Before reading this article, you can click "Follow" to become a fan, so that you can receive the latest article push first, or you can choose "Listen" in the upper right corner to learn about financial hotspots, brand stories and other news for free.
- Source/Chief Business Intelligence
- Author/Chief Business Intelligence
Source: Lady House official website
Introduction: There was once a women's clothing brand that dared to declare itself "more popular than LV" in the prospectus, although it was immediately ridiculed by the industry, but it did make countless girls crazy in that era.
This romantic princess style benchmark that swept Guangdong, once opened more than 800 stores, with sales of up to 100 million yuan. However, the good times did not last long, and now these stores have quietly disappeared, and it has also chosen to "live in seclusion" in a self-closed manner.
What went wrong with it to become a "narcissistic" giant? Is there still a chance to regain its glory and regain the hearts of young girls? These questions involve not only the survival of a company, but also the watchfulness of thousands of "ladies" to the dream of a beautiful princess.
01, relying on girlish feelings, build a trillion-level women's clothing empire in one fell swoop
In 1994, Lady House targeted the girls' market and launched a dream-inspired clothing design. Lace, skirts, ribbons, all satisfy all the imagination of a girl for fairies and princesses.
This undoubtedly touched the princess and fairy complex of many girls, and they couldn't wait to have such dreamy clothes. The Lady House accurately captured the consumption psychology of the girls and was a great success in the early stage.
The data of the first two years of operation proves this: the sales volume exceeded 10,000 yuan on the first day, and the amazing performance of hundreds of thousands of yuan in the first month. During that time, it has always been one of the most popular women's clothing brands among consumers, comparable to big brands such as Dior and LV.
Considering that the entire women's clothing industry was generally hovering in the low price range of 100-200 at that time, the lady's house easily launched a single item of more than 300 yuan "luxury entry index", which can be described as standing out from the crowd.
Take a lady's house skirt with a price tag of up to 329 yuan as an example, it can easily be exchanged for 5 sets of ordinary women's clothing at that time. At that time, the monthly income of post-90s girls in Guangdong who had just worked was only more than 1,000 yuan. Despite the scarcity of daily expenses, they are willing to save up to buy a lady's house just to have that luxurious but necessary symbol of their dreams.
In fact, the Lady House does not simply profit from the goods themselves, but more by providing "cultural services", such as exclusive magazines, forum communities, offline salons, etc., to create a commercial romantic princess cultural circle, and win the fanatical pursuit of young girls through this cultural cluster.
For example, the "Lady Journal" magazine published by it will choose princesses or princesses to publish essays in each issue to guide readers to live like princesses, and offline activities such as book sharing sessions, dating salons, and talent competitions are held to enhance fan stickiness.
The launch of the entertainment project not only adds humanistic temperature to the business, but also allows consumers to take the initiative to endorse and disseminate the lady's house, which plays an excellent role in brand building.
It is the combination of cultural services that has successfully realized the transformation from selling clothes, to selling dreams, to detonating emotional purchases, and opened up the linkage and value-added of the business model. If you rely on clothing products alone, I am afraid it will be difficult to achieve such a performance. This kind of operation strategy of integrating culture and entertainment has inspired many women's brands in the future, and has also made Lady House unique in the industry.
Of course, culture alone is not enough. In the end, what made the lady house the king in the market was the matching commercial volume of real money: the highest annual sales before the listing was close to 600 million yuan, and the number of stores exceeded 800 all over the country. This is a successful commercial princess sentiment movement, and the girl's faith is directly translated into the monetary benefit of the enterprise.
02, more popular than LV and Dior? Netizens have complained
In fact, when Lady House decided to go public, its ambitions for commercial expansion had swelled to an almost "pathological" level. The object of the founder's self-comparison has actually changed from his peers in the industry to the international luxury giants Dior and LV.
Kuang Zi, the founder of Lady House, made this shocking conclusion without data support in the prospectus, which looks like it was fabricated out of thin air to attract attention.
