Professor Huang Weiping from the School of Economics at Renmin University of China put forward a point of view at a recent forum. He believes that when we are still trying to build a world-class brand, international fashion has quietly changed, and the trend of brand popularization is becoming more apparent. .
In fact, the most sensitive to this trend is the luxury brand itself. Armani launched a low-end brand, ArmaniExchange, which mainly faces young consumers, a few years ago, and CHANEL designer Carl Lagerfeld, who is a woman in the womenswear industry, personally “condescends†to capture the H&M brand.
The place where H&M designers work is called "White House". It is located in a humble brick building in the center of Stockholm, Sweden. It is very large and can hold more than 100 people. Actually there are so many people, and it almost covers the whole of Sweden. The old designer with cutting-edge cutting-edge. Instead of walking in London's flea market or picking in Paris' fabric market, Margarita Van Den Bosch will be here to lead the group and create a cheap fashion dream for H&M.
This little fat, gentle-spoken mommy was a H&M designer since 1987. At first she was a buyer. She took some cheap stuff from the agents in Southeast Asia and cluttered her way into the store. Later, she set up a design team and started to introduce only one product. From beginning to end, the values ​​instilled to her by the apparel company have not changed: selling is cheap and good fashion.
This is a simple point of view of a small businessman. There is no bragging and show-off. It also lacks great and dangerous enthusiasm. In this industry, “little people†are always not valued. At the very beginning, H&M was regarded as an associate of cheap street brands such as GAP or OLDNAVY. The moneyless young people embraced it. With the growth of wealth and taste, they ended up. It will abandon it; afterwards, H&M has quickly been incorporated into the "fast fashion" section because of its follow-up trend. Their aliases include "imitators" and "followers." Margarita always believes that H&M is different from the others. She has a very realistic goal: “To be more people, to be more interesting†and there are also seemingly unrealistic ideals: “We have to stand on the same starting line with the top brands. on."
In June 2004, this ideal became a reality because of the addition of a big man. CHANEL designer Karl Lagerfeld announced the design of 30 garments for H&M. This combination of high-end and low-end is not new. In 2003, Isaac Mazraxi of New York City, a designer who can sell more than 40,000 dollars in ready-to-wear clothing, launched a price as low as more than 20 dollars for Brand Target. Women's and accessories collections were used as the creators of the "Designer Marriage". The cooperation could not be more successful, but it also caused concern. Margarita also started looking for such a person for H&M: “We considered a lot of designers, of course, Karl Lagerfeld is also on the list. We are an art director said He knows Karl personally and can ask him, of course, we will not hesitate to say good. Then Carl agreed! This is simply trembling, but the subsequent cooperation was extremely smooth."
The 30 clothes include a pleated silk top priced at $49.9, a small black dress for $99.9, and an evening jacket at $129.9, which is more expensive than H&M's regular price of one or two hundred yuan. It can be comparable to tens of thousands. Chanel is just like a sly one. This series was limited sale at H&M's global 500 stores (more than 1,100 stores in total) and was no longer copied. It was dubbed the "mass limited." H&M has no restrictions on design, except one: "non-Chanel." Karl Lagerfeld claimed that the product of this marriage is "not a classic, nor a trend, but a kind of style that no one can match." He said that he has always been obsessed with H&M, and the current fashion is that people who buy Chanel will also visit the H&M store. “The world is no longer divided into two, but combined into oneâ€. Although it was a mystery, people still grasped the spirit represented by the name Karl Lagerfeld. After seeing the figures on the price tag, they were snapped up on the day of the sale. What has H&M gained in this cooperation? A men’s jacket with a $59 price tag designed by “Fashion Greatâ€. Karl Lagerfeld himself could not help but praise himself for being "a superior person!" He exposed the light a few times in this suit, claiming that it was 10 times as expensive as this one.
