The Market Has: Blindly Pursue The Trend, How Beautiful Is The Brand

The popularity of fashion brands can be seen from the performance of bubble Mart.

On February 11, bubble Mart landed on the Hong Kong stock exchange. It oversubscribed nearly 356 times in the IPO stage, and rose more than 100% in the dark market stage. On the day of listing, it finally achieved a closing increase of 79.22%, with a total market value of nearly HK $100 billion. With a blind box unit price of 59 yuan, this Chaozhou game enterprise, which has been established for ten years and just started to take off in recent two years, has sold 1.7 billion yuan of annual revenue and nearly 100 billion yuan of market value.

The purchasing power of young people is amazing, and what's more, capital's craze for it is even more exaggerated. Compared with the actual revenue scale, bubble mart's market value of nearly 100 billion yuan is obviously too high, but even if there are not a few doubts, the capital still firmly shows its optimistic attitude towards the trend Economy: the analysis of Guojin Securities believes that the trend toy market is expected to grow faster than the chip industry in the next five years.

I.T., the originator of fashion, can also feel the frustration of fashion brands.

Also in the Hong Kong stock market, just four days before the high-profile listing of bubble mart, I.T., the founder of chaopai, announced that it had been offered to privatize by the CVC consortium, the founder of chaopai. The shares of other shareholders would be cancelled at HK $3 per share. The once popular fashion group ended its 15 year capital career and left the arena.

Even with the privatization news, I.T's share price has doubled in the short term, and its market value is only HK $3.3 billion - its total revenue in 2019 is HK $7.7 billion, much higher than that of bubble Mart.

The two generations of fashion brands have just completed an intergenerational handover in the Hong Kong stock market, and have gone in two different directions.

Capital does not necessarily know the trend, but it believes in the judgment of young people. After young people voted with their feet, I.T., the early fashion empire, lost the love of young people and the expectation of capital. But in the face of young people with "flower hearts" and the capital of "steering by the wind", how long can bubble Mart enjoy?

The trend is fleeting and the business of young people is not easy to do.

Fed by a generation of young people

The trend of young people has changed one after another.

Before the birth of the blind box, the "big brother" in the fashion industry was still created by Japanese animation IP. Under the influence of Japanese animation culture, Chinese market players are also full of enthusiasm: in April 2018, wonder Festival, one of the world's largest hand-held model exhibitions, held its first preview in Shanghai, and VIP tickets sold out within 24 hours.

Station B, one of the labels of Japanese secondary culture, also enjoyed the hand-held bonus. It launched the member purchase platform in September 2018. In 2018, more than 1 million people bought hand-made model game products on station B. in 2017, a 2233 Niang limited hand-made shop in station B was sold at a sky high price of 9.8 billion yuan (the transaction was not completed due to malicious bidding).

It is because of the high price of handmade goods that young people who chop their hands have such self mockery: "one wall in fat house, one suite in Second Ring Road in Beijing, two walls in fat house, and sea view house in Maldives."

As an important part of the animation industry, manual operation is the main means of commercialization of animation copyright owners. "Kodak" series creator Yukio FUKUNO once said: "now the production of Takata animation is to sell."

Therefore, the development of hand-held industry is closely related to Japan's developed animation culture. Around 2000, after entering the new century, Japan's animation industry was in a downturn, turning to seek breakthroughs in painting style and human settings. A large number of animation game works with the theme of beautiful girls came out during this period. GSC, one of Japan's three hand-held companies, was founded in this period. By winning the copyright of the fate series and the future of Prima, GSC has leapt into the first echelon of Japanese hand-held manufacturers.

With the development of the industry, Japanese hand-held audience has gradually expanded to pan quadratic fans, but its core purchasing power still comes from the "otaku" who love beautiful girls' animation.

Japan's hand-made and popular blind boxes, which have been developing for a long time, belong to the field of fashion play, and this is only the tip of the iceberg of the trend economy. In addition to fashion, fashion clothing has always been pursued by young people. In this track, I.T., the early fashion empire, has to be mentioned.

Back 15 years ago, I.T. was also the most dazzling "trendsetter" in the capital market. In 2005, I.T. was listed on the main board of the Hong Kong stock exchange, and its public offering was 873 times oversubscribed. Compared with today's bubble mart, I.T.

Over the past decade, I.T. has set off a storm of tide in Hong Kong, Macao and Mainland China. Its success first benefited from the innovation of business model. It introduced a series of brand clothing which had not been settled in Hong Kong and Mainland China at that time with the innovation mode of store in store. It set up big I.T., mainly focusing on the world-famous first-line designer brands and small I.T., focusing on younger and cheaper Japanese and Korean fashion brands, and independently established 5cm, B + AB and Izzue and other brands.

At its peak, I.T. has more than 300 agency brands and more than 10 self created brands. In short, I.T. provides a large collection of fashion brands for fashion lovers.

