Fast Fashion To Subvert "Fast Fashion" Must Be Solved As Soon As Possible.

Fast wake up from the dream, fashion has realized that we must find a breakthrough as soon as possible.
According to Swedish online news website breakit.se, H&M group has made a very surprising plan to announce that it will sell other clothing brands in H&M brand stores.
The brand first said on a recruitment website that it would open to external brands to increase brand vitality. At present, H&M has developed an implementation plan and will be tested in some shops in H&M.
A spokesman for the company said that the complementarity between external brands and internal brands would make H&M attractive to new shoppers, but declined to give more details.
Previously, H&M group's &OtherStories and Arket have tried to sell other external brand products in the store.
Some analysts believe that the move signifies that the 72 year old fast fashion brand is making significant strategic changes. It goes without saying that in addition to Zara and UNIQLO, it will compete directly with the multi brand online retailers such as Germany Zalando and British ASOS.
Other fast fashion brands that have started selling other brands include the British fast fashion Next, which has developed its website from a single brand website to an online collection store of multi brand clothing, footwear and household goods in the past ten years.
The British fast fashion Topshop will also be landing on the fast fashion e-commerce platform ASOS in September 30th. The Topman belonging to Arcadia group has also landed on the platform in June.
It is reported that CVA voluntary bankruptcy application submitted by Arcadia group has been approved. The focus of future development will be on digital channels. At present, a number of retail entities have been closed and will be completely withdrawn from the Chinese market.
In fact, this is not the first time H&M has passed the signal of breaking the border.
In April this year, H&M opened a new version of the Internet platform Itsapark beta to the public. The platform aims to provide consumers with a place to solve fashion problems and seek new inspirations, so that people can exchange ideas and suggestions around fashion modeling.
Itsapark adopts a visual format similar to Instagram. Users can ask questions or answer in the form of pictures, videos and texts. Besides answering, the website also provides links to all products involved, including not only private brands, but also competitors, such as ASOS, Topshop, RiverIsland and New Look, which has aroused widespread concern in the industry.
Creating a shopping platform can bring more freshness and vitality to H&M.
In August of this year, H&M was involved in the hot clothing rental service. It is reported that H&M members will be able to hold exclusive collections at the flagship store in Seeger square, Stockholm. The store will be reopened in late autumn 2019, and a sewing workshop will be set up, where consumers can mend or customize garments.
H&M said that the development of garment rental and repair business is an important step towards a sustainable and recycling fashion future.
At the same time, after GiambattistaValli and other related series suffered setbacks in the market, H&M also tried to inject fresh feelings into the designer's joint venture series that entered the bottleneck.
In July, H&M announced a series of ANGEL CHEN xH&M, a collaboration with Chinese designer Chen Anqi Angel Chen, which has been pre sold at the official Tmall flagship store in September 11th and will be officially launched on September 21st in H&M Tmall super brand days.
This series is designed by AngelChen and H&M internal design team, inspired by Kung Fu, and is the first Chinese designer cooperation series launched by H&M. The unit price is between 199 yuan and 1490 yuan.
H&M attaches great importance to the series, not only increasing publicity efforts, but also choosing Zhang Yixing, the spokesman for the men's wear in the Greater China region, and the supermodel Liu Wen to take up the advertising blockbuster in.
In August, H&M released an advertising blockbuster series with designer PalesaMokubung, which has 15 products, which have been launched in H&M select stores and official website since August 15th. PalesaMokubung founded its personal brand Mantsho in 2004, meaning "black is beautiful".
PernillaWohlfahrt, director of H&M design, said that the brand especially liked the designer's modern and sharp vision, and the design style of using color, printmaking and tailoring to highlight the female profile.
Obviously, H&M has realized that by launching a joint series strategy with world-renowned designers, it can no longer adapt to the increasingly difficult appetite of consumers.
The targeted joint launch of designers in different markets is more in line with the development needs of local markets in the context of global market. Working with independent designers can not only enhance freshness but also control costs.
Although the Itsapark platform and the sale of other brands are still in the initial stage, the industry has seen the efforts to break the fast fashion development in H&M. At least in the fast fashion market, which is generally bogged down in the quagmire, the unfavorable H&M is beginning to move ahead of Zara. It may have the opportunity to use the current window period to achieve "bend overtaking".