"If one idea can't be copied, it's not a good idea." This is Margarita's summary of the first "designer marriage" and it also means a beginning. After 2004, this model became H&M's annual signboard. dish. He has worked with Stella McCartney, Viktor & Rolf, Robert Cavalli, and Kawakubo. This year, Ryuhiko Kawakubo's polka-dot and asymmetrical cuts designed for H&M triggered a turbulent berserk at the Tokyo store, and several pieces in the Shanghai H&M store also sold out in 10 minutes. Stella McCartney once said that H&M was chosen to satisfy people who love her but cannot afford her clothes. Margarita responds from the perspective of H&M: “The secret of being favored by well-known designers is the wider customer base.†In November 2008, H&M announced its partner in 2009: British designer Matthew Williamson.
These designers who are regarded as artists also understand that to sell products, they have to contact people. But if you can buy these products at a price of only 1/10 of the price, then how noble is the noble dream like snow and the value of money? The expense of a well-known designer is not a secret: using the best fabrics, produced in the most expensive countries such as France, only a very small amount, displayed in expensive shops with high rents, advertising and public relations It's like no tomorrow.
Karl Lagerfeld thinks: "There is no difference in essence between expensive and inexpensive." H&M's "not expensive" is like a secret being discussed repeatedly by marketing experts. In 1947 it was a women's brand called "Hennes" (in Swedish, "she"), and merged with the men's line "Mauritz" to become "H&M". President Steffen Parson still has not forgotten the scene of the first overseas expansion of the brand in 1967. The store opened in London. The founder’s son was 29 years old and he held a record of ABBA in the street. Solicit customers on the solicitation. This trivial matter always appears at the beginning of H & M's corporate culture. It means that everything is done well and is always at home.
The design team led by Margarita treats H&M like perishable fruit, keeping it fresh and flowing. She called this “lightning speedâ€: a piece of clothing from the design to appear in the store as long as 20 days, more than 1,000 stores worldwide are updated every day (faster than this only the Spanish brand ZARA, but the price of ZARA is higher 30 %-50%, the number of stores is less than H&M; the same period of GAP takes one month). These fast-looking products have blurred borders - it seems that they seem to be a bit like the popular trends of the season's big names. But Margarita said that plagiarism is strictly forbidden. Her team is always looking for inspiration in the streets, concerts, movies and TV dramas and other possible places like the ants that cannot stop. Sometimes, they do not even believe in the T station. There are other taboos: The product must not be allowed to appear sexually, and it must not be too much of avant-garde. "Only being accepted by most people is the real fashion."
In the early stages of expansion, H&M had made mistakes in selecting a site, chose a suburban factory shop, and was adjacent to a cheap brand, but quickly changed its strategy. Global stores are all located in the prosperous business district, Fifth Avenue in New York, Michigan Avenue in Chicago, Kowloon in Hong Kong, Shanghai Huaihai Road ... ... opposite, often Chanel. No money was spent on advertising. Kate Mousse and Madonna were spokespersons, but the cost of these products was not passed on to the price of the product. This clever but hard-to-find strategy is not only brilliant, but it also allows the public to accurately grasp the points of tremulous elites who feel shudder and win over them. So there is a mixed image: In 2007, H&M China’s first flagship store opened in Shanghai, and the city seemed to have become different. Take an airplane and the small TV screen in the back seat of the taxi started playing the TV fashion produced by H&M. The show, "Sex and the City" clothing guide "Princess Red" Patricia Field is there to elaborate the seasonal trend with the law, as if you arrived in New York, the car turned into the city alley, wearing slippers to line up to buy the road The young girl who was simmering at the stalls was holding a red H&M large bag on the white. This scene has also puzzled many market analysts. According to this kind of play, H&M's production cost can't be controlled at a low cost, "unless the factory is on Mars."
The financial report for the last quarter of 2008 shows that H&M's profit growth rate has slowed down due to the financial turmoil, but it is still growing. The 2009 financial report shows that H&M's profit growth rate has a large growth trend.