For a while, all kinds of ridicule followed: "Is this also comparable?" "This is self-esteem, right?"
Some people in the industry even criticized that if you simply rely on the survey data of consulting agencies to prove your popularity, it is completely unconvincing and there is a suspicion of excessive packaging. Indeed, in the world's luxury industry, the popularity of the lady's house is still far from internationalization, and it cannot be compared with LV.
After the news spread, even the research agency that issued the report had to apologize. They said that the analysts at that time were in the internship stage, that is, halfway home, so their vision and cognitive level were limited, so they would compare Lady House with brands like LV side by side.
This incident has undoubtedly become a big joke in the industry, but its negative impact far outweighs the problem of face. The overconfident conclusion undermined the business credibility of the Lady House in the minds of the public and investors, and made it difficult to raise funds in the future.
The failure of the IPO exposed not only the arrogant delusions of the founder Kuangzi, but also the more serious crisis that has long been buried in the bones of this women's clothing brand.
Public records show that the inventory balance is as high as 270 million yuan. The situation may be even more dire, as some of the backlog that cannot be liquidated is also consuming operating cash. If this part of the inventory is transferred to Taobao for sale, it can be converted into a whole year of free women's clothing for millions of users. However, for various reasons, they can only lose their value in the warehouse.
Such a staggering amount of money has been forced to stagnate, seriously squeezing the company's operating cash. Warehousing, labor, extra advertising and other daily expenses have been severely affected and can only barely be maintained.
A simple calculation, at a unit price of 80 yuan, this backlog of goods is enough to provide a complete set of clothing accessories for free for 270,000 female users. The problem is that users are resistant to the ladies' house, and almost no one wants these free clothes. At the same time, fast fashion brands like ZARA began to rise rapidly, eating into market share.
It could have been revived with new financing. But "narcissism" comes at the cost of a lack of investor confidence. After listing, the situation could have been reversed through capital operation, but it became a helpless abandonment.
Missing the dual opportunities of brand transformation and financing expansion undoubtedly made the Lady's House, which was already at the end of its power, even worse. Its glorious position in the industry is gone.
03, what does the lady's house rely on to sell ugly clothes at sky-high prices?
Do you remember the design of the ladies' house when you were a child? Layers of pleated skirts, lace, and fresh and lovely light makeup. My girl, you are obviously the seedlings of Qunfang, why are you inexplicably said to be a weed crawling all over the ground?
It turned out that after decades of ups and downs, the Lady House experienced a low period, in order to catch the attention of young people, its designers selectively "middle two" attacks and began to add things to clothes.
For example, a most ordinary plaid skirt, with a few more diamond patterns, will immediately have an earthy taste; Then add a circle of the famous lady's house lace to the skirt to thicken the earthy flavor; If the color is chosen to be ancient fluorescent green or pink, it is simply the icing on the cake, earthy Max!
These clothes, which look extremely murderous at first glance, were put on Douyin, and they unexpectedly became popular and became new Internet celebrities. The comment area is full of "It's too earthy, I like it!", "This brand is too individual, it's simply unconventional!"
It turns out that in this era of visual traffic liking the new and hating the old, "soil" has become a kind of symbol, representing the rebellion and banter of young people against the mainstream aesthetics, and this contrasting and cute aesthetic is just caught by the lady house.
To put it simply, it is the lady's house, on the basis of retaining its own classic elements, deliberately hit a bad street, and turned a local tyrant corner, which suddenly caught the attention of young people and successfully became popular!
Of course, to be truly long-lasting, it's not enough to rely on earthy styling. For example, Sanfu Department Store is good at making all kinds of ridiculously ugly dolls. It has successfully hyped up a lot of ugly hits through platforms such as Douyin. However, the actual sales volume and monetization ability of these ugly goods are relatively limited, and it is difficult to form continuous consumption.
