Author | Pomelo in pots
Li Sanshou, 35 years old this year, is an "old man" in the garment industry.
As early as 2011, he founded the women's clothing brand Orange Desire, developing dresses and tweed coats that can sell tens of thousands of models. In 2018, it founded Zhizhi Clothing, a women's clothing brand focusing on oriental culture, and its transaction volume on Tmall has maintained a growth of nearly 100% for five consecutive years.
He has successfully built two brands, and has used a biological perspective to look at the pursuit of brand development, one is genetic, the other is mutation. "The most important thing is variation, and only innovation can achieve exponential growth. ”
As we all know, the apparel industry is getting more and more rolled. According to the National Bureau of Statistics, as of November 2023, there are 13,643 enterprises above designated size in the mainland garment industry, achieving operating income of 1,086.64 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 6%. In order to have their own place in the consumer market, these merchants in the apparel industry can only increase the frequency of new products, increase the speed of new products, meet the differentiated and personalized needs of consumers, in order to maintain customer stickiness and drive brand growth and development.
Li Sanshou's coping strategy is to make a thorough innovation from the whole stage of clothing design, production and marketing. So in 2021, Zhizhi Apparel launched the brand's high-end line, Gewu series.
Different from other large-scale production brands, the style, fabric and flower shape of each item in the Gewu series are hand-painted and original by the designer, which not only reflects their pursuit of aesthetic design, but also expresses their cognition of all things natural.
And in this series of clothing films, Li Sanshou has come up with a shooting method that is completely different from other brands.
He invited Chinese supermodel CC to wear every costume and shoot in the mountains, forests and water. From the "Animism" series filmed in Qinghai Lake, to the "Outside the Mirror" series recorded in Yangshuo, Guilin, to the "Glacier" series taken in the Pamir Plateau, to the "Listen to the Wind" series filmed in Wanning, Hainan. In 3 years and 4 seasons, Gewu has traveled to the ends of the earth in China with every design. "All you have to do is be different. Li Sanshou said.
Therefore, in the comment area of this series of products, you can always see the praise of consumers for "beauty", "high-end" and "atmosphere".
"Because you create value for the real user, because you bring him new designs and products that he has never seen before, anything is possible. Regarding the success of the brand, Li Sanshou explained at the New Talk 2024 Tmall Consumer Innovation Annual Open Class held on January 23.
This may mean that innovation and change are inevitable choices on the road of brand development.
New products, turning the gears of brand growth
More and more brands are starting to work on new products.
A set of data from Tmall is that in 2023, the number of new products released under the Tmall brand will increase by more than 30% compared with 2022, and more than 80 groups have reached cooperation with Tmall New Product Innovation Center (TMIC) to launch more than 4,000 new products. Among them, there are more than 600 popular new products with an annual transaction scale between one million and ten million, which accounts for more than 20% of the overall incubation of new products, and more than 150 new explosive products with a transaction scale of more than 10 million.
In the face of many challenges in the market, the vitality and resilience of the entire consumer innovation can be seen.
Lifespace, a brand of Tang Cheng Beijian, is a member of the "new promotion".
After discovering that most young people have the habit of drinking afternoon tea and prefer peach flavor when drinking tea, last year's Double 11, Lifespace launched a peach oolong cold brew tea probiotic that can be cold brewed for young people, changing the previous form of nutritional supplement that needs to be swallowed with water.
It can not only save time, trouble and effort, but also meet their own taste, this nutritional product has hit the heart of the main force of the new generation of health care, and the new product will sell out, and in one year, the transaction volume of the whole network has exceeded 100 million, bringing more than 85% of new customers to the Lifespace brand, and also leading the trend of "afternoon tea-style recuperation" for young people.
As a designer brand originating from the United States, Calvin Klein also has a new discovery in the clothing needs of male consumers.
When more and more men realize the importance of sun protection, sun-protective clothing has become a must-have for their summer. After analyzing the pain points of these consumers, Calvin Klein designed a "sun-free sunscreen clothing" last summer, which not only amplifies the value of sunscreen for the selling points such as added coolness, quick-drying, and wear-resistant in summer, but also fits the current hot trend to create an atmosphere of outdoor and camping two popular scenes. This also makes Calvin Klein's "sun-free sunscreen clothing" successfully enter the TOP20 of Tmall 618 men's sunscreen category in 2023, when men's consumption is rising.
There are many similar new product cases.
