What Is Brooks Brothers Planning For The Chinese Market?

According to the world clothing and shoe net, Frankie Lam said on March 23rd that he was dressed more than usual: a full set of lake blue suit, a light yellow tie, and a pocket towel to reveal the color of his left chest pocket.

He works for Walton Brown, a subsidiary of Lane Crawford Joyce Group of Hongkong boutique chain group, and is currently managing director of Brooks Brothers (Greater China) Limited.

That day, Brooks Brothers opened a flagship store in the East Square of Wangfujing in Beijing.

Walton Brown is now in the era of Chengdu, Changsha and Urumqi's department stores, Chengdu and Qingdao.

At the same time, it is also responsible for operating Kate Spade, Juicy Couture and other brands in the Chinese market.

And Brooks Brothers is the new business of Walton Brown in January 2016, although Frankie Lam introduced "Brooks Brothers is the initiative to find the door."

Like Kate Spade, Walton Brown and Brooks Brothers do not belong to the agency relationship. The two sides signed a 20 year contract, each holding 50%, and set up a joint venture company.

You may have known Brooks Brothers.

Over the past 10 years, this has a history of 199 years.

The brand is founded by another Hongkong company, "Disheng", which has been operated in the Chinese market. The number of shops is over 90, but it is located in the middle and low end, and is not consistent with the market image of the United States.

BB suggested buying abroad.

Brooks Brothers store in Beijing has no BB home.

Shirts and casual wear T-shirts are all the same.

Back to Beijing, I saw the oldest clothing brand in the United States in 1818. The Chinese do not recognize that the selling price is not as high as POLO, and no TOMMY has been selling expensive. It is very strange that it is the price of TIMBERLAND and NAUTICA.

In May 13, 2012, the netizen Wang Cai's landlord wrote in a post titled "Brooks Brothers".

This post created in April 3, 2012 is not big enough to reply, but there are only 149 articles, but the life cycle is quite long. The last post is in February 2016. At that time, Brooks Brothers had recovered the right to operate from Disheng, and just started working with Walton Brown.

From the time span of 5 years, Tucao Tsai sees that Chinese consumers are not optimistic about Brooks Brothers. They complain about: "shirts do not sell Western-style clothes", "to buy in the United States, the domestic price is killing people", "this brand is not very good in China, there are too few species, and the size is not enough".

The price is too high, the discount is very affordable, and so on.

Its Ivy wind

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Harris Tweed suit

Madras to market in 1902

Nowadays, the multicolored diamond shaped socks Argyles is indispensable in Ivy fashion.

Many people have known the history of Brooks Brothers, just like the landlord of Wang Cai family.

In 1818, Brooks Brothers was founded in Manhattan.

In fashion style, it is the ancestor of the Ivy League campus.

Later, Ralph Lauren, who succeeded in selling Ivy culture to the American middle class, sold it in the store of Brooks Brothers Madison street in the early years.

The characteristics of American culture lie not only in the mass production and duplication ability of large industries, but also in its output capacity.

The concept of "cultural industry" and "mechanical replication" put forward by the Frankfurt school, which is famous for its "critical theory", is the reflection of the academic circles on the United States that is good at making popular culture.

Although most of these theories were discussed at the time, the mass media and entertainment industry (a famous example at that time was the influence of the recording industry on classical music), which had not yet covered the details of the fashion industry, the power of reproduction and output was not much weaker in this beautiful field than in the entertainment industry.

Brooks Brothers is the participant and witness of this cultural evolution.

Although the rising stars Yamamoto Teruji and Wakubo Rei have created the unique style of fashion in Japan today, Japanese fashion has never been ignored by the United States.

In the past 50 years, what the Japanese have done is to turn their obsession with American fashion into an industry -- creating a Japanese fashion that mimics the US and selling it back to the United States.

There are two classic examples. One is the imitation of Levi s jeans. Now they have a professional term called "Nissan LVC", and the other is Ivy fashion.

In 2015, Ametora:How Japan Saved American Style, which traces how the Japanese learn American fashion, has recorded a detail.

In 1950s, Kensuke Ishizu founded a fashion brand VAN.

Before, he went to Princeton university to study in the United States, where he saw the Ivy fashion.

He was attracted by the dress of the college students and decided to use this style as the basis of his brand's design.

"In 1959, VAN produced Ivy style suits, drawing on the classic design of Brooks Brothers's suits and coats set up in 1818 in the United States."

It is written in the book.

Brooks Brothers likes to flaunt her identity with political leaders, including Kennedy, Ford, Clinton, Roosevelt, Nixon, Hoover, Kennedy, Ford, Bush, and so on.

Another thing it likes to talk about is Abraham Lincoln: in 1865, when Lincoln was assassinated in Washington, he wore the coat of Brooks Brothers.

The coat was specially designed for Lincoln, and also made the eagle pattern and the word "One Country, One Destiny".

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In addition to the origins of celebrities in politics, Brooks Brothers has also provided costumes for many films and TV shows.

The whole class actor in Mad Man; Chuck Bass and Nate Archibald in Gossip Girl; George Clunie in the cloud; Dev Patel in the "millionaire" in the slums; and Ben Affleck in the Pearl Harbor wearing a Brooks suit.

