The Prevalence Of Rimless Underwear: Who Has Grasped The Tuyere And Who Has Missed The Opportunity?

Under the influence of the epidemic situation, people work at home, keep fit, and the fashion circle is once again blowing sports and leisure. People's requirements for clothing comfort are also further improved. In the field of women's underwear, with the change of aesthetics and concepts, the "C" position of gathered underwear is no longer occupied. Instead, it is comfortable and simple underwear without steel rims. In this trend, who seized the opportunity and who missed the opportunity?

Young people prefer rimless underwear

With the change of women's aesthetic and concept, the underwear style closely related to them is also changing. In the 16th century, Western women's underwear was mainly designed with corset waist to enhance the chest. In the early 20th century, the recognized modern underwear was invented. For a long time after that, underwear mainly took on the responsibility of holding the chest and maintaining the beautiful curve of women. The main role of underwear in the prevention of sagging, or in fact, is not proving to be effective in preventing the sagging of the chest.

Although the gathered type of underwear with steel rims still occupies a place in the market, but in the past two years, the popularity of underwear without steel rims is booming. Women are attracted by the concept of comfort and simplicity and the pursuit of freedom, and focus on their own feelings instead of the single pursuit of sexy curve.

According to the consumption growth rate of the underwear industry after 2015-90, the consumption volume of the underwear industry will continue to grow by 95% in the past half of 2016, especially the consumption of the underwear industry will continue to grow after 2015. Bralette, which goes further than rimless underwear, has a 172% increase in market size in 2018. At present, Taobao Search underwear, the top three types of underwear sales are rimless underwear.

According to the statistics of Euromonitor, a British research company, UNIQLO's parent company, fast retailing group, accounted for 20.03% of the Japanese women's underwear market in 2017, catching up with wargol (20.11%), which ranks first. Huagol mainly focuses on gathering underwear. The top 5 underwear sales trends in China were released in the top 5 underwear market list published by ndata in 2018.

The emerging underworld underwear brands are rapidly "encircled", and the performance of Weimi and urban beauty is declining

In the domestic market, the start-up underwear brands without steel rims are also rising and expanding rapidly. Ubras, which is supported by Ouyang Nana, was founded in 2016. In 2018, it received a round of financing of 50 million yuan, and opened its first offline flagship store in 2019. During last year, the sales of underwear and underwear of ubras were less than 6 hours without steel ring.

The underwear brands established earlier than ubras have already occupied more market share. Founded in 2012, the brand concept is to "make a underwear that makes people feel free", and invited cuckoo to become the spokesperson in 2018. As a brand starting from online, the company is currently ranked top 5 in the category of tmall underwear. In October 2019, the company has obtained 150 million yuan of round C financing, and by the end of 2019, there have been more than 60 offline stores.

In just a few years, the brand of underwear without steel rims, which focuses on comfort, function and aesthetic feeling, has quickly "enclosed" in the underwear market. According to the data released by cbndata, UNIQLO, manifen and Nei Wai are the top 3 in China's rimless underwear market in 2018. While Victoria's Secret (hereinafter referred to as "Weimi"), an international brand focusing on gathering underwear, and a domestic brand, city beauty, are facing the dilemma of declining performance.

In May this year, l brands, the parent company of Vimy, reported a net loss of $275 million in the first quarter of 2020. Among them, Weimi's first quarter sales fell 46% year-on-year to $822 million, and plans to close 256 stores this year. In fiscal year 2019, the company's performance was not satisfactory, especially in the fourth quarter, where sales fell 10% year-on-year. In November 2019, the 24-year Vimy show was cancelled. According to coresight research, the share of the U.S. women's underwear market fell from 31.7% in 2013 to 24% in 2018.

Domestic underwear brand city beauty is also facing the problem of transformation. In the first half of this year, the city beauty is expected to lose 120 million yuan. In 2019, the income of the city beauty will drop by 19.9%, the loss will be 1.389 billion yuan, and the number of stores will be 1335. The stock price will drop from the highest HK $9.12 in 2015 to HK $0.58 today (closed on July 8). In the annual report of 2019, urban beauty clearly pointed out that the previous business strategies failed to meet the needs of most female consumers for practical, functional and cost-effective products, and would implement a transformation plan to shift from fast fashion sexy products to practical, functional and cost-effective products. Facing the current consumer's pursuit of comfort and utility, urban beauty has had to change its strategy.

Sports brands are laying out women's underwear

In addition to underwear brand, sports brand in underwear market exploration is also deepening. According to coresight research, from 2013 to 2018, sports retailers such as Nike, andama, Adidas, lululemon and champion have increased their share in the U.S. women's underwear market. One third of the millennial generation spent on underwear in the United States in 2018.

Take Nike as an example, its female business achieved double-digit growth in fiscal year 2019, with sales growth of sports underwear and women's shoes driving performance. Nike executives have made it clear that they are trying to broaden the range of products through women's underwear and tights. In recent two years, Nike has launched a number of sports underwear. In addition to improving the technology and fabric, it also classifies different sports types and styles, adding a variety of sizes to cover consumers of different sizes.

At present, the brands in China's underwear market are still relatively scattered. According to Euromonitor International, the market concentration of the top five brands in China's underwear market in 2018 was 6.6%, while the market concentration of the top five brands in Japan, the United States and the United Kingdom was 56%, 47% and 22%, respectively. China's underwear market still has the potential of market share in the top brand set. At the same time, China's underwear market has huge growth potential. According to AI media consulting data, the size of China's underwear market has reached about 200 billion yuan in 2019, of which women's underwear market accounts for more than 60% of the total market size.

In the fierce competition of traditional underwear brands, emerging underwear brands, sports brands and e-commerce channel goods, the reform of rimless underwear has come. At a time when all parties are making efforts, China's 100 billion scale underwear market still needs to be tested by the market.