According to H&M group's third quarter performance report released on Monday, the group's sales rose 12% to 6 billion 257 million Swedish kronor about 4 billion 560 million yuan. The group said its growth was mainly due to the popularity of summer clothing and the gradual entry into transition strategy. Other detailed performance will be elaborated in the first 9 months of October 3rd.
In addition to trying to see fast fashion's efforts in channel transformation, the market also wants to see how fast fashion can subvert the rigid business model with innovative products and business models.
Zara's parent company Inditex group's earnings data are not entirely satisfied with the market. In the first half of July 31st, Inditex group's sales grew 7% to 12 billion 820 million euros, gross margin was 56.8%, which was basically flat with 56.7% last year, gross profit increased 7% to 7 billion 300 million euros, net profit increased 10% to 1 billion 550 million euro, less than analysts expected.
As of the end of the reporting period, Inditex group has 7420 stores in the world, a net decrease of 2 stores compared with the same period last year, of which the number of Zara stores is 2123.
Inditex group reported in its earnings report that the growth of sales and net profit in the first half of the year has broken the record of semiannual growth rate, and all markets and channels are growing. This achievement is mainly due to the promotion of digital business expansion.
Since this year, Zara has launched the first beauty series and maternity series, and has officially launched its customized business in the world's major markets this month to find new growth drivers.
However, analysts are still skeptical about whether the Inditex group with a large offline network can continue the myth online and how to achieve steady growth in the fierce electricity market.
Morgan Stanley analysts have said that although Inditex group's business model is still differentiated, but as Amazon and other business giants continue to overweight clothing industry, Zara's competitive edge in the market is declining.
Citigroup analyst Adam Cochrane and MatthewGarland said the decline in gross margin in the second quarter of the Inditex group is worrying because sales growth usually improves profitability.
In July of this year, Inditex group promoted chief operating officer CarlosCrespo as chief executive officer, and former CEO Pablo Isla continued to serve as chairman of the group.
This also means that the market wants to see fast fashion's efforts in channel transformation, and also hopes to see how fast fashion can subvert the rigid business model with innovative products and business models.
Anatomically fast fashion business models, it is easy to see that this model is already full of holes. On the one hand, by quickly copying the fast fashion of the high fashion trend, it once satisfied the consumer's psychology of satisfying the fashion desire with limited budget. But in the "surplus material era", consumers are already immune to various styles and inferior quality.
Neither H&M nor Zara has solved the problem of product quality which has been criticized for many times. Instead of using this short board as a long board, UNIQLO has suddenly come to a new stage. Under the help of technology, the fast fashion label has been completely removed.
On the other hand, the fast fashion traditional fast reaction advantage has been broken by the more light online "super fast fashion". Compared with online retailers such as Boohoo, Missguided and FashionNova, the physical shops of Zara and H&M have become a burden.
Although the two have invested heavily in digital transformation in recent seasons, their strategy for physical shops is still unclear. Whether to continue to open a shop or how to upgrade the shop is a problem to be solved.
Take China as an example, fast fashion brands are saturated in the first tier market, but in local fashion and Taobao dominated subsidence market, they are not acclimatized. At the same time, the gold market rent in the first tier market is continuously high, and the volume of retail sales and store efficiency are decreasing.
By contrast, many domestic fashion brands have worked with Alibaba and other technology giants to upgrade new stores, enhance store experience and try to attract more consumers.
Zara has recently closed the stores of two core business circles in Beijing: one is the Raffles shop in Dongzhimen, the other is the new Dongan store in Wangfujing. The two shops have been closed for more than two months. The exact reason is unknown. The new store is in the decoration stage. The successor businesses are lululemon, DIESEL and high-end beauty brand Lancome.
There are people in the industry who believe that closing stores may be related to the expiration of the lease. Fast fashion brands signed contracts with shopping centers between 10 and 15 years.
The physical store has brought down many fast fashion brands. Forever 21, which pulled out of the Chinese market earlier, is typical. According to Bloomberg citing sources familiar with the matter, as part of the restructuring plan, Forever21 will transfer part of its shares to the largest two owners, Simon Property Group and Brookfield Property Group, and the co founder Do WonChang will retain the remaining shares, but the specific transaction content has not yet been announced.
According to Bloomberg news, Forever21 originally planned to file for bankruptcy on Sunday, but was denied that it would continue to operate a physical store.
