170 years of high street brand

From Shanghai Hongqiao Airport, there is no need to go on an elevated road. It takes only ten minutes by car to reach C&A’s China headquarters in Shanghai Mart. Their front desk is bright and bright, with white walls, and casual employees are everywhere. Comparing with fashion brands that often set up offices in Plaza 66 and Huaihai Road, the casual decoration style here is hard to imagine. This is a family-owned company founded in the Netherlands and now headquartered in Germany.

Even though the vast majority of garment manufacturing in the world today originates from China, from the perspective of brand ownership, no one can shake Europe's creativity in fashion. Senior men's and women's clothing are the world of Italian and French tailors. The High Street brand is governed by Sweden's H&M and Spain's ZARA Group, and the Dutch founded C&A's British TOPSHOP brands.

What are the tips for Europeans to sell their brands to the world? What is even more surprising is why a fashion store that relies on the rise of parity prices can go through 170 years. In the fashion industry, there are only a handful of brands with this number.

Mark Siezen is the new CEO of C&A China. He has a very Hong Kong-style Chinese name, Xi Zhenen. Prior to becoming the CEO of China, he had long worked as an advisor on investment strategy for the Swiss company Cofra Group, which controls the brand. The Dutchman knew that the high street brand was short, and storytelling marketing could only be a top brand for most of the time. Marketing strategy, but nowadays as a fast-moving consumer goods fashion, "it must pursue the grasp of details, without details, there will be no success."

Since entering China in 2007, no one knows how well the brand has achieved in China. Xi Zhenen said that the company has never stopped its research on the Chinese market, but "We are a family business and we don't need to report specific data to the outside world. I can only say that the results are satisfactory." When he said this, he laughed again with a sign of 16 teeth.

Since Xi Zhenen began investigating the Chinese market in 2003, it has been accompanied by the mad rise of high street fashion. To be honest, in China's first- and second-tier cities, fashion has disappeared from the lives of the people for more than 30 years and it has swept the city at a flood-like speed. People only know the consumption of famous brand, to the awakening of today's "fashionable" consciousness, with a H & M T-shirt with LV, GUCCI package, Beijing, Shanghai can be seen everywhere. High Street is no longer the opposite of luxury. In the concept of more people, they can live in harmony.

No matter if it is a top brand or a more close-knit fashion snack, they are better at using this change for marketing. H&M and LAVIN's cooperation, although the price of a dress of 1,500 yuan is still not cheap, but the young people are still overnight. At the entrance of Qianmen Street, wait for the purchase.

People who have seen such scenes can understand how much people want to have a famous brand. These crazy moves have given H&M a higher degree of attention than usual. The story of ZARA is more to say. Every year when it plagiarizes big-name designs and accepts huge fines, hundreds of thousands or even millions of ordinary consumers flock. Come here.

The competitors that C&A faces in China are those brands that have been rooted in the minds of consumers through a series of crazy events. Although the history of these brands is much younger, H&M opened its first store in the United Kingdom in 1976. From the standpoint of price, C&A is more like Japan’s Uniqlo. The latter almost sells the basic models of popular clothing, but it has become a commercial miracle. C&A is more ambitious than its ambition. Its clothing has always been characterized by the sale of its full range of products. Children, students, and white-collar workers are its audience. Garments are divided more closely. They are suitable for urbanites to work, leisure, and even Nightclub outfits and bikinis are also included. This business model, which provides one-stop shopping across the board, is now being learned by most retail stores.

In addition to the types of clothing, they also intend to make some changes. When other high street brands are adhering to the "globalization" strategy, Shi Zhenen plans to make its brand more "Chinese." They did not sell the same clothing in the world like H&M or ZARA. In the eyes of Xi Chenen, people in each country and region have different requirements for style and color. “This should not be the same,” C&A established in China. For a 14-person design team, only one person is from Germany and the rest are Chinese. They will use the Chinese people's eyes to reprocess the clothes in the European design center, and at the same time become more suitable for the size of the Chinese people. In other words, they hope that while maintaining their international brand image to suit the psychology of Chinese consumers, they will make some adjustments. Even though such adjustments are implicit, they may also allow C&A to obtain more commercial returns. After all, for a popular clothing brand that plans to open 150 stores in 2015, winning more consumers is a serious matter. In their home base Europe, they also face the needs of different levels of consumers. Now after 170 years of development, the number of their stores has reached 1,000.

Price is the current advantage of C&A, but people have higher and higher requirements for high street brand quality. In the past, the use of rough and inexpensive fabrics has caused criticism for many high street brands. In order to change this situation, many brands have established strict quality control procedures internally. C&A is no exception. They have signed quality contracts with suppliers who have cooperated in China for 30 years, and set up quality control centers at global headquarters. In addition, they will continue to continue the tradition of cross-border cooperation with big-name designers from 1913 onwards, providing some more textured clothing.

This is inconsistent with the stereotypical image of the Nordic people in the traditional impression. Xi Zhenen and the company behind him are obviously more flexible. They are more flexible and know how to attract business. However, today's fast-food fashion industry is not only about designing and quality of clothing, but also depends on the group's financial resources, logistics efficiency, and even professional window display. C&A has historically changed the clothing retail industry many times. They have overthrew the privilege of fashion that only nobles can enjoy in history, the first to sell bikinis and children's clothing in stores. However, today's market environment is much more complex than in the past, especially in the face of the opening up of the Chinese market, whether it can create amazing results again, or is it to develop the rules and regulations? Only Shi Zhenen knows now. (Yang Tingting)