Review 2018 | The 20 most in-depth articles worth reading in the fashion industry

In the rapid changes in the current luxury fashion industry, clarifying the fundamental logic of the fashion industry under the fragmentation of information is the key to understanding the market.

2018 is a major turning point for the luxury goods industry.

This year, the fire-fighting triggered by the industry's dark horse Gucci ordered the oligopoly competition in the luxury goods industry to fully open. Although the industry rankings of LVMH, Richemont and Kaiyun Group have not changed, but under the many challenges of Kaiyun Group, LVMH has carried out intensive and even radical internal adjustments to internal personnel, involving core brands Louis Vuitton, Dior, Celine and Berluti. The Kaiyun Group is in a row, allowing Gucci, which has grown for 11 consecutive quarters, to form a first-team attack with Balenciaga and Saint Laurent.

Marketing is becoming more and more important, especially for head luxury brands, all in order to compete for the attention of young consumers. Fashion show as a form of traditional marketing has become a "armament competition", Louis Vuitton and Gucci have held exhibitions in China, and social media has long been a new battlefield for competition, Instagram is abroad, and domestic is backed by 10 WeChat for millions of monthly active users. Changes in the way information is transmitted have changed the way luxury brands tell stories, and in turn have a structural impact on the traditional fashion media industry and the advertising industry.

The luxury fashion industry has witnessed the process of street fashion being gradually incorporated and internalized by luxury brands. After the launch of the Louis Vuitton and Supreme co-branded series, Virgil Abloh took over the Louis Vuitton menswear, clarifying the brand's resolute attitude to cater to the upstart rather than the old rich. LFMH's Fendi also relies on Logo revival and cooperation with sports brand FILA to return to the perspective of young consumers.

The new round of industry personnel turmoil has basically settled. At the time of the new and old exchanges, both the old star creative director Hedi Slimane is in charge of Celine, and Bottega Veneta has appointed 32-year-old young designer Daniel Lee as creative director. But the luxury brand's patience with the creative director is getting more and more limited. Haider Ackermann leaves Berluti only three seasons later. Chinese designer Yin Yiqing broke up with the Korean capital capital and the revival of the old fashion house Poiret after two seasons. Raf Simons ends in the three-year contract period. In the first 8 months, he suddenly split up with Calvin Klein.

This year, luxury brands flocked to the Chinese online market, and it was also the first year for Chinese capital to join the global luxury goods industry. Shandong Ruyi will be Bally, Fosun will win Lanvin, ICICLE will acquire French veteran fashion house Carven, and Anta plans to acquire Finnish sports giant Amer Sports. At the same time, domestic apparel brands represented by Taiping Bird, EPO Group and Jiangnan Cloth began to rise and showed the new identity of Chinese brands to overseas markets. Li Ning, Jiangnan Buyi and the rising Chinese young designer brand have made frequent appearances on the stage of the International Fashion Week with the help of e-commerce platforms such as Tmall and Jingdong.

The “third hand” that affects luxury fashion brands is playing an increasingly frequent role, adding uncertainty to brand development. As fashion businesses and social media move toward globalization, the reefs that brands touch in cross-cultural communication can have unintended consequences. Dolce & Gabbana, H&M, and Balenciaga all faced a brand image crisis. In addition to the continued resistance of animal protection organizations, the luxury down brand Canadian goose was accidentally involved in the storm, affecting the process of opening stores in mainland China.

Luxury e-commerce is still optimistic. Yoox Net-a-Porter was privatized by Richemont and opened a joint venture with Alibaba. Farfetch was listed on the New York Stock Exchange and was sought after by the capital. Tmall and JD.com's competition for the luxury goods market has become hot, and the latter has been affected by the Liu Qiangdong incident, and the market value has shrunk dramatically. Temple Bank and private equity fund L Catterton Asia and domestic e-commerce giant Jingdong reached a strategic cooperation with an investment of 175 million US dollars. China Fashion Technology's first mushroom street was listed on the NYSE this month, with a cumulative increase of 72% in less than a month.

