Does fast fashion need to find a way out in the transition?

The law of fast fashion is the pursuit of the fastest. When a fast fashion brand can't do it the fastest, it might have to consider another direction. Swedish fast fashion brand H&M officially released the first complete series of its new brand ARKET this week. Ulrika Bernhardtz, creative director of ARKET, said that his design combines Nordic traditional style with functionality. The word ARKET means “white paper” in Swedish, which fits the Nordic design concept of the brand's pursuit of minimalism.

The overall style of the collection is similar to that of another COS brand of the H&M Group, which also adheres to solid colour tones, comfortable fabrics and neat cuts. According to the brand's official introduction, the new series is priced between £18 and £300. The first flagship store will open on Regent Street in London on August 25th, and online stores will be launched on the same day, but consumers will be able to start from the 23rd. Register your reservation on the official website.

According to the world clothing and footwear network, H&M has also chosen for the second and third stores, one in Copenhagen and the other in the Covent Garden business district in London. In order to better enhance the consumer shopping experience, ARKET stores not only sell men's and women's ready-to-wear, children's wear and home products, but also sells selected items from other brands in the ARKET store, and has a Nordic-style coffee shop. For consumers to have fun. H&M has high hopes for this new brand and has been preparing for this for nearly two years. Currently, H&M Group has seven brands in addition to ARKET, including H&M, COS, & Other Stories, Monki, Weekday, Cheap Monday and H&M Home. From product positioning to shop decoration, the new brand ARKET is very similar to the positioning of COS.

What everyone is curious about is why the H&M group that already owns a COS has to recreate a COS? The commercial success of COS is one of the reasons. H&M hopes to replicate and expand its success model. In just 10 years, COS quickly caught the attention and consumption boom in the fashion industry. According to the data, the brand is expanding at an average of 22 stores a year. Relevant data also shows that COS sales have grown rapidly. From 2009 to 2014, COS sales increased from $132 million to $625 million, nearly five times. The group expects COS sales to enter the $1 billion club this year, which will reach 10 billion Swedish kronor, about 1.17 billion US dollars, and has the potential to become the second largest brand of the group except H&M.

It is worth noting that as a high-priced mid-sized brand of H&M Group, COS profitability is also quite amazing. Earlier data showed that the daily profit of COS London single store has exceeded that of all H&M stores in the same city. In fact, COS has become a new growth point for H&M Group. The second reason is probably the strategic adjustment of the H&M Group. The group has begun to enter the bottleneck in the fast fashion field and is seeking new directions. According to financial report data, Zara is still in the growth period, and the growth rate of the entire fast fashion industry including H&M has gradually slowed down. In 2014 and 2015, H&M's sales revenue increased by 14% and 18.9%, respectively, and recorded the lowest in history in 2016, only 7%. In the three months ended April 30 this year, ZARA's parent company Inditex Group's sales rose 14% year-on-year to 5.6 billion euros, with sales growth in Europe, Asia and the Americas being the strongest. Group gross profit also increased by 14% to 3.2 billion euros, gross margin was 58.2%, net profit rose 18% year-on-year to 654 million euros, which is the second quarter of its main competitor H&M Group (STO: HM) net profit More than enough. It seems that the H&M Group is getting farther and farther from its biggest competitor, the Inditex Group. In the fast-moving industry, which is fast and unbreakable, competition is direct and cruel.

Some analysts believe that H&M is in a very embarrassing situation. The fashion and update speed is not as good as ZARA. The quality is not as good as Uniqlo. The loss of personality and uniqueness will make consumers quickly lose their freshness to the brand. In order to survive better, H&M must find new growth points as soon as possible. There are indications that H&M is changing its strategy to move towards mid- to high-end boutiques, and hopes to avoid a positive fight with ZARA in the fast fashion field. Taking into account H&M's emphasis on the concept of sustainable development in recent years, as well as frequent joint cooperative activities, H&M has gradually distinguished itself from ZARA's business methods. Take H&M's concept of sustainable development as an example. This concept has been criticized as “greenwash”, which is to promote brand status with environmental protection, but does not make actual environmental behavior, because many opinions think fast. Fashion and environmental protection are inherently repulsive concepts.

Those clothes only wear a season, the consumer groups that continue to pursue fashion trends, and the consumer groups who actively donate old clothes to H&M are not very close. But there are more signs that H&M is very serious about sustainability and even wants to make it a H&M brand project. In May of this year, H&M officially joined the Global Climate Initiative EP100, pledge to double the company's energy productivity in the future. H&M Global Sustainable Business Pierre Borjesson said that reducing energy use and increasing economic output is H&M's long-standing strategic foundation. It plans to reduce energy consumption per square meter by 40% in 2030, and launch one in 2040. A climate-friendly value production chain. Since 2015, H&M has launched the Conscious Exclusive Environmentally Conscious Action Limited Series, which is organic or recycled, mainly made of cotton. The series also includes a formal dress skirt, which encourages celebrity artists to wear such eco-friendly dresses on formal occasions. The dress worn by Chinese star Shu Qi when he got married is from this series. If we develop fast fashion at the same time, the core concept of H&M will be difficult to justify.

For the sake of the future sustainable development of the group, H&M cannot make the brand grow in self-contradiction. It now appears that H&M has chosen the latter as the focus of future development between fast fashion and sustainable development. Some analysts speculate that H&M may gradually weaken the fast fashion competition and turn to the lifestyle boutique brand. Now, the group will focus more on the high-end product line COS and the upcoming brand new ARKET, which are not strictly fast fashion. People from this month's H&M recently announced the joint collaboration of designers can also smell different atmospheres. The group chose the designer to be Erdem, which is not so high-profile. The latter is famous for its prints and dresses, avoiding the best-selling street fashion styles. This month, the group also announced that it will launch the H&M Studio 2017 autumn and winter cooperation series with the Paris buyer's store Colette. The collaboration includes a total of 9 pieces, which are based on Colette's iconic blue color, with special color combinations, hand-painted graffiti and raw edges. Jacquard and so on.

