Thailand, CentralwOrld, this is one of the largest shopping malls in Southeast Asia, where many world brands have entered. This time, Zhou Jianping, Chairman of Hailan Group, and President Zhou Lichen presented here, announcing that its three major brands, HLA, Black Whale HLAJEANS, and OVV, have officially entered the Thai market. Globalization is an unstoppable trend. The deployment of domestic brands overseas will help the brand complete the planning level and globalize the brand image. For apparel companies, it is both an opportunity and a challenge.
Why do apparel companies want to go overseas?
The clothing profession is an important part of the fashion industry, and the fashion industry is based on the spiritual and civilized needs of people in the consumer era. In the past, fashionable civilization mostly originated from Europe. Taking Paris Fashion Week as an example, it has become the world's top fashionable industry event.
The presentation of world brands is actually a kind of civilized output. Fashion has been planned, produced, promoted, and sold products or services that are advanced in the times and decorate and beautify people's lives. It is attributed to the creativity and inspiration of different civilizations, and guides the direction of civilization and the preferences of the audience. Customers like foreign brands, but they also like the civilization on the back. Therefore, the export of the clothing profession is first of all the output of civilization. Another important reason is income. Take the American brand Nike as an example. In fiscal year 2018 (June 2017-May 2018), Nike's sales in Greater China were US$5.134 billion. Excluding the impact of exchange rates, it increased by 21% year-on-year. The growth rate is in all shopping malls. In the 2017 fiscal year, H&M's sales in China were 11.03 billion Swiss kronor (approximately 8.13 billion yuan), accounting for 4.8% of global sales. The highest income was Uniqlo. In fiscal year 2018, the revenue of Chinese shopping malls It accounts for 70% of its total revenue. The world's brands have made high incomes when they go overseas in my country.
The entire textile and apparel industry is also going abroad. According to the my country Minsheng Bank's "Textile and Apparel Industry Investment Strategy Statement in 2019", it is shown that domestic apparel industry consumption has steadily increased, and professional performance is stable. Going to the sea is the choice of many textile and apparel companies. As one of the industrial chains of the clothing industry, the textile manufacturing industry has been impacted by the low cost of Southeast Asia and other places. Blum Oriental, Jiansheng Group, Huafu Fashion, etc. have set up production bases in Southeast Asia, and the world trade situation and exchange rate fluctuations have changed. , The overseas deployment of textile and garment enterprises will help strengthen their cost advantages, and their competitiveness in world shopping malls is expected to increase. Fundamentally speaking, under the background of globalization trend, going overseas is also an industrial promotion and channel promotion of the clothing profession.
Why Southeast Asia?
Many times, the domestic think that the backwardness of Southeast Asian shopping malls can complete the impact of model dimensionality reduction. In fact, it is not. Take Thailand as an example. Thailand is a country where Eastern and Western civilizations blend. As the capital, Bangkok is the same as domestic cities such as Beijing and Shanghai. In other aspects, it is even at the leading level in Asia, so the requirements will only be higher.
From the perspective of shopping mall format, although the entire Southeast Asian region is multi-ethnic, it is mostly Asian, with similar civilizations and loose market competition. The total population of all countries in Southeast Asia exceeds 650 million, which is equivalent to half of my country's shopping malls. The market potential is huge. As a result, Southeast Asia has become a forward-looking post for globalization. According to the "2019 BrandZ Top 50 Chinese Overseas Brands Statement" released by the world's largest advertising group WPP Group and Kantar. It shows that the "brand power" index of Chinese brands in 2019 has increased by 15% year-on-year, which is three times the increase last year. The vitality and competitiveness of Chinese enterprises are increasing.
Among the many Chinese brands that have successfully gone overseas, Huawei is undoubtedly the leader. Lenovo and Ali follow closely behind, with extraordinary results, and many mobile phone brands such as vivo and OPPO are selling well overseas. Chinese brand corps have formed an overseas market. The strength of our country cannot be underestimated, and the world has to look at it with admiration. In the Internet industry, Alibaba launched Lazada, a Southeast Asian e-commerce website, and Tencent has directly or indirectly invested in Sea Group, Go-Jek, Traveloka, Pomelo Fashion, and Tiki.vn. Southeast Asia has become a battleground for Internet giants.
How to look at the overseas strategy of apparel companies?
The three major brands of Hailan House, Black Whale HLAJEANS, and OVV have different consumer groups. For example, Black Whale HLAJEANS focuses on young and fashionable men's and women's clothing, and OVV is a mid-to-high-end women's clothing brand. Many brands have different positioning. Regarding segmentation Shopping malls are the basic guarantee, and the multi-brand matrix also helps to satisfy the needs of personalized styles.
At the moment, young collectives have higher and higher requirements on clothing quality and planning, which also determines the satisfaction of multi-brand shopping malls. Apparel companies go overseas and often choose the platform + brand method, which can expand the market segments, and other brands also leave room for future market expansion. The brand matrix method will reduce the risk of overseas expansion, and brands can also form Synergistic effect. If you carefully analyze the development path of world brands, most of the world brands have been localized in the countries where they landed. In the two years of expansion in Southeast Asia, Hailan House has always implemented the "globalization-localization" strategy, that is, " To be the most globalized local brand and the most localized global brand".
The first is the localization of operations. In Thailand, due to legal restrictions, many global brands can only be carried out through agency or joint ventures, while Hailan House is directly managed, and a dedicated overseas team has been established locally. Independently expand stores overseas, recruit and handle overseas employees, and conduct localized operations.
In terms of marketing management, the marketing team is also an overseas local team. Starting from the store planning, it is based on the Southeast Asian local customs, which is different from the overall style of its domestic stores, combined with the local Thai style, and the Thai store uses a simple and light plan, black and gray. The lines are matched with the main white color, which is more world-like. Southeast Asia is a tropical region, and clothing styles cannot be copied domestically. Although Hailan House already has tens of thousands of SKUs, it has increased the development and distribution of T-shirts, thin jackets and other products for the characteristics of Southeast Asian shopping malls.
In the process of promoting the globalization of the brand, Hailan House has also taken on the responsibility of civilized export. The co-branded clothing launched in April this year was simultaneously sold in global stores and was also liked by overseas consumer groups. In the case of many brands looking for cooperation with popular foreign IPs, Hailan House selected classic domestic animations that date back to the 1960s, awakened the classic Monkey King in the hearts of several generations from scratch, and relied on the brand's overseas strength to export this to overseas. A classic domestic big IP and traditional oriental aesthetics.
Looking at global brands, globalization creates global influence, which can help companies integrate global resources and feed back domestic businesses. The backside of globalization is also global competition. The era of great navigation for apparel companies has only truly begun at present. In the future, we expect more Chinese brands to go abroad like Hailan House and create greater influence on a global scale. force.