It once took the lead in the market, and constantly introduced products that surprised competitors and consumers.

For example, Harris wool, Madras light and thin cloth series, multicolored diamond shaped socks, and ironing shirts.

But since then, the innovation of Brooks Brothers has slowed down, and even its own Wikipedia has no more information about new products since the 1998 "ironing shirts".

Only the New York Times wrote Brooks Brothers Revives the Preppiest Shirt Collar in 2016, saying that it has changed its classic Ivy wind shirt. The details of the changes include upgrading the pearl button, adding the shirt pants to the corners, and removing the chest pocket.

The modern history of Brooks Brothers is closer to adjusting the product structure.

Another problem it has to face is that the market shows indifference to the overly formal design.

In other words, suits don't look fashionable anymore.

Faced with this situation, in 2007, Brooks Brothers invited an independent designer, Thom Browne, to develop a high-end line Black Fleece.

Thom Browne and I have worked with Ralph Lauren to lead the creative team of Ralph Lauren sub brand Club Monaco.

After the establishment of the personal name brand Thom Browne, in 2006, he also took the fashion designer of the American Fashion Designers Association (CFDA) best men's wear designer.

His design is different from the traditional style of sitting in a suit. He always looks like a small size. His trousers should be bare, his waist not to be tied up with his belt, his coat is also smaller, his cuffs are always short enough to expose his shirt 3 inches, his front buttons are always 3 Nu, narrow collar, and sometimes he has a side slit.

Similarly, Thom Browne also brought this style to Brooks Brothers.

The first series includes 50 SKU and sells them in more than 30 global stores.

At first, Black Fleece was originally scheduled for a 3 year project, which sold well, and the product line was completed in one breath at the same time in 2015.

"We give people the impression that we are rather old-fashioned. After all, we have 200 years of history.

I hope that the fashionable designers will make our brands more popular. The idea is to do more young people's business.

The production line is aimed at young people, and design and tailoring are relatively self-cultivation.

Frankie Lam told curiosity daily.

However, after 2015, Black Fleece ceased production. Frankie Lam explained that this is because Thom Browne should be busy with its own brand name. On the other hand, "consumers are too much attention to the designer rather than Brooks Brothers."

In the early days of the termination of cooperation with Thom Browne, Brooks Brothers had new plans.

This time, it is still not a product innovation. Instead, it has increased the development of women's clothing production line, and has found designer Zac Posen as the creative director of brand women's clothing.

"Please come to Zac posen to make women's clothes, just want to make women's clothing fashionable and business bigger."

Frankie Lam said.

He said the long-term plan is that men and women make up 50% of their sales.

For Frankie Lam, Brooks Brothers's entanglement in the global scope is within the scope of his consideration, including the hope of leveraging Zac posen's bigger women's clothing business, and even the "left over" problem of the closed Black Fleece production line.

But there are still some additional problems in China.

In the Chinese market, sales of suits only account for 10% of total sales.

Selling better in Hongkong suits can make up about 60% of sales. This is because "there are more businessmen in Hongkong, there are activities in the evening", "many lawyers, doctors and accountants will buy".

Since shirts are also placed in formal clothing, leisure and formal sales account for almost 50% of the total sales.

"In the Chinese market, suits are not the most important products.

Wearing suits is very common in the United States, which is a little different from that in China.

If we only sell suits in China, we can't survive. "

Frankie Lam said, "however, it's harder to dress up now."

In this regard, Brooks Brothers's solution is to make some changes in store display.

In the past, the shops were displayed in the formal and leisure products, but in the new flagship store of the new Plaza, casual and formal clothes were sold.

In May, the flagship store's new business was the suit customization.

Brooks Brothers has customized services in the United States, but it did not make a tailor-made business in the physical store before it was founded.

"In the past, disson might find it rather troublesome, so he didn't spend his energy on it."

Frankie Lam said.

Nevertheless, Brooks Brothers is not attracted to young people. In fact, its customers in China are mainly concentrated on customers aged 40 to 60, and the future plan is to lower the age of consumers to 30 years old.

Another important thing is to open a shop.

Frankie Lam said that the top priority is to separate the shops from Tommy Hilfiger.

Since Dick had previously acted as a proxy for Tommy Hilfiger and Brooks Brothers, they often put two brand stores together.

"A lot of shops before, next to the Tommy Hilfiger.

It is a sense of leisure, we also have many casual clothes, but not so leisure, we start in suits.

So we must change and give our guests new ideas.

Frankie Lam said.

At the end of 3, the new store is located in the middle of the Oriental Plaza. Opposite is the Coach which has been gradually effective in the recent reform. On the left is MontBlanc with huge photos of Jackman. On the right is the Italy style Moschino, and the wrist watch brand TagHeuer.

Tommy Hilfiger is only 200 meters away. It takes a while to see it.

Although the company has already had great flexibility to deal with the particularity of the Chinese market through joint ventures, years of caution may still make it too late to handle the rapid development here.

One proved to be the planned electricity supplier, the other was the first Red Fleece by Brooks Brothers Caf, which opened in New York last year to attract guests, and the coffee shop has not yet opened the plan to China. Frankie Lam said, "first look at the reaction in the US market".

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