Is It A Designer Or A Star And Net Red?

Luxury is back in fashion.

Bain's consultation was published in the 2017 global luxury industry research report released in October 25th.

As an important reference material for the global luxury industry, the figures given by Bain this year seem optimistic: the overall luxury market has increased by 5%, totalling 1 trillion and 200 billion euros; the average operating profit of the industry is 19%, close to 23% of the Chinese crazy consumption period in 2012; up to 65% of the luxury.

Both achieved positive results, 15% higher than last year.

The most pleasant thing is that for the first time in 10 years, the growth of the industry is not based on raising prices, but on the basis of real sales expansion.

You probably can hear the news of the recovery of the three luxury groups.

According to the world clothing shoes and hats net, in the first half of 2017,

Sales of Kai Yun and Li Feng increased by double-digit growth rate of 14.7%, 28.2% and 10% respectively.

Judging from the third quarter performance, the momentum will last until the end of the year.

According to Bain estimates, the industry will maintain an increase of 4% to 5% over the next three years, and the personal luxury market will reach 2950-3050 billion euros in 2020.

But 2017 is also a very puzzling year.

LV and Supreme have worked together as if they had never had any conflict before.

Few people talk about whether Supreme is cool or whether the marketing idea in the collaboration has overshadowed the design itself.

More are mentioned about the hot queuing scene and social media fever, and the possible benefits of this cooperation.

The joint series reportedly sold more than 100000000 euros.

In October, Supreme also accepted the $500 million injection from the private equity fund, Carlyle Group, and sold 50% of the shares, with a valuation of $1 billion 100 million.

Luxury goods, which claim that they absolutely value the physical experience, are starting to do their own business, and also focus on social marketing.

Originally LVMH and Hermes and Kai Yun, which are the same as the Shanzhai problem and Alibaba, have introduced their brands to Tmall, and have launched WeChat's sales function.

Chinese and Western Valentine's day, you can see more limited handbags, local fashion bloggers promotion and WeChat friends circle advertising.

It is also amazing to see all kinds of celebrity brand friends and brand ambassadors. Every time a new spokesman appears on the brand official micro-blog, fans can start a new wave of Carnival and abuse.

Environmental protection and rapid sales go hand in hand.

In October, Gucci CEO Marco Bizzarri announced that it would stop using fur from next year. Its parent company, Kai Yun group, came to China in Shanghai fashion week to introduce its newly developed environmental protection App, "my environmental profit and loss statement" (My EP&L).

But just 6 months ago, Gucci also launched a "90 minute delivery home" service with the fashion buyer Farfetch.

M & A has become the strategy of more and more companies.

According to fashion media ladymax.cn, more than 30 luxury and fashion brands have been purchased this year. The biggest deal is the 12 billion 100 million euros acquisition of Dior by LVMH group owner Bernard Arnault family. In addition, Coach group buys Kate Spade for 2 billion 400 million dollars, and Michael Kors buys 1 billion 200 million Jimmy for $1 billion 200 million.

Plagiarism and inappropriate cultural embezzlement are also increasing.

This includes the 18 spring and summer series of Gucci v.s.Dapper Dan, Raf Simons v.s.Bonnie Cashin, Chanel and its offensive Australian Aboriginal culture of the boomerang, as well as the discrimination against China's Dolce&Gabbana advertising.

The luxury industry is undergoing dramatic changes.

As we mentioned last year's year-end inventory, to maintain the glory of the past and keep pace with the Internet, the change has finally happened and is irresistible to a slow industry.

The number of young people buying luxury goods has increased, and the boundaries between class consumption have become more blurred.

Gucci's annual sales growth has been above 30% this year, reaching 59% at its peak.

At last week's WWD summit held by the American fashion media, CEO Marco Bizzarri talked about the secret of success. She said that in addition to the Alessandro Michele, the creative director who was popular with the most popular and nerd, he also had a shadow committee composed of young people under the age of 30.

