COCOFIT, which is positioned as a brand of "smart technology for light sportswear", recently announced the completion of over 10 million yuan angel round financing led by Xianfeng Changqing. COCOFIT is a brand of Guande (Hangzhou) Digital Technology Co., Ltd., and this round of funds will be mainly used for product research and development and supply chain system upgrade.
Make clothes by making scientific and technological products
Wei Yuan, the founder of COCOFIT, holds a master's degree in electronic engineering from Tsinghua University and has worked in the chip industry for many years. Later, he served as general manager of Amoy Factory, director of C2M commodity supply chain and director of Ali rhinoceros manufacturer center, and had a deep accumulation in digitalization of industrial chain and supply chain.
In the second half of 20021,Wei Yuan, as an extreme sports enthusiast, chose to start a business against the trend when the new consumption capital dividend ebbed, and entered the light sportswear track from the yoga pants category. Wei Yuan chose to use yoga pants to cut into the market because the product coverage of this category is wide enough, and there is no domestic brand to occupy the market. If you can achieve the ultimate in a sub-category, you have a chance to achieve a brand.
At present, the competition on the track of light sportswear is very fierce. Not only international giants like lululemon, but also domestic brands have entered the market to grab this cake. Even the "posture" of brands entering the track is very similar-many brands have chosen the category of yoga pants to ask for directions. The competition on the track is so fierce, how did COCOFIT, as a latecomer, run out?
The Method of Making Clothing Entrepreneurial Bear by Technological Products "img _ height =" 480 "img _ width =" 720 "data-src ="//imgq8.q578.com/ef/0707/359f5040c6070a92.jpg "src ="/A2020/img. The new brand of light sportswear track will be suppressed by international giants such as lululemom, and it will compete with many low-priced brands to seize the market. The competition on the track is becoming more and more fierce.
Wei Yuan told Lazy Bear Sports that R&D and supply chain are the core competitiveness of COCOFIT. He believes that brands that simply tell stories can no longer satisfy this generation of young people, and brands should run out or stay in product strength. COCOFIT's way to build product strength is to establish a scientific research and development system, make clothes by developing scientific and technological products, and then build an adaptive supply chain according to product demand.
"The focus of our research and development is to decompose comfort and transform it from subjective feeling into something that can be structured and quantified. Starting from the research of ergonomics theory, and then disassembling it to the most upstream of the supply chain, we decide what kind of technology, what kind of fiber and what kind of fabric to use, that is, to link consumer demand, product development and supply chain. " Wei Yuan said.
Disassembling "comfort"
Wei Yuan believes that sportswear brands may run out as long as they do a good job in marketing, choose the right version and color during the bonus period. However, when the dividend period ebbs, the importance of refined product design is highlighted. Therefore, COCOFIT chooses to develop scientific products, and the core is to establish a scientific system, so as to ensure the continuous iteration and stability of products.
Specifically, the comfort of close-fitting clothing is divided into warm and wet comfort, tactile comfort, elastic comfort and other dimensions, and the team chooses to focus on elastic comfort.
Elastic comfort can be reflected by the index of clothing pressure. Wei Yuan believes that many brands still use rough concepts such as "wrapping" and "elasticity" to capture the concept of comfort, but clothing pressure (the force on the skin per unit area) is a more scientific concept and a key clothing performance index. In the past few decades, there have been many relatively mature theoretical studies on clothing pressure in academic circles, and the team has also cooperated with Donghua University and other institutions.
After the basic theoretical research, the team began to blindly measure the clothing pressure of the samples. Before the test, in order to avoid the subjects' scores being too subjective and arbitrary, the team measured the standard value through the elasticity test in advance, and compared the competing products with COCOFIT products of different versions, fabrics and processes from the market. Each subject evaluated 10 pairs of trousers, and then matched the consumers' somatosensory feelings according to the elasticity and clothing pressure data measured by the team in advance, so as to study the demand and demand threshold of people with different characteristics and backgrounds for product clothing pressure.