1. In the early 20th century, Hong Kong's entertainment industry was the most developed period. In particular, young people in the mainland were deeply influenced by Hong Kong's entertainment culture. Therefore, I.T. from Hong Kong became the pronoun of "trend" in the minds of young people in the mainland.

The blessing of the goddess Qiu Shuzhen also added a lot of light to I.T. Qiu Shuzhen married Shen Jiawei, the founder of I.T. in 1999. At this time, she had been nominated as the leading actress of Hong Kong Film Awards for three times, enjoying high popularity in Hong Kong and the mainland. Qiu Shuzhen became the boss of I. T. she acted as a buyer and flew to Europe, Japan and South Korea to pick up goods for the company. Taking advantage of celebrity effect, Qiu Shuzhen became the king of I.T. and further opened up sales for I.T.

Generally speaking, the essence of the rise of the first batch of fashion enterprises, such as I.T., Joyce and Lane Crawford, is that in the era of Hong Kong's cultural and entertainment industry's heyday, the trend industry also highly praised Hong Kong's aesthetic style. I.T. and other enterprises followed the wind, introduced and built a number of trend brands, filled the gap in the trend market at that time, and established their own trend empire.

1. Behind the success of T is a group of young people who pursue the trend of Hong Kong culture, and behind the Japanese hand-made is a group of young people who love Japanese animation - but these young people will always grow old.

Abandoned by a generation of young people

The two words "tidal current" both represent flow and change, which also reveals the characteristics of fast iteration and long-term difficulty of tidal current.

One of the underlying logic is that the trend is almost equal to youth culture, but different generations of young people growing up in different environments and cultural backgrounds have different preferences. With the alternation of generations among young people, the trend of being pursued has changed again and again.

Take handmade as an example, its market scale is still considerable, but an objective phenomenon is that the most fanatical Japanese animation fans after 2000 have entered the Mesozoic era, which also means that the core purchasing power of handmade animation fans tends to be aging. According to ocean hall, the organizer of wonder Festival, the average age of its customers has reached 40.

Faced with an average customer group of 40 years old, it seems that it is difficult for haiyangtang to regard its sales as a trend any more, and it can only choose to seek help from young brands. Wang Ning, founder of bubble mart, revealed in a speech that the president of haiyangtang has communicated with him frequently in recent two years and invited bubble mart to Japan as the first foreign brand to participate in wonder Festival.

The president of ocean hall and many hands-on fans are puzzled by the question: why can Molly, an IP without content support, make so many young people crazy?

But in fact, breaking away from animation plays may be one of the reasons why Molly can break through the circle successfully. This means that its audience is not limited, and does not need to experience a long time of IP precipitation, greatly reducing the threshold of consumer understanding. If we dig deeper, the consumer psychology behind this is very consistent with one of the characteristics of the Z generation growing up in the fragmented media environment: lack of patience.

Generation Z has become the key group to grasp the direction of the trend. They made their own preference in the Japanese handmade and bubble mat blind boxes, and also declared that I.T., the early generation of trend Empire, was out of date.

1. T, Joyce, Lane Crawford and other buyer shops have made their fortune by acting for foreign high-quality brands. However, in the current business environment, overseas brands have adopted the direct marketing mode to increase the size of the Chinese market. Meanwhile, overseas shopping websites such as farfetch are becoming more and more popular, and the living space of the "purchasing on behalf" mode of the buyer's shops has been repeatedly squeezed.

From the bottom logic, the loss of I.T. is due to the change of consumption environment and the improvement of the ability of the new generation of consumers, which makes up for the information gap in the consumption process.

In addition, another key reason why I.T. is now facing cold in the market is that with the decline of Hong Kong's entertainment industry, the new generation of young people's love for "Hong Kong Style" has been greatly reduced. Even with the blessing of Qiu Shuzhen, the trend of Hong Kong style represented by I.T. has become a bit old-fashioned. 1. T is not unaware of the problem. Since 2017, it has invited Wu Yifan, Lin Yun, Meng Ziyi and Wang Junkai as spokesmen of the group or its brands, but this has not fundamentally reversed the decline of I.T.

1. Another reason why t is out of favor among young people is that its price positioning is higher than that of fast fashion and most domestic fashion brands. Shen Jiawei once stressed that "what our target consumers need is not cheap things, but constantly updated products". But in fact, for today's young people, cost performance is also an important factor affecting consumption decisions.

This has a certain relationship with the sinking of fashion brand audience. According to tmall data, the number of consumers in genz trend market increased by 267%, the number of consumer pieces increased by 441%, and the unit price of consumer parts increased by - 1%. The trend consumption growth rate of the third - and sixth tier cities is significantly ahead of that of the first and second tier cities, and the potential of the sinking market is being developed.

The decline in the unit price of consumer parts and the decline of consumer groups to a certain extent show that young people are not willing to pay high prices for the trend. For example, the low threshold of a blind box of bubble mart is a prerequisite for its rapid popularity.