"What they want to do is to provide different perspectives, or discuss the same topic as Gucci board, or directly tell me the specific ideas."

Marco Bizzarri told qz.com.

Gucci changes in quarterly sales from 2014 to 2016

The iteration of luxury consumers is indeed the main engine to stimulate the growth of the market.

According to the report released by Bain consulting, the contribution of Y generation (1977 to 1995) and Z generation (1995 to 2010) contributed almost the same as that in China, accounting for 32% of the total luxury consumption market.

And in the past year, 5% of the total growth, 85% of the share is also driven by the two generations.

"For luxury goods, this moment is particularly interesting.

The millennial generation's consumption mindset and shopping methods are very different from those of the previous generation, forcing the luxury brand to rethink what should be provided to customers.

The main author of the report, Claudia D 'Arpizio, explains this.

Specifically, there are at least four differences among these young people.

1. the last generation of consumers was fastidious about whether the materials were rare, and whether the products were customized. The new generation valued the brand values and the way of expression of vision sufficiently unique.

2. from the definition, luxury goods were originally regarded as the commodities in the core fashion category, which prohibit most people from being deterred but with excellent quality and exquisite craftsmanship. Today, luxury goods are meant to match and combine various kinds of consumption scenes in order to express certain views.

3. more emphasis is placed on the integration of creativity and the luxury of entry products than the emphasis on "rare things are expensive" and Logo.

4. compared with exclusive consumption carnival, consumers nowadays are more willing to express their views through style choice.

In short, young people promote the pformation of elite consciousness in luxury consumption to personal expression, and the purpose of consumption has shifted from common status and status to expressing common values.

It is worth noting that the word "Curated" has recurred in this section of Bain consulting.

You can think of it as "careful planning" or "guided consumption".

If young consumers like to express, interact and experience, luxury brands must do this to catch them.

Although the industry has always been good at telling stories, the way of story telling must be changed not from top to bottom, but from an equal dialogue.

To some extent, this explains why some fashion critics think that Gucci's creative director is more like "Curator (curator)" than "Designer (designer)". Why should Kai Yun group emphasize sustainable environmental protection and why LV wants to cooperate with Supreme.

The change of luxury consumption class from 1985 to 2025 is from the Bain consultation report.

In addition to age iteration, another interesting change is the consumer class.

Since 90s, luxury consumption has gone through three stages.

According to Bain's division, the Pyramid has three levels: the accessible is the "light luxury" that some mass consumers can also buy. The middle tier (aspirational) is a medium end product which is slightly beyond their consumption ability, while the top level (absolute) is the top product that only the rich can afford.

Over the past 30 years, the prosperity and depression of the luxury goods market have been largely affected by the two sides, which basically changed with the expansion and shrinkage of the middle consumption.

After the financial crisis in 2008, the consumption power of the global middle class shrinks, and the whole industry only relies on China's gray consumption and the Internet and real estate upstarts for some time.

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Today, the middle class in China is still regarded as the most powerful driving force for growth.

But from a global perspective, the strict hierarchy of consumption order has collapsed, and the "new normal" is the three strata with different circles, but they are intertwined.

However, this kind of interweaving is still just a marketing illusion created by the brand to expand audiences, further scale and further stimulate sales.

The cooperation between LV and Supreme can be regarded as a typical case -- LV touches the young people, and when the big red Box Logo of Supreme is printed on the LV's leather case, its brand value has also been "sublimated" on the social stratum.

But in essence, the problem of class solidification has not changed. The children who buy LV and the rich who buy Supreme still live in two completely different worlds.

Why luxury brands are so popular and why mediocrity is considered interesting?

In the face of changing consumers, sales channels and marketing channels, luxury goods are rather passive.

The only opportunity for them to have direct initiative is only one product.

However, compared to the design itself, the brand seems to be more willing to take shortcuts, such as the rapid completion of product and word of mouth through cross-border.