As the leader of American fast fashion, Forever21's biggest burden is its huge scale of physical stores. The brand still has more than 815 stores worldwide. The high rental cost makes it impossible for the brand to invest enough funds for new retail and technology to cope with the changing market trend and the rapid rise of competitors such as the Internet brand.
The increasingly depressed US retail environment can not give Forever21 enough traffic. According to the latest report, University of Michigan's consumer confidence index dropped to a 7 month low in August because people heard more bad news about the deterioration of the business environment and the setback of the US stock market, and the growing concern over consumption.
Both &OtherStories and Everlane are positioned above the high street, similar to those of H&M group's COS and Arket, catering to the taste of middle class consumption.
Recently, high street brands such as &OtherStories and Everlane have entered the Chinese market through Tmall rather than directly open shop. According to relevant sources, the brand and Tmall international cooperation from the start shop, the fastest one month to complete the process, which is obviously cheaper than the establishment of a physical store.
Both &OtherStories and Everlane are positioned above the high street, similar to the COS and Arket of H&M group, which solve the short board of fast fashion and cater to the taste of middle class consumption.
In particular, Everlane, the flagship fund, caters to consumers' pursuit of comfort and minimalist lifestyles like UNIQLO. The first theme of Everlane's entry into China was "real life", which was founded in 2011 by MichaelPreysman in San Francisco, USA, and is a high quality basic fund.
At first, only a cotton T-shirt was awarded $1 million 100 thousand in angel investment. Although Everlane resolutely does not open a physical store, it will set up an experiential store "TheLab" online, and online will invite different models of skin and color to take photos of products to meet the needs of different consumers.
However, it should be emphasized that channel is very important for brand management, but not as important as brand core strategy, nor as important as product itself.
UNIQLO is still opening shop crazily. At present, UNIQLO has about 700 stores in mainland China, and plans to increase to 1000 in 2020. The number of fans in Tmall flagship store is as high as 18 million 610 thousand. It is also the first fast fashion brand in WeChat's official flagship store.
The rapid growth of the brand's performance in the Chinese market is inseparable from the brand's aggressive expansion strategy. In addition to opening nearly 100 stores a year, the electricity and digital businesses combined with offline shops are also advancing smoothly. After entering China for 13 years and landing on Tmall 10th anniversary, UNIQLO's overseas business scale has exceeded Japan's domestic market under the impetus of Greater China.
UNIQLO has become an exception to the fast fashion industry. Like Everlane, UNIQLO's main source of revenue is the foundation. The brand's parity, simple and quality products become consumers' first choice for every season. UNIQLO is also the first traditional fast fashion brand to publish the list of supply chain. It aims to enhance its transparency so as to get consumers' trust.
In order to find a breakthrough, Ryui Masa, founder of UNIQLO, focused on technological innovation and channel digitalization of products, and accelerated global expansion. In his earnings report, he stressed once again that the group's medium-term vision is to become the world's leading apparel retailer by virtue of "digital consumer retail enterprises".
Ryui Masa also pointed out that the future clothing function is more important than fashion. He believes that fashion trends will change over time, but it is possible to provide functional products from actual needs, regardless of trends, and UNIQLO's business in China is also seen as an important part of promoting globalization.
UNIQLO is not only positioning itself with fast fashion, but also exploring its possibilities in sports. Some analysts said that Nike had a war sooner or later. Last year, 300 million dollars was signed for Federer. UNIQLO is so eager to compete for sports marketing resources. It has a sharp distinction with other fast fashion brands. Sponsorship contracts between sports brands and sports stars have always been a big business. Now fashion brands also want to be a spoiler.
Fortunately, new brands like Everlane have broken the traditional thinking framework, attracting consumers through innovative and sustainable business ideas, and providing more imagination for the future high street brand.
Under the premise of guaranteeing quality, Everlane's products strictly comply with the environmental protection principle from the very beginning. The production of ordinary jeans needs 1500 liters of water, while Everlane only needs 0.4 liters of circulating water. The brand Renew series is made of 3 million non degradable plastic bottles. MichaelPreysman, the brand's founder, said that if a brand wants to really implement the concept of environmental protection, it must have high quality and wearable clothing.
The era of volume winning and quick victory has passed. As the market becomes more saturated, consumers' desire and expenditure on clothing are becoming less and less, and the pursuit of comfort and sustainability is dominant. So if fashion is to find a way out, perhaps the first thing to do is to subvert itself.