Underwear Industry Market: Service Quality Is The Factor To Increase Consumer Stickiness

This article is reprinted from: new retail business review by Qian Luoying

"This underwear is just as comfortable as not wearing it. You must buy more than 2 underwear! Buy one for your friends and mom No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, No.

During the "double 11" promotion this year, the change of underwear category was that the new domestic brand ubras caught up with UNIQLO, which has been dominating the list in recent years, and ascended to the top 1 position.

In addition to uberas, new underwear brands such as bananin, Neiwai, milk sugar pie, and livary Mio are popular in the consumer and capital markets this year.

Science and technology, comfort, fashion, antibacterial materials are the key words of these new brands. It seems to be the formula for them to successfully get out of the circle by digging into the needs of consumers, customizing vertical segmentation products, and supplemented by precise marketing methods.

Women's aesthetic and pursuit of brassiere are constantly evolving, and their consumption choices are also more abundant.

Sun Su, director of tmall underwear industry, told Mr. retail: "Chinese consumers have a high acceptance of new brands. Among the top 100 brands (flagship stores) of tmall's double 11, 20% are new and cutting-edge brands established within three years."

On the other hand, traditional underwear brands are in a dilemma -- Taking "Victoria's Secret" as a typical example, after canceling the eye-catching marketing method of Vimy show, the latest financial report data of L brands, the parent company of Vimy, shows that the sales of Q1 in 2020 will be 822 million US dollars, a decrease of 45.6%; in the second half of this year, the British company of Weimi announced bankruptcy.

Looking at China, manifen and city beauty are adjusting their product R & D and operation strategies; the first generation of "netsheng" underwear brands, such as greyl and crab secret, are adapting to the changes of the times through brand upgrading, diversified product innovation and even creating new brands.

How can new brands make new patterns in the traditional category of underwear? How can traditional brands with large and complete product lines compete with new sharp brands in vertical subdivision categories? Are there any opportunities for new brands to enter the bra and underwear market?

Mr. retail successively interviewed representatives of three generations of underwear brands, including milk sugar pie, Corell, Diane Fen and relevant responsible persons of tmall underwear industry, hoping to restore the views and specific practices of the industry on the latest changes in the underwear industry.

Key to success: precise positioning + excellent products

The products, positioning, service and marketing of new brands such as ubras and jiaonei are the key research objects of underwear industry practitioners. Dabai, founder of milk sugar pie, Zhang Xiang, founder of Corell and Evan, e-commerce director of dianfen China, all recognize the logic and value of these brands.

"If it wasn't really something, they wouldn't have been so successful in the underwear category." Zhang Xiang said that the comfortable and easy-to-wear characteristics of ubras catered to the pursuit of comfortable and non feeling underwear of consumers who had been staying at home for a long time during the epidemic period, and "cured their choice difficulty" with no size.

"They have a clear insight into the current needs of consumers, and their positioning is very accurate. The social marketing mode has allowed it to grow exponentially, and has maintained word-of-mouth and user stickiness with good quality products."

In addition to the pursuit of comfort, the data from tmall platform show that latex bra, large bra with small bra and girl bra are all vertical sub categories with rapid growth in tmall bra category.

"There are two trends in this year's * *, one is the emergence of a lot of high-speed growth segments; the other is that the brand matrix is changing in the subdivided track and underwear market." Sun Su said.

The three underwear companies interviewed by Mr. retail also confirmed this view. As "predecessors", Gloria and dianfen failed to meet their expectations on double 11 this year, with only milk sugar pie sales increasing by 150% year-on-year. In addition, the annual sales of milk sugar pie have reached 100% rapid growth this year.

This is due to the unique positioning of the milk sugar school. As it specializes in the market of large breasts above the c cup, its brand development concept, business logic and marketing method are obviously different from other brands, and even different from the main no size uberas.

Dabai told the retailer that people with large breasts have higher requirements for the support and comfort of brassiere. At the same time, because of different types of large breasts, the product types are more diverse.

In addition, the user's choice of underwear is not the same. Some people want big breasts to look small in order to look good on clothes, some pursue concave convex effect, and others just want to wear comfortable without burden

Therefore, large bra can not be standardized at all and can only be customized according to the needs. This is also one of the main reasons why the big chest market has not been valued by traditional underwear brands.