Queue up to buy LV X Supreme series of young people

At 3 p.m. on June 29th, 17 hours from the release of the LV and Supreme limited series, 150 people queued up at the corner of Surrey Street in London.

In July 3rd, a similar scene took place in the 798 Art District of the North Fifth Ring Road in Beijing.

As the weather was too hot and too many people lined up, the video blogger Skywang, who had rushed to buy, gave up the purchase and began filming the first few young people who bought the goods.

They all looked only 20 out of age, because many people bought two T-shirts and backpacks for each purchase, but T-shirts were more quickly grabbed.

"LV X Supreme, this is Supreme's closest to us," Sky wrote in a video synopsis.

The 85% mentioned in the bain report largely came from Sky and the young people he photographed.

In order to attract these people's attention and try to pform them into their own consumers, there are still many similar cooperation launched by luxury goods this year.

For example, in June of this year, Gosha Rubchinskiy released its 2018 spring summer series in St Petersburg, and also showed 8 pieces of cooperation with Burberry.

High end brands are also starting to invest in product types such as T-shirts and sneakers.

According to the statistics in this report, the market size of the luxury T-shirts this year reached 2 billion 500 million euros, up 25% over last year, and the luxury shoes reached 3 billion 500 million euros, an increase of 10% over last year.

Luxury brands are willing to invest in the category of Chao brand products, the picture from Bain advisory report.

One of the problems that led to this problem is that the luxury goods that originally were responsible for researching the craft, expanding the frontier of creativity, testing art and designing boundaries, now put more effort into more basic products.

Plus social media filters, mediocre and even interesting.

A recent example is the color thick bottomed cave shoes co operated by Crocs and Paris. Similar popularity includes ugly "Daddy shoes" and "boots".

In the words of Luke Leitech, columnist of the Economist magazine 1843, "the sense of mediocrity in 2017 is as strong as that of 1987's thick shoulder pads".

Vetements has been collaborating with the public brands such as Champion, Levi's and Reebok, and J.W.Anderson has joined the designer's camp of UNIQLO.

In an interview with the media, Anderson said that this is the first time he has designed a series that he will wear. "I just want to be realistic."

It's interesting to say: who wears unrealistic (or mediocre) clothes every day? Is the fashion industry designed for these people before?

From "lots, lots, lots" to "online, online, online".

"New sales channels should not be molded into a temple, but rather like a home."

This is discussed in Bain's report.

A more direct view is that the sales channels of luxury goods are gradually shifting to consumer oriented, and the more efficient online channels have become the fastest growing places.

According to the bain report, online sales of luxury goods increased by 24% over the same period last year, reaching 23 billion euros, 2 times the growth of airport channels.

In form, these channels coexist in various ways, such as the brand official network, the third party e-commerce and the retailer's website, as the "full complement" of the entity store.

Although the third party e-commerce has the greatest impact on online sales, the brands are finally starting to build their own business.

Soon after the sale, the proportion of sales contribution has reached 31%.

The online performance of different regions, product categories and business types is illustrated by Bain.

In the region, the US market still accounts for 47% of luxury online sales, but the faster growth is in Asia and Europe.

China contributed 32% of its luxury consumption last year, and it has become the focus of luxury goods for online business.

Over the past four months, Gucci and LV have launched online shopping services in China. Hermes began to sell watches in the WeChat public address. Jingdong shares Farfetch for $400 million and launched independent luxury shopping App Toplife. Tmall has launched luxury Channel Luxury Pavillion and online luxury flash store Tmall Space, while the local electricity business Temple library is listed in the US.

But it is worth noting that as new young consumers are seen as a group that I want to get right away, the luxury online platform has also entered a fast fashion war.

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In April, the fashion buyer Farfetch and Gucci jointly launched a service called "90 minutes delivery to home".

In September, Net-a-porter and Mr Porter also launched a delivery service to the VIP customers, called "You Try, We Wait".