In addition, the team conducted some other tests. For example, the inner stitching and outer stitching of trousers are often considered as minor problems in fashion design, but the team found through tests that young people born after 95 or people with lower psychological age are generally not interested in the design of outer stitching. "They think that the outside stitching is like trousers, so a small problem will affect the goodwill of the product. Sometimes this is not just physical comfort, but psychological comfort. " Wei Yuan said.
The results of these tests have also become the basis for the research team to determine the SKU. At present, COCOFIT has two classic main products, namely "elastic" and "feather" yoga pants. The former focuses on elastic wrapping, while the latter focuses on softness and nudity. In the experiment, the team found that people with weak sports attributes have higher requirements on the psychological threshold of clothing pressure and like relatively tight pants. Pants that are too loose will make these people feel insecure. So this is the starting point of the "Bomb" series.
On the other hand, people with relatively strong sports attributes have relatively low psychological threshold for clothing pressure and prefer soft and nude products, which has also become the starting point for the team to launch the "Feather" series. In view of the requirements of exposure, the team made the warp elasticity of the product weak in the leg extension direction, so that users would not feel too much fabric resistance when doing large-scale sports. In addition, most yoga pants are too sensitive to the changes of clothing pressure/wrapping force of consumers of different sizes, and the error rate of consumers buying online according to the size table is high. "Feather" series has achieved two sizes to adapt to the full size, while the usual yoga pants are mostly five sizes to adapt to the full size.
But people's sports are different, and the degree of muscle expansion is different when they engage in different sports. At the same time, the product should also enable people of different body types to obtain appropriate clothing pressure and produce a "nude feeling" experience. In order to realize the universality of the product, the team developed the pattern with 3D model, established the human model library, and combined with the fabric elasticity data tested by the team, we can use the simulation software to calculate what kind of fabric to use and what kind of pattern to make. The products made in this way are generally comfortable for different people. With the accumulation of the number of mannequins, the products will be continuously optimized.
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The supply chain "stretched for a long time"
Insights and thoughts on these products will eventually be implemented in the supply chain. Wei Yuan believes that it is difficult to support the team's vision of products under the usual "marketing+design +ODM factory" mode of light sports brands. COCOFIT can't float on the supply chain, but make the supply chain "heavy" and "within reach".
Taking "Elasticity" series as an example, in order to meet the high clothing pressure demand of people with weak sports attributes, the team matched the cutting-edge material technology of liquid "Lycra" for the product, which can change the local characteristics of the fabric and enlarge the local elasticity, so the elasticity of this product in the hip lifting part will be increased to 200%. However, although liquid lycra is good, it is only a water-soluble coating and cannot be used alone. You need to match the right fabric to achieve sufficient results. What kind of fiber liquid lycra is matched with what kind of weaving method can give full play to its advantages in elasticity, which involves a lot of "know-how" industry tacit knowledge. Therefore, brands can really use this new technology only by understanding the advantages and disadvantages of upstream new materials and technologies and thoroughly understanding all links in the supply chain.
According to Wei Yuan, in the past, when suppliers developed a piece of fabric, technicians usually developed it according to their own imagination, which was similar to the logic of adjusting the formula in chemical experiments. However, the problem with this "empirical" method is that there is not enough guidance on how much and in which direction to adjust, so the adjusted "formula" may not be what consumers want. Some fabric suppliers have developed dozens of new fabrics a year. Although each fabric has its own characteristics, only a few of them can actually be put into the consumer market.
Therefore, the team participated in the fiber selection of customized development fabrics from the source, and carried out precise directional development with suppliers.
Due to Wei Yuan's accumulation in the supply chain when he worked for Ali, the team aimed to establish a technology supply chain. After blindly testing the product demand of people with different attributes, the team consulted the cooperation model between Xiaomi and eco-chain enterprises, sorted out the product definition book according to the demand insight, and gave the factory simple instructions accurate to the parameters. "They just give us the parameters that he can control, and we will do all the other things."
