How to transform physical clothing stores in the era of cloud consumption

　　Our reporter Liu Jin

　　This spring, the clothing consumer market is still warm and cold.

Not long ago, Metersbonwe Clothing Co., Ltd. closed its store at the intersection of Yan'an Road and Qingchun Road in Hangzhou, Zhejiang.

This is Metersbonwe's largest store in Hangzhou and the country's first O2O experience store.

　　This offline store, which was judged to "continue to lose money and had to be closed" reflects the dilemma that Metersbonwe has been trying to change in recent years but has not been able to break through. At the same time, many clothing brand physical stores have fallen into a trough in recent years. The epitome of.

In the past year, international fast fashion giants such as ZARA, Uniqlo, GAP, H&M, and MUJI have announced the closure of some stores.

　　Is the clothing store really out of fashion?

In the era of cloud consumption, how to adjust the offline layout of clothing brands? What kind of sales model is more suitable for the sustainable development of clothing brands?

Provide a good experience such as scenes, payment, etc.——

Optimized and refined physical stores

　　"In the past, many clothing brands used shop-shop methods to occupy the market, but now more and more clothing brands can more rationally optimize and make fine offline layouts." Jiao Pei, vice president of the China National Clothing Association, told reporters in the future. The physical clothing stores will certainly not disappear. The more important purpose of closing some stores is to optimize, stop losses in time for some stores with low quality, sparse passenger flow, and low efficiency, and concentrate efforts to upgrade some stores with high efficiency.

　　The reporter's interview also further confirmed the expert's opinion.

In the cold winter of the clothing store, there are still many brave men in the clothing industry who have bucked the trend.

　　In the Carbine flagship store on the fourth floor of Joy City, Chaoyang, Beijing, 2AM’s designer series are the national tide series and urban leisure series co-branded with Tsingtao Brewery. From styles to materials, from shop decoration to display methods, they are full of trends. .

Cabin Clothing Co., Ltd. will open more than 100 new stores throughout 2020, and its profit during the year will increase by 23.3%.

"Looking forward, Cabin will continue to invest in physical stores in shopping malls with high passenger flow." Yang Ziming, chairman of the board of directors of Cabin Clothing Co., Ltd., is confident in offline stores.

　　Also relying on offline stores for success is Ningbo Peacebird Fashion Apparel Co., Ltd.

According to the announcement, about 70% of the company's sales revenue is created by offline stores.

In 2020, Peacebird is expected to achieve a net profit of about 560 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of about 59%.

　　In the opinion of industry experts, the sense of experience is the core competitiveness of offline stores. Offline stores must focus on providing a good experience in various aspects such as scenes, products, collocations, services, and payment, and enrich and improve store functions in order to retain them. consumer.

Nike's Wangfujing global flagship store, which officially opened recently, is committed to creating immersive digital shopping experience.

The store has specially set up a private customized area, a smart basketball court and a running experience area, and also launched a mobile cash register and ordering system.

　　In addition, store location is very important, high-quality stores and shopping malls complement each other.

Tang Nan, general manager of the luxury category of Intime Department Store and CEO of Xiyou, told reporters that brand stores should provide customers with good experience and services to meet the needs of different consumer groups, while shopping malls can provide home service, return and exchange, and after-sales maintenance. And other links help consumers get more complete and professional services and guarantees.

Expand new sales time and space——

Integration of offline and online development

　　Xiao Yu, who works in a training company, told reporters that she likes shopping and buying clothes, but often encounters the problems of low styles, slow updates and high prices in clothing stores, so she mainly buys clothes online.

　　"Visible and tangible" makes it easier for brick-and-mortar brand stores to gain the trust and recognition of customers, but many inconveniences are real.

While online sales are convenient and low-priced, the problems of rising channel costs and uncontrollable traffic have also brought tremendous pressure to store merchants.

How can we attract customers to consume, or how can we sell the clothes in the store?

　　You Xiaozhou, who has been in the clothing business for three years, is very fortunate to start integrating stores and online last year.

She opened a clothing store in Wanyi Department Store on West Street in Huilongguan, Beijing. Affected by the new crown pneumonia epidemic, the number of customers visiting the store has greatly decreased since last year. You Xiaozhou has begun to expand from offline to online.

She will take the initiative to ask every customer who enters the store if she can add a WeChat account, and live broadcast sales with the store staff every afternoon and evening.

　　"Thanks to the opening up of online and offline, good interaction with customers not only increases online sales, but also provides more convenient information and services to offline customers." You Xiaozhou said, only It will become more and more difficult to do traditional offline business. This year, we will continue to integrate offline and online to drive store performance growth.

　　Offline stores can not only complete on-site sales, but also cultivate and accumulate valuable private domain traffic.

At the beginning of last year, due to the epidemic, the sales of Peacebird's offline stores across the country were almost zero.

Peacebird Women's Clothing Store in Rugao, Jiangsu promotes new products and activities through the circle of friends of the shop staff and community maintenance. During the second to the fourth day of the Lunar New Year, the single store performance exceeded 100,000 yuan.

Subsequently, Peacebird launched full-staff marketing for private domain traffic, and gradually established an omni-channel three-dimensional retail model, while actively exploring new social retail channels.

　　Carbine is also deploying online in multiple channels, using official WeChat mini programs and communities to implement DTC (direct channel management) strategies to tap the potential of private domain traffic.

According to the financial report, as of December 31, 2020, the number of Carbene omni-channel membership fans reached 10 million.

　　Experts believe that advancing the integration of offline and online and allowing the two to give full play to their respective strengths will become a breakthrough in the development of offline stores.

Apparel brands need to see their direction in a difficult situation. On the basis of the material and human resources of offline stores, they must connect offline and online, make good use of private domain traffic, and improve the training and performance evaluation mechanism of sales staff to allow offline stores. New sales time and space are extended online.

　　According to Chen Guoqiang, consultant of the China National Garment Association, the road to offline and online integration has a foundation, potential and a future.

Perseverance and innovation are equally important——

Enhance the value of brand culture

　　Since last year, some garment processing companies in Zhejiang have received a large number of garment orders from Internet celebrities.

Under the online sales pattern of "all-round price and mostly no profit", some Internet celebrities and clothing bloggers began to contact clothing factories to customize products through traders, hoping to enhance the value of brand culture through original designs.

　　The future of the clothing industry is certainly not to fight for low prices.

From the perspective of industry insiders, the market demand of the apparel industry is growing steadily every year. Who can take the product as the core and do a good job in marketing, technology, and culture can stick to the end.

　　While doing a good job in product quality, innovation is a problem that clothing brands must face.

In the announcement, Peacebird said that the reason for the improvement in performance was the company's continuous innovation in brand rejuvenation, digital operations, omni-channel retail, and organizational incentives.

　　Innovation is necessary, and perseverance is equally important.

Tang Nan told reporters that Xiyou is a high-end luxury goods buyer store under the Intime Department Store chain. With the help of business contacts, he has more contact with international luxury goods.

In her view, one of the important factors for the success of many international brands is focus and persistence, from supply chain to culture and communication, insisting on their own style for a long time.

Now the rise of many domestic designer brands has also noticed this.

　　Chen Guoqiang said that in order to achieve sustainable development for clothing brands, in addition to building a supply chain and possessing core technologies, it is very important to have a good culture.

The value of a brand lies in user thinking and market orientation. The foundation of brand recognition is the continuous output of brand culture, which represents the link between the brand's tonality products and consumers.

Apparel brands need to go beyond just making products and advance to the real promotion of culture, including management culture, brand culture, corporate culture, etc., in order to move from quantitative change to qualitative change and achieve sustainable development.