However, the luxury market is changing rapidly and is closely related to the global economic situation. As the global economy enters a turbulent period, the luxury goods industry that has just tasted the sweetness of recovery has to be vigilant again. US President Trump’s trade policy has begun to shake the confidence of the wealthy. UBS issued a warning that although China is now recognized as the most promising luxury consumer market, it is expected that the pace of luxury consumption in China will slow down significantly, which means that the performance of global luxury brands may be slowed due to the slowdown in the Chinese market. Again suffering from stress.

In the rapid changes in the current luxury fashion industry, we conduct real-time monitoring and analysis of the industry, trying to clarify the fundamental logic of the fashion industry under the fragmented information from a comprehensive perspective of business and culture.

Here are 20 articles worth reading for the year we recommend for you:

LVMH's "B Plan"

Thirty years seems to be an important cycle for the ups and downs of every industry, including the highly competitive luxury industry. From capturing LVMH to building the world's largest luxury empire, Bernard Arnault is in the luxury industry, but Gucci, which failed 20 years ago, has always been his heart. With the sudden emergence of Gucci and the parent company Kaiyun Group, the sense of crisis has spread in the industry, but LVMH, which has stood up for decades, cannot tolerate any faltering challenges to the foundation of the group's fashion dominance.

Has the fashion industry gone bad?

At the end of December, Raf Simons, the chief creative officer of Calvin Klein, who had been in office for only two years, parted ways with the brand and canceled the contract eight months in advance. After the departure of Dior, the work experience of Raf Simons at the helm of large brands shocked the industry. People are eager to find the reasons for habitual failure. According to the fashion headline analysis, the short-term cooperation between Calvin Klein and Raf Simons exposed at least four questions and reminded the industry that when the whole industry is eager to pursue returns and push creativity to the corner, savvy consumers will no longer be fashionable. Excited, and the ending is tantamount to the collective suicide of the brand.

The luxury industry should be vigilant. Where is Dolce & Gabbana wrong?

At the end of November, the Dolce & Gabbana brand experienced the most serious crisis in the history of the brand due to the insults of founder Stefano Gabbana, which caused the global fashion industry and the Chinese community to pay close attention. The brand’s big show in Shanghai had to be cancelled urgently. After successively removing the products, the brand image fell to the bottom of the night and also sounded the alarm for the luxury goods industry. Long-standing arrogance and prejudice have made Dolce & Gabbana lack the humility of going deep into overseas markets. Enemy with the Chinese market may be the first commercial mistake Dolce & Gabbana made, and this is almost fatal. After all, consumers now have too many brands to choose from.

Spoiler Off-White

Off-White's growth is due to the overall logical upheaval of the fashion industry, which may not represent the future direction of fashion business, but has become an important driver of the industry. Virgil Abloh's use of "explosive models, high prices and celebrity endorsements" in building brands, and the realization of maximum market benefits with simple products has become a methodology for a large number of brands to follow. Maximizing efficiency and minimizing costs is the essence of business.

Is high fashion going to die?

Fashion is not the same as art. The former's creative space is more limited by social production conditions and business environment, which is also a prerequisite for the current evolution of the fashion industry. As the middle class becomes more anxious about the expression of identity, the faster the fashion rhythm, the shorter the production process. At some point in the future, people may begin to forget haute couture, and haute couture evolves into haute couture, which as a way of maintaining class privilege does not die. The fast-changing fashion, while using clothes as a carrier, is bound by stars, music, social, clicks, and co-branded lifestyles, and is gradually drifting away from the high-end fashion in the traditional sense.

Zara bids farewell to the golden age

Fast fashion people are welcoming the winter. In the face of the rapid rise of ultra-fast fashion such as Boohoo, competitors Uniqku and other ongoing attacks, high cost of transformation and gradual loss of freshness, the market share of Zara parent company Inditex Group, which has always disdained marketing, is accelerating. Fast fashion brands including H&M, Topshop, New Look, etc. have also fallen. Regardless of the industry, once the industry structure and consumer preferences change irreversibly, all past experience may be cumbersome.

