Seven wolves into the Lord's love capital: the beginning of men's "competition"

Since last year, seven wolves that have received much attention have since emerged as the main Aidu incident: Septwolves Co., Ltd. has acquired a 51% controlling share in Aidu through a capital injection. Regarding this incident, there are many opinions from the industry, and "mergers and acquisitions" and "alignment" have become the two mainstream views. From the perspective of the brand planner, the author puts forward the theory of “brand competition and cooperation” in the apparel industry to attract valuable comments.

I. The phenomenon of "brand competition and cooperation"

Like Adidas and Reebok, Nike and Converse, after a bit of wrestling, they deeply feel that they are in an antagonistic position. It is better to shake hands and make peace, to form a community of interests and share the market cake together. This is competition. Together.

Unlike mergers and acquisitions, its focus is to allow acquired companies to no longer exist or simply to acquire asset shares; it is also different from alliances to strengthen cooperation and promote development. Concurrence is an alternative and complementary. Competition and merger will not cause the collapse of their companies. Instead, they will reduce the pressure of competition through the consensus reached after the co-opetition. By complementing each other, the exchange of resources will give rise to stronger corporate motive force to achieve mutual prosperity and common prosperity.

(1) The basis of competition is complementary

Seven wolves, Weinan, and even the country's rare multi-brand and successful group companies. It owns a business-style men's seven-pronged wolves (Red Wolf/Green Wolf), young casual men's wear and wolf dances, Chinese Dragonsports Dragons, sportswear, and first-line brands Mark Warfield.

Aidu, a menswear brand that has been fired all over the country since the early 1990s, is no less inferior to other similar brands in southern Fujian, including its founding time, product design, and online channels. Especially in product research and development, has always been talked about in the industry: Love is different from the men's clothing brand with the most tough attributes on the market, promote and adhere to romantic simplicity, and create high-quality, high-style dress for men. This is exactly what the seven wolf subordinates lack.

Through this competition, it will be very significant for seven wolves to make up for a strong and elegant men's brand and further expand the overall strength of the seven wolves.

(2) The way of competition is resource exchange

Seven wolves have developed rapidly since they were listed in 2004, and they have grown in strength; while Aidu has been losing money due to financial problems, both product R&D capabilities and networks have been developing soundly. Through this competition, it is precisely for the diversified development of the seven wolves to supplement the brand resources and market resources; and the capital injection of the seven wolves will effectively solve the financial dilemma of Aidu, and usher in a new dawn for the brand's long-term development.

(3) The result of co-opetition is win-win and co-prosperity

Through this co-opetition, we can imagine that this trend will emerge in the future:

1 Seven wolves have more strength. Through competition and cooperation, relying on strong product strength and sales force, the seven wolves are more powerful and have more diversified development, thus further expanding market share, which in turn drives the overall development of men's wear in Fujian, and even affects the overall promotion of the entire Chinese men'swear industry. improvement;

2 Love is even more developed. With seven wolves in all aspects of operational management, financial support, channel construction, etc., will enable the love of the brand development is full of stamina.

Second, the past, present and future of the "competition" of men's wear

The competition of menswear companies is not accidental, but the general trend.

(1) The competition in the forum creates the men's clothing

As we all know, men's clothing industry is the most mature industry in China, and it is also one of the fiercest competitive industries in China. The distribution of China's men's clothing industry cluster has a very distinct regional nature, forming a three-footed pattern in Zhejiang, Fujian and Guangdong.

The men's wear industry, which develops from shirts and suits to commercial and white-collar leisure, is represented by Zhejiang Ningbo and Wenzhou.

The casual men's industry cluster formed by the integration of sports, leisure, trousers and jackets is the most famous in Quanzhou, Fujian Province. Fujian Shishi's men's casual wear, especially men's jackets are marketed worldwide, producing casual wear and jackets. Accounted for 1/4 of the national market share;

Sportswear and jeans wear, manufacturing, finishing and brand influence are the largest in Guangdong.

From this we can see that the seven wolves are clearly developing and growing in the soil of the Fujian section. The competition in the section is the source of the competitive advantage of the men's wear. After sending collective strength in recent years, Sui sent men's clothing, which currently has strong explosiveness in many aspects such as technology, concept and operational mechanism, industrial chain, location and information, talents, and public platforms, and quickly surpassed the industrial clusters of Zhejiang and Guangdong. . Without forums, there will be no overall rise of men's clothing. This is the power of competition!

(2) Brand competition and achievement leading brand

In the new competitive landscape of the menswear industry, product differentiation and differentiation have become a trend. Breakthrough simplification and diversification are the main motives for high-growth men's companies to choose companies to compete. In general, one billion is an important bottleneck and a watershed for enterprise development. Enterprises can generally achieve a scale of hundreds of millions more quickly. However, if they exceed one billion, or have a greater breakthrough, it becomes extremely difficult. It will become the decisive factor in determining the sustainable development of the brand. Therefore, it is an inevitable trend for brands to choose a diversified road through competition and to seize different types of consumer groups.

