Where is the way out for China's clothing industry and how to go in the future?

Through the research on the development history of China clothing in the past 30 years, we can find that almost all clothing categories in China have achieved today's achievements, which can be said to have gone through the same road of growth. In this process of growth and expansion, the success rules of representative brands of various clothing categories are strikingly similar.

The similarity of their road to success is mainly reflected in the growth and maturity of various categories of clothing in China, which basically went through three stages: production, category rise and industry consolidation.

Production stage: In 1980s, due to the relative shortage of materials, the whole garment industry was in short supply, and some private garment enterprises just started, so the garment industry was in the production stage. Under such a market structure, there are only two elements of market competition, one is to seize opportunities, and the other is to have products. The rules of the game are "no one has me" and "something is better than nothing". Manufacturers can sell anything they produce and sell as much as they produce.

Category rising stage: from the 1990s to the early 20th century, with the improvement of people's living standards and consumption capacity, people's pursuit of clothing is getting higher and higher, and clothing consumption began to show diversified characteristics. At this stage, various clothing categories began to rise with their unique category characteristics. Leading brands such as Youngor, Li Ning, Seven Wolves and Mi Bang Wei were born one after another. No matter what clothing category, many of the main brands we can see now are winners who have experienced the smoke of that era and moved from product competition to category competition. It can be said that the road of clothing brand in China started from this time.

Industry consolidation stage: In recent years, from the beginning of 2 1 century to the present, almost all leading brands of various clothing categories are doing one thing, that is, integrating the industrial chain. For the first time, China clothing rose from tactical actions such as marketing to strategic actions to integrate the industrial chain; Integrating the upstream, middle and downstream resources of clothing, so that clothing enterprises can respond more quickly, operate more efficiently, have stronger core competitiveness and control the core links of the value chain, is a great progress of China clothing industry.

Given the past, we can know the future. Our research on the development history of clothing industry is not only to understand the success secrets of some leading clothing brands, but more importantly, we hope to sum up the development trend of China clothing industry and find out the winning rules of the future clothing market by systematically sorting out the development history of clothing.

Marketing planning agencies's answer to the winning rule of the clothing market in the future is that there are two main outlets for the clothing industry and clothing enterprises in China in the future. One is to innovate the business model, and the other is to integrate the industrial chain, shorten the delivery time and speed up the response.

Why are we so sure? Let's take it slow:

The first stage, the initial stage: something is better than nothing.

/kloc-After the Cultural Revolution in 0/0, China people's love for beauty, which had been buried for ten years, began to be released in their clothes.

1979, Frenchman Pierre Cardin held the first "clothing exhibition" in China, which caused a sensation.

The following year, China's clothing industry began to break the dominance of green, black, gray and blue, and fashionable clothes such as suits, jeans, bell bottoms and battops appeared, and the clothes began to become a little colorful.

At the end of 1983, China completely cancelled the ticket distribution that lasted for decades, and the horn of the great development of the clothing industry has sounded. However, at that time, the private clothing industry was still in the state of collective workshop processing, and the main bodies were still state-owned enterprises such as Shanghai Conch and Beijing Tiantan Shirts, and the share of private enterprises was very small.

Moreover, because the commodity circulation system in China was not perfect at that time, the sales channels of the clothing industry were mainly concentrated in state-owned department stores and spinning stations at all levels. In the early 1980s, the products of private enterprises could not be directly circulated to the market, but only sold to spinning stations at all levels.

Despite many restrictions, the pace of development of private enterprises and the entry of joint-venture garment enterprises are unstoppable.

1976 founded a small tailor in a village in Changshu, Jiangsu Province, which is the predecessor of Bosideng Company.

1979, several educated youths, 20,000 yuan of starting capital, a ruler and a pair of scissors, the predecessor of Youngor Group-Ningbo Youth Clothing Factory was born.

1989, Zheng Yonggang took over the predecessor of Shanshan-Ningbo Yonggang Garment Factory. This year, Shanshan brand went public;

1990, Seven Wolves Clothing Company was established.

In the middle and late 1980s, the world industrial transfer has begun, production lines are shipped from South Korea and Taiwan Province Province, and foreign-funded enterprises begin to enter China. A number of joint ventures such as "Goldlion" began to appear in coastal areas such as Shenzhen. Processing with supplied materials, sample production, assembling with supplied parts and compensation trade (referred to as "three supplies and one supplement"), as well as Sino-foreign joint ventures, Sino-foreign cooperation and wholly foreign-owned enterprises (referred to as "three capitals") have brought advanced technology and management experience to China garment industry.

At the same time, the fashion information of clothes that first entered China from Zhongying Street in Shatoujiao, Shenzhen, and the "profiteers" who sold clothes from Guangzhou to other places began to flood. The greatest achievement of the transformation of circulation channels is the birth of the first batch of clothing wholesale markets similar to Hanzheng Street in China.