Can sneakers become a big business for luxury brands?

Compared with traditional leather goods such as handbags, luxury brand sports shoes, because they do not emphasize functionality, have lower R&D and production costs, and the brand premium makes sports shoes have higher gross profit space, which makes luxury sports shoes become “cash cows”. "Provides the possibility." More importantly, the business is aimed at millennials who are more willing to pay for brand premiums and freshness, and they are less value-protected and investing when buying luxury goods. However, some analysts have warned that the current luxury brand production of sports shoes has been reduced to production for production, consumers gradually become aesthetic fatigue.

How did Wei Mi lose the market?

Yesterday has passed, and tomorrow is completely unknown. For fashion retail, there are very few who can grasp the present. From a small shop to the world-famous lingerie queen, Wei Mi used it for nearly 20 years, but fell to the altar in less than five years. The continued sluggish performance and the decline in the big show mean that the situation facing the 41-year-old Wei Mi has been riddled with problems, whether it is marketing methods, product updates, or global market strategies. Consumers who have been baptized by the market will no longer be satisfied with the beautiful dreams created by Wei Mi, and the latter can only do to speed up the pace of keeping up with the changes in the market.

Luxury brand Tanabata marketing, who is the big winner?

If Dior first sold the handbags on WeChat as the key time node in the first anniversary of 2016, the luxury brand Tanabata digital marketing has entered its third year. Luxury brands set up special small-time limited-time shops for the Tanabata series, becoming the biggest highlight of this year's luxury brand Tanabata marketing. According to WeChat data, this year's Tanabata praise rate far exceeds the industry average is Dior and Burberry, the total interactive click-through rate far exceeds the industry average is Cartier. As China becomes a key market, the mapping of Tanabata marketing to the Chinese market trend is becoming crucial, and it has become the most intuitive embodiment of the creativity and execution of the luxury brand China market team.

Is it important that the creative director is important, or is the brand itself more important?

Phoebe Philo left Celine, marking the official exit of the fashion industry “free time”. But when the industry is caught in a high-speed cycle that no one can control, the ecological chain, including the luxury goods group, is exhausted for the normal operation of commercial machines. In order to miss the opportunity of the future, the luxury goods group will pin their hopes on creativity. On the director. Cedi's Hedi Slimane took over the consistent style and completely overturned the brand, sparking a loyal fan protest from the brand, which led to the importance of the creative director or the more important discussion of the brand itself.

Will luxury brands fall into a predicament?

The idea of ​​luxury goods seems to be equating with the explosion, but the market and fashion will be more difficult to predict. With the acceleration of the fashion cycle, if the luxury brand's products are extremely exclusive, the symbolic value of the product will die out and fall into the cliché. . Luxury brands have used the explosive thinking to create greater benefits, but in the process will also inhibit their creativity. Popularity is also a paradox. When the explosion appears, it also means mediocrity, very popular, and it is approaching outdated.

Is sustainable fashion a new opportunity for domestic apparel brands?

Sustainable fashion has become one of the major development trends that cannot be ignored in the global apparel industry. As global consumer awareness awakens, more and more brands are beginning to adapt to this trend, and domestic apparel brands have also smelled this trend and acted. Over the past 20 years, China's role in the global fashion industry has completed a gradual shift from productivity to consumption. Some analysts believe that in the Chinese market, it may be brands, not consumers, that are not prepared for sustainable fashion.

How to Deal with Crisis Public Relations from Luxury Brands in Paris

In April of this year, the French luxury brand Balenciaga Balenciaga "queuing the event" pushed the brand to the public opinion, the brand issued two apologies in 24 hours. From this crisis event, social media is more of a contagion of emotions. It reduces the cost of vocalization and is prone to a clustering effect. The more extreme, the conflicts and contradictions are spread, so the brand is in addition to sincere dialogue and There is no other way to act. However, the crisis public relations of Dolce & Gabbana at the end of the year still prove that luxury brands are not fully aware of the nature of social media.