According to a survey of more than 5000 people conducted by Huaxing capital, generation Z has four labels: "lazy", appearance Association, embracing national brands, and pursuing minority. Huaxing believes that bubble Mart fully meets these four characteristics, so it accepts a short-term premium to invest in it at a valuation of $2.5 billion.

Facts have proved that bubble Mart has accurately grasped the preferences of contemporary young people. However, once brilliant enterprises such as haiyangtang and I.T., they have more or less misjudged the label of the new generation of young people, or lack the ability to cater to the new generation.

For all consumer brands, "younger" is always a major direction. But "Youth" has different interpretations in different periods.

With the enthusiasm of young people quickly ignited and rapidly cooled, there are few brands that can flash in the pan every year, but there are only a few enterprises that really achieve "evergreen". How to continue to attract young people of every generation and continue the trend is a problem that every fashion brand needs to face.

How to continue the trend?

The most valuable experience may come from the "fashion shoes", which is an enduring and relatively stable trend classification.

Last year, the fashion shoe market broke out in China. Dewu completed two financing transactions in January and April and entered the unicorn line. Nice, another trading platform of fashion shoes, also completed round D financing in June. At the end of July, goat, the head trading platform of global footwear and fashion items, announced its entry into the Chinese market. This year, the big and small giants continue to increase the size. In April, tmall fashion products were launched, bringing together fashion categories such as sneakers and clothes. In August, pinduoduo announced that "Duochao shoes hall" would provide one month targeted subsidy for fashionable shoes in the channel.

The continuous increase of capital and enterprises comes from young people's lasting love for fashion shoes: in June this year, Dior and Nike launched the Dior x Air Jordan 1 high og co branded sneaker, which attracted more than 5 million people to participate in the lottery. When the online pre-sale was started, the bidding for the shoes on the stockx platform had reached 38000 US dollars.

On a global scale, there is no need to repeat the preference of fashion people for Air Jordan. A question worth thinking about is, as a brand with a history of nearly 50 years, why can Nike still be pursued by young people today?

In addition, another brand that has successfully passed through the cycle and is worth studying is Lego, which has a history of nearly 90 years, but is still popular in the field of fashion games.

Both Nike and LEGO are the most important players in the field of fashion shoes and fashion play. However, Nike and LEGO can not be simply defined as a trend brand. They create and lead the development of a kind of trend, and gradually add a stronger cultural connotation to the brand.

This also provides a direction for the broader trend brands to be creators rather than pursuers, and to be cultural rather than fashion.

Looking back on the development of Nike, in addition to technical innovation in products, the marketing method is also more unique. The marketing style of Nike focuses more on the in-depth characterization of the characters than on the outstanding products. The main characters of the advertisement include not only sports stars such as Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods, but also a lot of ordinary sports fans. It is through this marketing method, combined with close cooperation with sports events and clubs, that Nike constantly binds its brand with basketball and sports spirit.

On the other hand, in order to revitalize the sales volume, Nike constantly stimulates the market through co branded products, enriches and consolidates the core of the brand. This year alone, Nike has launched joint brands with Japanese fashion brands such as sacai, Readymade, Canadian rap star Drake, and luxury brand Dior, etc., to quickly bring out the old and bring forth the new, so that Nike can dynamically meet the changing preferences of young people.

In the minds of young fashion shoe lovers, Nike is regarded as one of the synonyms of sports culture. Such brand strength is the core reason why Nike fashion shoes continue to set off a storm in the hearts of generations of young people.

Lego is also the pioneer of building block culture. LEGO system is an important concept in Lego's business philosophy. Toy manufacturers should not only develop disposable products that occupy the market for a short time, but should develop a comprehensive system of interrelated toys. Only in this way can repeated sales be formed, and the fun of the original products will not be lost because of the innovation.

This concept supports LEGO to build its own toy paradise. Based on the "LEGO system" system, Lego continues to expand IP content and toy themes, such as classic IP Star Wars, Harry Potter, friends and other popular series launched in recent two years. These diversified themes continue to attract consumers' attention.

Lego's way of playing also brings a lot of inspiration to bubble Mart.

Wang Ning said that at this stage, bubble Mart would like to become a company like Lego. "The great thing about Lego is that it's not just selling toys. In my eyes, it's like a technology company. It's a system, it's a language, and then all the IP's have to be written again in its language."

Creativity, leadership, and continuous enrichment and iteration are unique capabilities of evergreen trend brands such as Lego and Nike.

It's not easy to create the trend. Take bubble Mart as an example, it has created a new way of playing the blind box. However, how to continuously enrich the connotation and core of the blind box and give it the power to go through the cycle is a problem that bubble Mart still needs to think about.

The trend is easy to pass, and it is culture that can pass through the cycle. However, it is not easy to take this road from the trend to the culture.