With the germination of private clothing enterprises, the invasion of joint ventures and the dawn of circulation channels, the consumption desire of ordinary people has been completely liberated from the state of "nothing". At that time, clothing consumption was almost hungry, and a style of clothing inadvertently became a popular trend.

As the closed door was opened, the outside world dazzled China people. With the continuous opening-up of China's economy, western culture and fashion from Hong Kong and Taiwan have rapidly entered China, conveying the latest trend information to the younger generation. People began to pursue the trend, and a diversified and colorful clothing era came.

At that time, a movie "romance on lushan mountain", the heroine and gorgeous fashion brought a strong visual impact to people who were used to seeing "green, blue, black and gray" at that time. It goes without saying that the land of China seemed to become a huge paint box overnight, and people put on all kinds of colorful clothes one after another. But at this time, due to the restriction of income and consumption concept at that time, people still put interest first. Pay more attention to external factors.

In addition to the liberation of clothing color demand, there have been several fashion waves sweeping the country in the 1980 s.

For example, "dacron" once swept the country. "Polyester" is actually a kind of chemical fiber fabric. According to the present vision, it's not good at all. Because it is a chemical fiber fabric, it will feel extremely stuffy when put on. But at that time, it was sought after by the whole country only because it was quite scratch-resistant and smooth, especially because it could print and dye bright effects. The girl wearing a floral "cool" skirt became a beautiful scenery of that era.

Another fashion is bell bottoms, which are "low waist and short crotch, tightly wrapped around the ass;" The trouser legs are narrow at the top and wide at the bottom, and gradually spread from below the knee. The size of the trousers mouth is obviously larger than that of the knees, forming a trumpet shape; Bell bottoms, which usually cover the heels and have the function of sweeping the floor when walking, were once the best dress for many urban youths to express their fashion.

Of course, the popularity at that time also included jeans, fitness pants, bat shirts and so on.

It can be said that in that era of economic shortage, everyone bought products, only products that looked good. The whole 1980s was the time when China's clothing started. At that time, the demand of consumers was mainly concentrated on the simple material basis of eating enough and wearing warm clothes, lacking brand awareness, and the clothing industry was in the stage of oversupply. On the other hand, there is almost no direct competition between manufacturers, so as long as there are products, there is no shortage of sales.

Therefore, this stage belongs to the era of single business model dominated by products, and the criterion for the success of enterprises is "whether there are products", and products are more successful than no products. Consumers don't pay much attention to product style. As long as there are products, there is no shortage of sales.

In addition to products, at that time, China's clothing industry had a single circulation channel, and some stall-style small commodity markets and farmers' markets became the main circulation channels. Clothing enterprises can sell their products as long as they simply use their own product resources for production and enter these primary circulation channels.

It can be said that the 1980s should be the best period for China garment enterprises to survive and operate, and many later leading garment enterprises in China completed their first primitive accumulation during this period.

The second stage, the category rise stage.

A boss of a private enterprise who was once a smash hit in China and later failed said: "From a certain point of view, the prosperity of private enterprises is mostly to seize one or two good products, identify a market gap, and then bet on market promotion and succeed in one fell swoop."

One or two products mentioned by this entrepreneur, a gap in the market, are the rise of a product category.

With the reform and opening up in China and the transformation from planned economy to market economy, many industries and market opportunities previously occupied by state-owned enterprises and many unsatisfied market demands are gradually awakened by the wave of market economy. All kinds of industries in China, like popcorn, exploded at once, from one rice flower to thousands of millet flowers.

This popcorn process has been exploding since the 1980s.

And every popcorn is actually an unsatisfied demand and an industry. From the shortage in the 1980 s to the sale of things produced at that time; By the sudden outbreak of China household appliances, beverages, computers, health care products, clothing, milk and so on. In the 1990s, it can be said that almost all well-known brands from all walks of life (except the late-developing industries) in China have established their status as rivers and lakes.

In the process of these popcorn explosions, the benchmark enterprises in all industries have done the same thing without exception, that is, to create a new industry, or we often say to create a new category.

Some well-known brands that are still active in China are actually the first brands in the industry because they represent a certain category at the beginning of their creation, or they have already created a certain category.

In other words, if a company wants to succeed, each company must represent a certain category, which is the basic law of business.

A brand must stand for something. You will be very successful when you truly represent something, especially your category.

If you want to do it, you should do it the earliest, the best and the first. This is the success rule of leading brands in various industries in China: find an industry, take the lead in entering, seize the first place in the industry and become a category representative.

We are familiar with several major categories of clothing industry, which also experienced such a process throughout the 1990s. 90' s is the year of 10 for the rise and great development of China clothing brands. The leading brands of major clothing categories that we can count today were basically born in that era.