GQ to the left, Wang Feng to the right

From paper media to WeChat public account, to small programs, behind the changes in the fashion content platform is the change in business logic. At the moment, the two media brands, Zhizhan GQ and TRENDS Fashion, have developed two different transformational tracks. The former continues to cultivate content through the WeChat public account GQ Lab to attract younger generation readers. The business model continues the traditional media. Ad serving. After the addition of GQ, the former editor-in-chief of GQ, the latter directly used the small program to directly reach readers and users, and realized income through real-time traffic realization.

Will the new iPhone grab the LV business?

Although Apple has never admitted that the iPhone is in luxury, no one can deny that Apple is now entering a new price range. Now consumers have to seriously consider such a question, whether it is to buy an Apple mobile phone of nearly 13,000 yuan, or a Louis Vuitton handbag of the same price. At present, the new iPhone product broke through the 10,000 RMB mark for the first time, and the price increase far exceeded the luxury handbag. When consumers really start to face the dilemma of choosing an Apple phone or an LV handbag, fierce competition will be inevitable.

Can Chinese fashion bloggers go further?

In the past year, in the middle of the traffic dividend period, Chinese fashion bloggers and other content entrepreneurs faced the challenges caused by the drastic changes in the platform, and continued to explore various forms of traffic realization, and bloggers began to rise. Fashion bloggers who rely heavily on the platform choose to take root in WeChat outside of Sina Weibo. The latter, as a super platform with more than 1 billion active users, has become a key factor affecting the ecology of fashion bloggers. It is worth noting that after the revision of the WeChat subscription number this year, WeChat recently launched the instant video function, which means that domestic fashion bloggers may reshuffle again.

What should the domestic apparel brand learn from Xiaomi?

The ability to innovate was once the shortcoming of Chinese companies, and domestic brands were inevitably questioned by foreign counterparts. However, in just a few years, Xiaomi has become a representative of new business logic and boundary breakthroughs. Its fan economy, high commercial efficiency and cost-effective products are also useful for other industries. In recent years, it has been committed to imitating Zara's domestic apparel brand. At present, there is no clothing brand version of Xiaomi that realizes the “end of business”. Breaking Zara's mindset and establishing new business logic is the new way out for domestic apparel.

Where are the ads for luxury brands going?

The global traditional media continues to be turbulent, and the data shows that the magazine industry lost at least $400 million in revenue last year, and more and more luxury brand advertising budgets have flowed to social media and KOL bloggers. As young people become the mainstay of luxury consumption, the logic of luxury advertising becomes where young people are and where advertising targets are. It is noteworthy that at the end of November, in order to save costs and integrate resources, Condé Nast, the world's leading publishing group, announced that it will merge with Condé Nast International to aggravate the structural changes in the fashion media industry.

Luxury brands are highly consistent with the risk of replacing the logo

In 2018, a number of luxury brands have changed their brand logos, or in order to show their determination to change the market, so that the brand image is more in line with the current aesthetic and its own business, bringing a fresh sense to the market, or a kind of swearing sovereignty of the new creative director. reflect. But the surprisingly similar phenomenon of multiple brands of new logos has caused the industry to be vigilant. Replacing the Logo brand can only create some freshness, but it is fleeting, especially when more and more brands follow the trend to change the logo, the freshness will become aesthetic fatigue.

Why are "mid-range" luxury brands not doing well?

With the dramatic changes in the industry's winds, the “mid-range” luxury brands began to fall into the passive under the double-headed luxury brands and fast fashion. Burberry was marginalized during the long transition and fell out of the first echelon. Brands such as Salvatore Ferragamo, Tod's, Bottega Veneta also fell into the bottleneck. The signal released by this phenomenon is that the loss of “mid-range” luxury brands is more about the migration of young consumers, and now they are more interested in high-end luxury brands.

Push Lock

Snap Lock,Push Lock,Case Lock,Rectangle Lock

Bag Tags Co., Ltd. , http://www.machineryblogs.com