The problem is that most of these ugly dolls of Sanfu are made of cheap fabrics and filling, and the texture is average, which is not enough for consumers to have a second purchase desire. They are also priced on the lower side, more like a casual grab for consumers.
If you want this kind of ugly goods to really continue to be realized, Sanfu needs to start with product strength. Improve fabric texture, add functionality, optimize price matching, etc. Brand loyalty is only possible when consumers feel the true value of the product.
It's not enough to rely solely on the hype of ugly packaging. Turning consumers into repeat customers is the key to Sanfu's realization of the ugly economy.
The Lady House is different, which also benefits from its solid product power genes. As a landmark brand in Shenzhen, Lady House has always been particular about the craftsmanship and fabric selection of its products, which has won it a reputation for its ugly clothes.
For example, even if it is a local Internet celebrity clothes, its fabric feels good and the workmanship is not bad, which gives consumers a sense of superiority of "I'm not buying ugly, I'm consuming culture".
Therefore, product power + cultural power is the magic weapon for the real and sustainable realization of ugly clothes in the lady's house. It has to continue to work craftsmanship and design, so that the clothes can really sell at sky-high prices, even if they are ugly!
04. Product cost performance is king, and traffic alone is not enough
Traffic is just passers-by, and products are the foundation. What is in urgent need of reflection at the moment is that there is a serious disconnect between the inflating prices and people's spending power.
You must know that in this materialistic era, many cutting-edge brands are poised to go, like the Joker in Batman, ready to give an old brand like Lady House a pleasure.
As a veteran fashion giant, what Lady House needs to face up to is not the fading of traffic dividends, but the price of its own products has been at the forefront of consumption upgrades, which is seriously out of touch with the public's consumption power.
In addition, the product line of the lady house needs to be further expanded, diversified development and the transformation of sales channels, while maintaining the high-end route, but also to develop supporting low-end series to form a pyramid-shaped product structure.
This maximizes market share and allows users with different spending power to find something that suits them. LV, for example, operates both high-customization and mass routes, and it is this strategy that has helped it stand firmly on the throne of the world's No. 1 luxury brand.
Of course, consumers are more concerned about cost performance. Whether the price of the lady's house can be paid by the consumer, and whether it is necessary to adjust the price, these are all questions worth pondering.
Perhaps, it is better to reduce the price appropriately than to increase the price. After all, for consumers, a price difference of one or two thousand may directly determine the purchase intention.
On the premise of ensuring quality, the ladies' house can accelerate design iteration and supply chain upgrades, and reduce costs through scale effect. If the price can be more affordable than other affordable luxury brands, users will be more willing to accept it.
As the old saying goes, quality is the foundation of life. No matter how the market environment changes, the lady house must adhere to the concept of quality first. It is precisely because of the consistent craftsmanship that the Lady House has won so many loyal customers. As long as we continue to innovate and make consumers feel the best value for their money, the brand will never go out of style.
05. Conclusion
I believe that with the recovery of the domestic economy and the upgrading of consumption, as long as the lady house does a good job of every product, it will definitely allow the old customers to return, attract new traffic, and make a comeback! As early as ten years ago, it almost became a landmark in Shenzhen, not to mention that now this is a good era of opportunities!
In the face of the current situation, we don't seem to find a shadow of the lady's house returning to its peak. But as long as it doesn't give up its dreams and continues to design for the happiness of girls, it may eventually usher in new opportunities one day.
We are also looking forward to that day, when it may appear in a new way, and realize the beautiful princess dream of the girls!
What do you think about the complete closure of offline stores and the main online sales of the Lady House? Have you ever bought a dress from the Lady House? Welcome to leave your opinions and opinions in the comment area.
Due to the rules of the platform, only if you have more interaction with me (likes, comments, shares, favorites), you will be recognized as a fan. If you like my articles, you can click "Follow" to receive more good articles push @Chief Business Wisdom first