocating formal wear is gradually receding.
The emerging post-90s and post-00s consumers are young people born in the Internet era. They have the characteristics of independence, self-expression, and the courage to accept new things at any time. Pay attention to trend information, pursue high quality, advocate a free, comfortable and casual lifestyle, and prefer fashionable, casual and trendy dressing styles.
In order to meet the diverse needs of consumers in the market, Youngor acquired the well-known American leisure brand HartSchaffnerMarx as early as 2017. In November of that year, Youngor once again successfully acquired the men’s clothing business of the American Kellwood Company for US$120 million, becoming the largest and most influential overseas M&A project in the domestic apparel industry so far.
Up to now, Youngor has built brands of all ages, all price ranges and different styles represented by YOUNGOR, MAYOR, HSM, HANP (Hanma Family) and HartSchaffnerMarx system to fully embrace the new consumer demands of the market.
At the same time, Youngor has not ignored the sales effect of the fan economy.
In 2019, when the live-action movie of Disney’s big IP “The Lion King” was about to be released, Youngor also completed its first IP co-branding in history – launching “The Lion King” Collection of T-shirts.
In September this year, Youngor announced that it would choose Xiong Ziqi as the second signed brand image spokesperson in its history. Changing from the past business and mature brand image, the sunny and energetic personal style of Xiong Ziqi, born in the 1990s, has also brought a new youthful look to Youngor.
Online and offline retail integration
In the past 40 years, domestic clothing companies represented by Youngor have often seized market share by opening more offline physical stores. Whoever has more stores in core business districts can reach consumers with a higher frequency. By.
However, the rise of e-commerce has quickly changed this competition model. Emerging online brands continue to seize more emerging consumers through fancy marketing, digital management, etc. They are encroaching on the market of traditional men’s clothing brands such as Youngor, Septwolves and Rimba.
Youngor is at the forefront of digital transformation. In October last year, Youngor signed the “A100 strategic cooperation agreement” with Alibaba.�, the two parties will cooperate in intelligent manufacturing, supply chain, new retail and other aspects, and implement the Alibaba commercial operating system to explore online and offline new retail practices in the apparel industry.
Inventory has always been a pain point in the clothing retail industry. Brands must ensure that when customers are interested in a certain item, they have enough stock to support it. However, excessive inventory backlog will lead to slow return of funds and high storage pressure.
The “Smart Middle Station” system launched by Youngor in 2018 solved this problem. From a consumer’s perspective, when online and offline inventory are connected, buyers can have a product delivered at any other nearest store no matter which channel they choose.
At the same time, the smart sensors in the store fitting rooms can also keenly capture the try-on rate of each item. Through data such as try-on rate and purchase rate, the “smart middle platform” system can accurately prompt how much stock each store should have.
Younger’s possibilities don’t stop there. In February this year, the epidemic caused a great blow to the domestic clothing industry, but Youngor took advantage of the situation and launched a micro-mall mini program for marketing and transactions, successfully solving the dilemma of more than 2,000 offline stores being unable to open during the epidemic.
In March this year, Youngor’s first live broadcast reached 5.42 million yuan. According to the latest news, Youngor’s current transaction volume through micro-mall and live broadcast has exceeded 500 million yuan.
Different from the past contempt for men’s consumption power, many brands have now seen the huge potential of China’s men’s clothing market. According to relevant data, it is expected that In 2020, the men’s clothing market will maintain a stable growth rate of 13.1% compound annual growth rate, and the retail scale will reach 979.3 billion yuan.
But the expansion of the market does not mean that selling men’s clothing will become easier.
Whether it is the rapid rise of online brands on Taobao or the fast fashion brands led by Zara sweeping China, it is announced that China’s traditional men’s clothing brands are facing the dilemma of being attacked from both front and back.
The main business of the former king of the Seven Wolves has been reduced to scraps such as underwear, underwear and socks. The national brand Heilan House has also encountered a growth bottleneck, with slow growth and good news. Although men’s clothing still has a place among middle-aged men, it has become a tear of the times for young consumers.
Youngor’s experience of breaking out in this digital wave has left us with two revelations: First, if you want to grasp fashion, you first need to grasp the hearts of young consumers. 2. In the old era, experience was used to capture trends. In the new era, data will open up everything.
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