"A lot of consumers have been wearing inappropriate bras and suffering until they know about the fudge pie."

A PU, the chief designer of the milk sugar school, studied architectural design. It was because there was no bra suitable for him all over the world that he and Dabai hit it off. After professional training, he embarked on the road of self-sufficiency bra design.

Open the classification list of tmall flagship store of milk sugar pie, you can see the products classified by three chest types: disc chest, hemispherical chest and papaya chest. It also links to the chest type evaluation page. Dabai said that this is the first classification and evaluation method of milk sugar pie in the industry.

In addition to classification according to chest type, milk sugar pie also takes care of different needs of users according to scene and function.

"We have a lot of SKUs in the whole bra brand." Big white said. As a result, the demand of small batch sugar production is 50% - 100%. However, this does not hinder the loyalty of big breast users to the milk sugar pie, with a repurchase rate of 40%.

The success of the milk sugar pie has also attracted the attention of the industry. Zhang Xiang believes that large chest and large size underwear are very potential markets at home and abroad, and are one of the future development trends of underwear categories.

Dianfen also takes the big bra as one of the driving forces in the future, hoping to rely on the introduction of Taiwan's advantageous product line to layout this field.

However, Gretel and dianfen, which have been developing for many years in the whole category of brassieres, obviously will not focus the whole brand on the big bra or any vertical subdivision category. They are more eager to develop in an all-round way.

"The core of Riel's products is still fashion. How to carry out diversified innovation on the basis of fashion, increase the comfort of products, and how to increase repurchase, develop flexible supply chain and low inventory are the main directions of our efforts. "

Zhang Xiang revealed that the design and R & D team of Corell maintains a turnover rate of 50% every year, and more design talents after 95 and 00 are used to stimulate internal innovation and maintain the flow of fresh blood.

Evan said that in addition to the product details accumulated over the years, the brand image of "independent, confident and beautiful women" created by dianfen has also been rooted in the hearts of consumers. White collar workers aged 25-29 and exquisite mothers aged 30-35 are still the main consumers of dianfen.

At the same time, dianfen is also actively arranging new white-collar workers and young people in small towns. Girls' bras are another future power point besides big bra: "we hope that mothers and daughters can use Diane's bras."

Besides products, pay close attention to service and marketing

In addition to excellent product quality, service quality has become one of the decisive factors to increase consumer stickiness.

"The material and feeling of bra are conveyed by touch, which can't be conveyed online." Zhang Xiang said. Therefore, online and offline consumption linkage and experience upgrading are the work points of the "predecessors" brand, and also the place where emerging brands like milk sugar pie want to make breakthroughs.

"To make our users use the products correctly, we need service personnel to guide them," Dabai said. No matter how much text or video is used online, it is not as good as the service on the opposite side of the line. " Milk sugar pie, which has opened an experience store in Guangzhou, hopes to expand the scale of offline stores as soon as possible.

Dabai's idea is to set up large experience stores in the first, second and third tier cities in China, and there should be enough fitting rooms in the stores, so as to meet the experience, purchase and service needs of big breasted girls in the whole city. But Dabai said frankly: "for the current milk sugar pie, such store construction still needs some time to test and prepare."

The logic of Gorrell's offline comprehensive experience store is different from that of milk sugar pie. As early as a few years ago, girell stores were reported by the media for selling flowers, household goods and other non underwear products. Zhang Xiang told retail Jun that practice has proved that this is definitely the growth point of user stickiness.

According to Zhang Xiang, Gorrell wanted to make the offline comprehensive experience store in the form of o2o, that is, all products online and offline are completely synchronized. After that, 30% of the online and offline products were related to the online and offline products.

"The price sensitivity of users to non-standard products is not high, and there is a high premium space In addition to household goods, we are trying underwear related edge products, and it turns out that this method is very effective. "

In the past, most of the offline stores of dianfen were opened in traditional department stores, but now they are gradually distributed to younger shopping centers.

