Analysis:
"If China doesn't have its own brand in the clothing industry, then China's clothing can only follow others forever and can only earn a little service fee forever." Chen Zhigao, general manager of Youngor North Clothing Co., Ltd. said.
In 2005, international high-end men's wear brands poured into China, and local men's wear brands such as Seven Wolves and Ba Jin showed their fists one after another, and the market competition of men's wear brands in China entered an increasingly fierce stage. Internationally, the textile trade disputes between China and Europe and the United States have become increasingly fierce, and China's textile and clothing industry seems to have entered an eventful autumn. Despite the grim situation inside and outside the market, after 27 years of development, Youngor has accumulated strength and laid a solid foundation for brand innovation.
Up to now, Youngor has established four centers: sales center, product exhibition center, after-sales service center and sales information collection and analysis center, forming the road of building China's own high-end men's wear brand in the form of high-tech innovative products and flagship stores, but this road of development is also full of hardships.
The core of the brand is high technology.
General Manager Chen Zhigao introduced that Youngor's marketing and promotion methods have changed significantly in the past three years. This is because in the mid-1990s, especially from 1994 to 1997, the company developed very fast, and its sales increased by more than 80% for four consecutive years. However, after 2000, due to the increase of men's wear brands and fierce competition, the market began to be silent. With the trend of market segmentation becoming more and more obvious, Youngor is determined to carry out comprehensive innovation in brand marketing, including continuous channel reform and terminal information collection. But the focus of innovation is the high-tech innovation of products.
Chen Zhigao said: "Youngor's products insist on' I have you without' and' you have me new'. If everyone is the same product, there will only be a price war. This is not good for brand building. Under the current market development situation, we insist that new products stay ahead in the market. " Under this guiding ideology, Youngor successfully developed a series of key new products, such as HP shirts, VP non-ironing shirts, nano VP non-ironing shirts, and launched DP pure cotton non-ironing boutique shirts this year.
In the promotion of new products, Youngor is good at creating new concepts for the target population. For example, the newly introduced DP cotton non-ironing shirt has created the new term "new lining". It represents such an elite group: no matter when and where, their clothes will always be impeccable and glamorous. According to Chen Zhigao, general manager of Youngor, this technology was created by Youngor combining the experience of foreign brands with the increasingly subdivided local market.
From the integration of channels, the impact of high-end brands
Youngor's belief of "creating China's own world clothing brand" is increasingly firm. This can be seen from many details. The "openness and transparency" of its specialty stores is rare among domestic brands. Chen Zhigao, general manager, said that China has always believed that "goods are piled up" and shops are freight yards. The more goods in the store, the better the business. Youngor did the opposite. The clothes in the specialty store are sparsely arranged, and only one of the same style is put in the store. This is done to set off the brand's grade and image.
For the lifeline of the clothing industry-channel, Youngor has always insisted on reform. Since the establishment of the "independent channel" business strategy, Youngor started to lay a nationwide marketing network on 1995, and opened as many as 5,000 retail terminals in the peak period, including stores in shopping malls, self-operated stores and a large number of franchise stores. However, after determining the positioning of high-end brands, Youngor began to "slim down and reorganize" the channels.
After the establishment of the flagship store in Shanghai at the beginning of this year, the actual number of Youngor retail terminals dropped to 2,000, with more than 800 in-store stores and more than 300 self-operated stores controlled by Youngor.
"It took Youngor 5-6 years to reduce the number of retail terminals from 5,000 to 2,000." Li Rugang, vice chairman of Youngor, said.
This is a performance-based knockout, because of poor performance, the retail terminals that adopt the franchise model eventually became the largest number of layoffs, and only nearly 200 franchisees with good performance were retained. In addition, from the perspective of regional distribution, Youngor resolutely gave up a large number of terminals rooted in the rural market, because too low terminals actually damaged Youngor's brand image.