H&M's selection of partners has become more and more cautious, and it is more inclined to select partners with higher fashion styles than high-profile ones. In the Chinese market, which is becoming more and more important in fast fashion, with the continuous expansion of the middle class, they are no longer satisfied with the short-term pleasure brought by cheap and fast fashion, and they begin to “break away” too many consumer goods, instead they choose “Small but fine” has a high pursuit of quality of life. The success of COS is in line with the needs of this expanding middle class. Although the price of H&M is higher than that of fast fashion, the sales growth rate is very impressive, which proves that the market space of the middle class has not been fully explored. In fact, more and more apparel brands are beginning to notice this potential market, enriching the brand matrix by expanding high-end boutique brands. ZARA parent company Inditex also owns the mid-to-high-end brand Massimo Dutti. Last month, the brand cooperated with Tmall Super Brand Day to hold a holographic image show in Shanghai, stimulating the brand's online and offline sales in China, and reiterated the Inditex Group. The emphasis on high-end brands.

Uniqlo has always been a fast fashion brand in the eyes of the public, but according to US media, its parent company, Fast Retailing Group, is planning to transform Uniqlo into a high-quality apparel brand, freeing itself from the fast-fashion brand image that focuses only on fashion trends, and is committed to designing. Producing high-quality clothes, we are striving to draw a line with fast fashion brands such as ZARA and TOPSHOP. In order to provide consumers with "non-disposable and high quality" clothing, Uniqlo launched a LifeWear series in 2013. Liu Jingzheng, CEO of Fast Retailing Group, said: "With fast fashion focusing only on the latest trends, Uniqlo is focusing on completely different things. In the concept of brand, LifeWear refers to high quality, fashionable and affordable, comfortable. Daily clothing." Some analysts pointed out that with the ugly reality behind the rapid exposure of a large number of fast fashion brands, such as sweatshops, human rights violations and environmental hazards, Uniqlo apparently wants to clarify the negative image of these fast fashions as soon as possible. Nowadays, more and more consumers are withdrawing from the cycle of continually consuming mediocre items, no longer buying cheap, mass-produced fast fashion brands, and are making choices about the availability and ethics of apparel. For the transformation of Uniqlo's recent high-end route, some analysts said that at least the change in brand definition will help consumers to improve their brand image and generate purchasing desire. In recent years, Uniqlo has also continuously promoted the "worth" through the joint cooperation of designers.

For example, the cooperation with former Hermès women's creative director Christopher Lemaire eventually extended to the fixed series Uniqlo U. It is obvious that Uniqlo is attracting more middle class interested in classics and materials through high-quality design, trying to convey a durable and durable fashion concept. Non-continuously updated fast fashion. Uniqlo has also enriched its matrix through new series such as Uniqlo U to seek more development possibilities. Therefore, the H&M Group's adjustment of its own strategy is not only based on internal development needs, but also the overall direction of the market. But why did H&M Group not choose to improve the fast fashion brand H&M, which is the main share of the group, but chose to re-launch a brand? Some foreign fashion retail analysts said that this may be because the fast fashion H&M business model tends to solidify and transform The space is getting smaller and smaller. Although H&M is trying to improve its brand reputation through joint cooperation, consumers who have experienced too many co-branded series are becoming more and more savvy. The long queues in the store "grabbed" home to the joint style carefully tried and found that the style fabrics are unsatisfactory, after several impulses, the big gimmicks began to become less attractive, which is happening in many consumptions. The general phenomenon of the person. The most frequently criticized in the fast fashion co-branded series is the quality problem. Some consumers report that there is no support for quality workmanship, and the design of big names is not much different from ordinary styles.

Karl Lagerfeld expressed strong dissatisfaction after the first sale of the H&M joint series, saying that the quality of the products produced by H&M was too bad and completely compromised his original intention. The poor quality has led many designers to abandon their second collaboration with H&M, which has also given consumers an impression of H&M's quality. Although H&M has recently invested a lot of energy in environmental protection, some analysts believe that fast fashion continues to burst into a supply chain scandal that has tied it to the label of “low quality, poor labor environment”. Well-known designer and environmentalist Vivienne Westwood has called for everyone to buy less or not buy fast fashion. This may be why the H&M Group launched a new brand. The relationship between the fast fashion brand H&M and the concept of sustainable development is somewhat far-fetched, so the launch of the new brand will give more play and the new brand will be more malleable. Just like the ARKET word, the new brand is a “white paper” for the group. It is worth noting that H&M is more rational and cautious about the choice of the new brand market, and even avoids the Chinese market with strong purchasing power. Group CEO Karl-Johan Persson believes that Chinese consumers are not mature enough, so ARKET has no plans to open stores in the Chinese market in the short term. This is different from the traditional mode of fast fashion and speed.

All in all, according to the current exposure of the brand image, ARKET is likely to become the second COS. The competition between the two brands is also a matter of concern to many people, but for H&M, this may not be a bad thing. Maybe the market can be made bigger, because the current priority is to adjust the strategy, and the group needs to be at the high-end. The field of apparel has enough powerful energy to reverse the situation. The future H&M Group may no longer be a fast fashion group. Will it eventually become a mid-to-high-end boutique apparel group?

For more exciting reports, please pay attention to the world clothing and footwear network.

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