For dianfen's online and offline member service system, Evan confidently said: "dianfen is in a leading position in the industry in terms of member marketing and member operation. Users can experience in the store smoothly and then place an order online. We are also actively laying out wechat apps, opening up the entire offline and online membership system, so that consumers can have a unified consumption experience in different channels. "

Although it has more advantages in user service, the former brands also admit that they need to learn from the new sharp brands in terms of marketing means such as live delivery with goods and online celebrity marketing.

Sun Su thinks: "what is the underwear brand with brand ability? The first is accurate consumer insight, which can grasp the subdivided consumers and develop the right products; the second is to establish its own unique brand spirit core and visual identification system; the third is to have its own core strategy on direct to consumer."

Born in 1880 and with German blood, Diana is very low-key and introverted in brand promotion, and even has no brand spokesperson in the domestic market.

"We (China) are also adjusting to adapt to the market." Evan told retail Jun that for young consumers, Diane put product information of sloggi and amostyle, which are younger sub brands, on platforms such as xiaohongshu.

In recent years, the marketing of milk sugar pie mainly relies on the "tap water" propaganda of loyal users. As early as shortly after the establishment of the milk sugar pie, the retail king saw relatives and friends calling for the milk sugar pie for free on the home page of the microblog. The big chested ones were planted with grass, and the small ones watched the excitement.

However, such a marketing approach is mainly due to the uniqueness of the milk sugar pie. Dabai said: "the emergence of the word" big chest "will be limited in shaking tone and small red books. As soon as the promotional pictures of the milk sugar pie on microblog appear, it is easy to be directly" harmonious. ". Therefore, we are not suitable for extensive advertising, mainly through Koc strategy, so that KOL and Koc can share more experience from the heart, which is more effective. "

Dabai revealed that since this year, the milk sugar pie has made efforts in the content marketing and live delivery of online popular KOL. After the offline service system has been established, the publicity and marketing will be promoted to a higher level.

In addition to the efforts of the brand itself, the boost behind the platform has to be mentioned. Sun Su told Mr. retail, "new underwear brands generally choose tmall as the stage of brand construction, because tmall has a set of mature brand development support system. Besides the business growth system of stores from new stores to key stores in the head, it also includes business systems, such as consumer operation, brand advertising and marketing, trend insight and product research and development In terms of flow system and financial system, tmall (ALI group) has a mature brand full link support system, which helps the growth of new and cutting-edge brands.

Sun Su also said that tmall underwear will make reports on the trend of various categories and issue them regularly to help new and old brands adapt to market changes and cut into the subdivision track more quickly.

Capital favors, but this is not the end

Capital has long smelled the new opportunities of underwear category. Since the second half of last year, many new underwear brands have announced that they have obtained a new round of financing.

It is expected that the new round of financing will be carried out for the white sugar brand, which will be used for a new round of rapid growth and upgrading in the supply chain next year.

Zhang Xiang said that financing is the only way for brand growth, but the time has not yet come for the current Gorrell. When it comes to future plans, Gretel will continue to focus on the domestic underwear market, focusing on online sales, while enhancing the offline service experience, so as to achieve a compound growth of 10% - 20%.

In recent years, the new underwear trend has been rising again and again, giving birth to more emerging underwear brands.

"According to my observation, there will be new brands in underwear category every 3-8 years." Zhang Xiang repeatedly stressed in the interview, "if we want to survive, we can't be content with the status quo, and we should differentiate with the new brand."

For the big bra market, which is gradually valued by people, the fudge school is ready to face fierce competition: "this is a market with over 10 billion and rapid growth, accounting for more than 20% of bra users. If more people join in the benign competition and cover more users with differentiation method, it is good for the whole market."

Dianfen, which has a relatively stronger strength, will continue to stick to its "position", maintain and expand its loyal user base with its excellent design and production technology, combined with the advantages of online and offline service linkage.

"As a century old brand, it is really difficult for us to make a turnaround. However, we have made corresponding adjustments in R & D, design and marketing strategies. With years of accumulation, our product barriers are still very high and still have a strong explosive force."

With the ever-changing market demand, channels, supply chain and marketing methods are becoming more and more mature. For each underwear brand, how to stand firm in the current of the times is always a fresh topic.