Seven wolves have achieved great success through brand diversification and competition: Seven wolf (Red Wolf, Green Wolf), Dancing with Wolves, Hong Kong Dragons, Septwolves, Mark Wah Fei, and Seven Wolf Shoes have exceeded 4,000 in the standard image store. Home can be described as a large scale. Through the competition of brands, it is beneficial to achieve economies of scale, gain new profit growth points, and compete with stronger international and domestic rivals in an advantageous position in the future; more importantly, it means that the competition for men’s wear has entered the cross-border and cross-regional competition. Brand competition time!

The co-branded parent brand will have a number of “family brands” and will use its diversified advantages to demonstrate its overall competitiveness in the market and become a “big player” leader.

(3) The strong will compete and will be born male overlord

With the competition of brands and the emergence of leading brands, it will inevitably lead to the struggle between the leading brands: more integrated brand competition, more internationalized image competition, more regionalized channel competition, and more personalized product style.

The author boldly predicted that in the near future, the leading brands in the Minnan, Zhejiang, and Guangdong sections will be even more short-handed, and will perform a thrilling "Wang Zhengzhi" before the end of the world. Three-point worlds will lead to stronger industry leaders and leader brands. All are unpredictable - but it is conceivable that their "dominant" brand will rely on strong design strengths and diversified brands to build and maintain its position as an industry leader.

Third, brand competition is also a "double-edged sword"

The co-opetition of enterprises is to achieve a win-win situation. It is a means of business management rather than an end. The case of TCL and other companies failing to cooperate shows that companies must have a full understanding of the competition, correct attitudes, clear goals, and do everything in their power. If walking on thin ice is the key to success. In this regard, the author summarizes the following points for corporate reference:

(1) Have strong capital as backing

A benign business brand, of course, requires a solid capital to complete the competition; a company that does not perform as well as it should bear and resolve its losses immediately after the merger and acquisition.

Seven wolves entered the main love capital, the first action is 90 million capital injections, followed by promises can be added according to different timing, and spend heavily on CCTV 5 sets of advertising. Obviously, this is not something ordinary enterprises can do.

(2) It is best to use the principle of complementarity as a basic principle

The advantages cannot be complementary and it will not be easy to dance together after the competition. Here is a bold assumption: If the King of Animal Husbandry and the Tigers are both competing, because they are the same type of men's wear, and also rely on the trousers this strong product rise and rise, and want them to develop together is very difficult.

In the field of shampoo, P&G's self-concurrence is a good “textbook”. As early as 1988, when Procter & Gamble just entered China, the launch of the three major brands of Head & Shoulders, Rejoice and Pantene basically stipulated the shampoo market product layout. Afterwards, no matter how shampoo develops, it will not be able to escape the functions of three major products: “anti-dandruff”, “nourishment” and “softness”. It is precisely because of this predictability and regulatory ability that P&G has long enjoyed the majority of the shampoo market, among which the rejoicing leadership position is even more unbreakable. The reason is based on complementary advantages as the core strategy.

If you are competing with other companies: one cannot accelerate business growth, two cannot fully use existing resources and advantages, and three cannot strengthen core competitiveness, then you must be cautious.

(3) Be vigilant against the adverse effects of unfavorable development of competing brands

In general, the competing parent company has a successful master brand, but it does not mean that it is free to compete - a failure is enough to affect the overall situation, drag down the parent company and the main brand.

After BenQ's acquisition of Siemens, a huge loss of 840 million euros a year, this makes BenQ's development strategy of relying on the mobile phone business to expand rapidly to the international market also had to give up halfway. In the end, they can only officially stop investing in German subsidiaries and apply to local courts in Germany for insolvency protection. This is a serious setback for BenQ. The impact on the company itself is unprecedented and enormous.

(4) Pay attention to internal integration after the competition

Different companies naturally have different operational processes and operating models, and it is difficult to integrate the management mechanism between the enterprise and the enterprise. Due to the different situations between enterprises, it is inevitable that there will be some differences, and it is very likely that the strategic objectives of the enterprises' cooperation will be lost due to internal conflicts.

Take Hing Fat Group as an example for Wei Haiwei. After the completion of the takeover, Zhang Shuxin, the general manager of Hao Haiwei, and 15 other key members (including 3 deputy general managers, 5 business managers, and 7 branch general managers) have resigned, causing the company to lose the first batch of Internet in China. Influential people in the wave, Xingfa Group's brand assets in addition to the Wei Haiwei, just an empty shell.

The competition of forums is not blindly followed, and the industry cluster value chain is created.

The competition and cooperation of enterprises cannot simply be regarded as mergers; what accumulates is corporate capital;

Brand competition is not the pursuit of the number of brands, but a new way of thinking and a new way of fostering the core industry and jointly expanding and strengthening the market...

Natural selection, survival of the fittest!