"Our logic is not to let suppliers develop fabrics, and then we choose one from them. But first understand what consumers want, put the demand into performance parameters, and define specific numerical indicators, different opening, stretching and rebound indicators. Suppliers can do it according to the indicators, so the development is very accurate. " Wei Yuan said.
In the choice of fabrics and suppliers, the team chose to believe "Made in China". Teams rarely choose pure imported fabrics, and they don't value whether suppliers import big-name foundries. Wei Yuan said that this is based on the confidence in the technological innovation capability of domestic manufacturing enterprises, especially the technological innovation capability of application layer. He believes that at present, the technical capabilities of domestic fabric manufacturers and some fiber manufacturers have reached the international frontier level, and the goal of the team is to help these enterprises tap their potential and realize the market faster. "Domestic enterprises can develop better fabrics with clear guidance and demand, which has been verified by our actual development process for half a year."
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Wei Yuan introduced that the supply chain management of many brands mainly focuses on procurement, inventory management and logistics distribution, but COCOFIT has done two more things in the supply chain. One is the fine management of the opposite parts, and the team directly participates in the production plan of the supplier's factory. The design and production stocking plan of the fabric factory is issued by COCOFIT brand, and the team can control the stocking quantity and safe storage period of each color product; Second, strictly manage the quality control link. Every batch of fabrics produced by the fabric factory should not only be sent to a third-party testing organization for testing, but more importantly, it should be sent to COCOFIT's laboratory to test the stretching and resilience characteristics of fabrics in each opening interval according to the elasticity testing standards preset by the product team, and at the same time test the performance of fabrics in different temperature and humidity environments. After comprehensive tests such as comfort elasticity, washing, color difference, color fastness and wear resistance, these fabrics can enter the fabric library of garment suppliers.
The team put the precise control of the fabric link in the front, which lightened the burden of garment manufacturers and enabled them to obtain fabrics directly from fabric suppliers according to orders, which was equivalent to purchasing spot fabrics and accelerated the production speed of garments.
The vertically integrated supply chain management and control mode also brings cost advantages to products. For example, in the garment manufacturing process, COCOFIT will directly intervene in the cutting process of garment suppliers. Because the biggest cost of products comes from fabrics and fibers, the control of cutting links can greatly save costs. "We have done a lot of work to help manufacturers reduce cutting loss, so although we use top-grade fibers and the fabric cost is 20-30% more expensive than competing products, the price is still 10-20 yuan cheaper than competing products. To be cost-effective, it is not to deduct the price of the supplier, but to reduce the loss of the whole link. " Wei Yuan said.
In terms of marketing strategy, COCOFIT takes Tmall as the center, combining Little Red Book and community word-of-mouth marketing. COCOFIT was officially launched on February 3 this year for Tmall sales, and achieved the top 3000 women's wear one month later. After the outbreak, Tmall's traffic efficiency declined, and the team quickly decided to reduce commercial delivery, work hard on content marketing, and strengthen the link of "planting grass in the station-increasing purchase-closing". Under the epidemic situation, the team is very cautious when expanding other sales channels. At present, it has not invested too much in Tik Tok and Quick Hands, but has chosen to increase group buying. The team will be more inclined to cooperate with the person in charge of cross-categories, rather than with the person in charge of simply selling goods and the community. At present, the brand cooperates with hip-hop, yoga and floral communities.
Wei Yuan believes that it will save a lot of effort to be a brand during the capital dividend period, but it needs comprehensive ability, and the ability of product development, supply chain integration, retail management, consumer interaction and team management all needs time to accumulate. Although the scale of branding will be slower than the current dividend period, in the long run, good brands and teams will eventually break out after crossing this cycle.
Extended reading:
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