"Time is a new luxury," explains Jos Neves, the founder and chief executive of Farfetch. "We also want to do some more work on this."

For example, one day you are anxious to go to a dinner party, but you just need a skirt or a pair of shoes.

You can use this service. "

However, few people have mentioned whether "faster gratification" will create new problems for designer's fashion.

"It's hard not to think about whether the immediate satisfaction is to pile up a lot of surplus items.

In fact, people don't have to buy so many clothes when they attend activities or socialize.

Clothing is a clue in interpersonal relationships. In this case, clothing should be the object of long-term investment, otherwise your personal identity will not last. "

New York Times columnist Vanessa Friedman said so.

Is it a designer or a star and net red?

Fashion entertainment is a topic that has been repeatedly mentioned this year.

At the beginning of the year, Dolce&Gabbana released the autumn and winter series in 2017 in Milan men's wear week. It found 49 people who had millions of fans in the global social media and displayed the costumes of the "two generation" fans, which accounted for 43% of the number of runtimes.

3 star bloggers also showed up in China: Chen Xuedong, who has 24 million 640 thousand fans of micro-blog, is popular with the drama "Princess Taizu promotion", Sheng Yilun, 4 million 680 thousand fans, and gogoboi, a fan of 7 million 20 thousand.

Sheng Yilun is at Dolce&Gabbana show.

Unlike the 60s interpretation of brand value orientation (think of Hepburn and Givenchy little black dress), stars are now playing a more important role in gathering increasingly dispersed and increasingly expensive attention, and then contributing to brand growth (short term) sales.

To put it simply, they are also becoming fashionable as a marketing channel.

This year, the most striking examples of the frequency and quantity of spokesmen in China are Dior and Chanel.

The former announced in April 8th and May 5th this year that Angela Baby (Angela Baby) and Huang Xuan became "China Brand Ambassadors". In September 25th, they gave Zhao Liying the same title. In October 18th, they announced Chen Feiyu as "the Millennium ambassadors for men's clothing".

In addition to Xun Zhou, the image ambassador of China, Chanel is just the three Ambassador of China's wrist watch ambassador, including Bai Baihe, Liu Wen and William Chan.

Part of this change reflects the distortion of the value system of luxury goods under the impact of technological innovation and consumer iteration.

Managers seem to be caught in a strange circle: an increasingly valued system of value at the core of KPI means that they are eager to use as many stars as possible to occupy their attention quickly, but this is contrary to the extreme, advanced and rare traditions of luxury goods, and the brand value that it has been careful to care for over the past few hundred years.

The numerous spokesmen are the freaks born out of these one or two difficult situations: Nowadays, this identity has been subdivided into various titles, such as "spokesperson", "brand ambassador", "brand ambassador", "product branch ambassador" and "brand friend".

Many brand ambassadors only appeared on micro-blog and did not take part in the advertising blockbuster. On the global website of the brand, some of the ambassadors were misspelled names, and some even did not have corresponding English titles.

This also reflects from the side that its "short term nature of goods" is much higher than the so-called "passing brand spirit".

Celebrity endorsement is beyond reproach.

After the capitalization and globalization of luxury brands, they are doomed to walk down the altar and enter the mass market.

But the question is, how can the luxury goods enter the market? As a minority elite group that should represent the top level of the fashion industry in terms of business ethics, creative design and brand value, it relies so much on the stars, the two generation or the two generation of the stars, instead of placing the products and designs in the second place, what kind of values are conveyed?

If it is necessary to evaluate the success of such a strategy in terms of earnings performance, a group of data in the bain report may illustrate some problems: in 2017, 65% of the luxury brands achieved sales growth, but only 35% had a positive return on operating profits.

A fashion critic, Tang cream, quoted by Hermes Chritian, a former chief executive of the luxury brand's local star strategy, is quoted as saying: "the real danger lies in the mediocrity of sensitivity, the lack of language, the absence of culture, and the generalization of short communication." Blanckaert

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