The niche culture no longer encloses self-cute Hanfu, JK, and Lolita to form three pits
The search volume of "Hanfu" on the online shopping platform surpassed that of "shirts", and a JK skirt sold 300,000 pieces within a few days... ", and has formed a market with annual sales exceeding tens of billions.
"Sankeng" culture from the niche into the public view
Hanfu, JK uniforms, and Lolita clothing are known as the "three pits" culture. They were originally only popular in certain circles. In recent years, they have gradually entered the public's field of vision and formed a new segmented clothing industry.
At present, there are nearly a thousand stores on Taobao selling Hanfu, JK uniforms and Lolita clothing, attracting a large number of fans.
In the past year, the "Chop Hand Party" bought the "Three Hangs" market represented by Hanfu, JK uniforms and Lolita apparel out of a scale of tens of billions.
Different from other industries, the "three pits" consumers are highly sticky, they tend to look for frequent purchases in one or several stores, and they often share and discuss them in the member groups of Taobao stores, buyer shows, etc. A store has become a gathering place for cultural circles.
And many "three pits" sellers are themselves fans of the culture, they have become watchers of trends and trends.
Regarding the development of the "three pits" culture, these people in the industry believe that despite the "bottleneck" under the influence of the epidemic, they are still optimistic about the development prospects. They believe that the market will continue to expand as the post-00s and even the post-ten generations enter.
It is understood that the "three pits" market represented by JK uniforms continues to be hot. In addition to the rise of circle culture, it also has a lot to do with young people daring to wear them and parents' tolerance of diversified dressing styles.
Hanfu fans add 10% every year
The audience of Hanfu is mainly young people born in the 90s, 95s, and 00s, with an average age of 22 to 34.
"With the development of China's economy and culture, young people are becoming more and more confident in Chinese culture. They feel that wearing Hanfu and using national fashion products is a very proud thing. And young people are more willing to try new things. They are also more willing to share their own feelings and experiences, which has led their parents, teachers and other people around to also like Hanfu and Chinese cultural products, which has become a popular trend." "Qingshuixi Hanchu" brand Co-founder Tang Wei said.
According to the statistics of Hanfu News, a media in the Hanfu circle, the number of registered Hanfu members alone reached 4.53 million, and it has maintained a growth of more than 10% every year.
The number of merchants in Hanfu's business is also showing a rapid upward trend, with 196 in 2014, 655 in 2017, and 1518 in 2020, with an annual growth rate of double digits.
Because it is optimistic about the young generation market behind Hanfu and Han elements, Taobao shop "Qingshuixi Hanchu" transformed from a hand-painted clothing store to a Hanfu store, and has now entered the top ten in the same market in the country.
"With the development of embroidery technology and digital printing technology and the decrease in cost, the shop has switched from hand-painted designs to imitating Suzhou embroidery and traditional Chinese painting styles. The hand-painted designers have also been transferred to embroidery and digital printing pattern designers. Because of their many years of hand-painting skills As well as high aesthetics, it provides important transformation support for subsequent large-scale production." Tang Wei said that after solving the design style problem, he had encountered the problem of weak quality control standards in cooperative factories, but because the factories willing to do Hanfu were very The production cycle and production cost are very high. Finally, a lot of funds and resources are invested to solve the problems of production, quality control, supply chain and production execution, which greatly improves the entire production quality and quality control.
Tang Wei is optimistic about the future development of the Hanfu market.
He believes that Hanfu itself is not a niche "circle", but a part of Chinese culture, just like learning Chinese characters, speaking Chinese, Chinese medicine, and porcelain for eating.
"Any public comes from a small group, such as smart phones, new energy vehicles, including the more popular artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things, etc.." He believes that now national style products account for less than 10% of the entire social consumer goods. %, there is still a lot of space and opportunities. I hope that all sectors of society will give more support and attention.
JK uniforms are versatile and practical, "sought after" by young girls
JK uniforms are generally divided into two categories: Western-style uniforms and sailor suits. The styles include shirts, middle clothes, sweaters, vest skirts, suits, coats, etc., and they will also be matched with accessories such as bows and ties.
Among the "three pits", it belongs to the category with the lowest price threshold.
Compared with Lolita clothing and Hanfu, JK uniforms are not only simple in design, but also versatile and practical, which is why it is liked by many young girls.
Similarly, because it is popular among student groups, it is easier to explode.
Fans are mainly concentrated in first- and second-tier cities, aged between 18 and 24. With the long-term expansion, the crowd has also spread to third- to fifth-tier cities, and is becoming younger and younger.
The "Salt Baked Little Planet" JK uniform shop opened in June 2019, and has experienced the process of this trend gradually moving from a niche to a popular one.
The initial market is not saturated, the biggest difficulty is not sales, but to solve the problem of production technology.
"In order to make the first batch of skirts, we lived near the factory for a month and got familiar with every process of production. Finally, I tried on and tested the patterns one by one before sending them out." The shop owner Fu Linying said, these are the details. The control of the brand also laid the foundation for the subsequent growth of the brand and gained more and more fans.
The price of JK uniforms is relatively low. A skirt costs about 100 yuan, and 200 yuan can be used to match a set. Therefore, the profit is relatively thin, and the seller is taking the "small profits but quick turnover" route.
"Salt Baked Little Planet", like other clothing stores, faces the problems of copycat and low-price competition.
Fu Linying believes that a strong supply chain is very important, and secondly, it is necessary to flexibly respond to market changes. Development of products, expansion of channels, and better services are the keys to continuing to gain a foothold in the future.
Lolita "Princess Trend" is favored by anime lovers
Princess dresses with lace, ribbons and bows. This fashion trend like palace dolls is Lolita dress. The main styles are sweet, classical, gothic and so on.
Domestically, its fans are mainly concentrated in economically developed cities and first- and second-tier cities, including Beijing, Chengdu, and Chongqing.
Between the ages of 16 and 25, they are mainly high school students, college students and newcomers who are new to the workplace. They love animation and are relatively easy to accept new things.
Lian Tingting, the owner and chief designer of Miss Dotdian Fashion Club, was promoted from a fan to a "seller".
She studied fashion design in college, because she likes anime "going into the pit" Lolita costumes.
In 2009, she opened a hand-made shop on Taobao, where she made some simple accessories, skirts, and pumpkin pants and sold them online. Unexpectedly, she earned 3,000 yuan in the first month, which is also the "first pot of gold" in her life.
"At that time, most people thought of Lolita clothing as fancy outfits. Most fans gathered in the post bar to learn about related information and products." Lian Tingting said that her store has been open for more than ten years, and it has been interrupted in the middle. Because the circle is too small and the audience is too small, he changed to retro women's clothing.
In 2017, driven by short videos and other publicity channels, the "lo circle" suddenly "strengthened".
I have accumulated a certain amount of fan accumulation and fund accumulation, and separated the retro women's clothing separately, and concentrated on doing "lo circles".
In 2019, offline physical experience stores were opened in Shanghai and Hangzhou. This year, May Day plans to open a third store in Nanjing.
Lian Tingting said that under the background of the epidemic, Lolita apparel has been affected by its relatively high price.
But the market will continue to expand in the next five to ten years.
"Under China's population base, the number of niche cultural lovers is also very large." At present, third-tier cities and even county-level cities have begun to purchase Lolita clothing to meet market demand.
"Diandiandian" will also carry out more cross-industry cooperation, such as with musicals, animation IP, etc., and cooperate with other cultural circles for common development.
Text/Reporter Chen Si