Nestle's new Nestle Xiyue freeze-dried snacks exceeded 4 million in the Double 11 turnover, ranking TOP3 in the cat snack industry; Lin's Wood Fabric Sofa of Lin's Furniture launched two new blockbuster sofa colors in 2023, and it took only 51 minutes and 47 seconds during the Double 11 in 2023 to exceed the performance of the same period last year, and the highest-selling product sold 28,000+ pieces......
New designs, new features, and new categories have all achieved remarkable results in sales and expanded the influence of the brand.
"Today, when the demographic dividend and traffic dividend have disappeared, only high-quality innovation and high-quality innovative brands can go through the whole cycle. Jiang Nanchun, founder of Focus Media, said this at the 2024 Tmall Consumer Innovation Annual Open Class.
Jiangnan Chun took new energy vehicles as an example - in the era of oil vehicles, compared with traditional car manufacturers such as Volkswagen and Toyota, BYD does not have a strong attraction to consumers. However, when there are not many car brands in China to make new energy vehicles, BYD launched the first pure electric vehicle in China, reversing the decline of the brand in one fell swoop and creating a new category of domestic new energy vehicles. "Instead of competing for the first, it is better to create the first, we create a new energy vehicle first. ”
What have other active and well-known new energy vehicle brands done? NIO has made the best service tram, Ideal has created the first choice car for Chinese dads and comfortable families in China, and BYD's Formula Leopard is the first choice for off-road scenarios. "Today, in such a volatile market, the brand breakthrough will simply reach four first choices, either the first choice for a certain category, or the first choice for a certain function, or the first choice for a certain group of people, or the first choice for a certain scene. Jiang Nanchun said.
In the N50 "new" sound list issued by the 2024 Tmall Consumer Innovation Annual Open Class, many of these new products can also be seen, and the muscular growth they drive.
For example, Akuan's mashed potato noodles and otter freeze-dried fruit tea, which are adapted to the attributes of young lazy people, meet the needs of Chinese mothers for "sucking", "breathable", "soft" and "slerable" Pampers sleeping pull-up pants, Descente temperature-controlled moisture-proof warm charging heating cotton clothes that incorporate heating black technology, and Dove and Moutai co-branded Dove Mao Xiaoling wine heart chocolate......
They either meet the new needs of a certain consumer group, or adapt to a certain environment and scene through black technology, so that they can break out of the fierce competition for new products and become the "50 most leading new products".
The road to innovation needs to be fast, accurate and steady
For traditional enterprises and cutting-edge brands, if they want to occupy a place in the market, they must either roll up the price, show ultra-high cost performance, and make money with efficiency, or create a unique and innovative product, open the market with "new", and keep the brand premium.
In past price wars, it is easy for brands to lose big because of small things, and there are few real winners in the market. More and more brands have understood that the latter is the only way for brands to develop, but this road is not easy.
First of all, the speed of innovation should be fast.
The market is always full of changes and uncertainties, young people's consumption habits and trends change frequently, the demand for products is constantly iterating, and the requirements for brands are also constantly escalating. This also forces brands to quickly capture young people's consumption trends and adjust their product strategies in a timely manner according to the trends.
However, for many large enterprises, especially traditional enterprises, whether a product is innovative or not often needs to go through layers of reporting and approval before making a decision. Xu Xiaoyu, head of e-commerce of Yili's liquid milk marketing department, proposed in the roundtable lecture hall of the "Insight 2024" of the 2024 Tmall Consumer Innovation Annual Open Class that traditional enterprises will encounter in making new products is that the decision-making chain is too long, and a decision needs to be jointly participated by multiple departments such as market research, sales, research and development, production, quality control, legal affairs, and logistics. ”
This also makes the decision-making costs for companies prohibitive, "because not all new trends will develop in the long term, and not all new trends will become one big trend." Xu Xiaoyu said.
The second is that the survival rate of innovation is not high.
After more and more brands have a sense of innovation, new products are also rolled up. Taking snacks as an example, a biscuit can be made in a variety of ways - the flavor has the flavor of poplar nectar, the flavor of kebabs, the flavor of peach oolong, the taste of brushed, sandwiched, coated, and the shape of rose-shaped, snowflake-shaped, mushroom-body......
The market is getting more and more volatile because consumers are demanding more from brands. "What we see is that consumers now want face, lining, and brains, and in the end you can find that you need not only cost performance, but also a price-to-face ratio, and a heart-to-price ratio. Jiang Nanchun said at the 2024 Tmall Consumer Innovation Annual Open Class. But don't blame the market volume, jump out of the path of "volume", or hit the differentiation, "we still have to see if the consumer can get used to the things you create to love you, choose you, you have to be, when he achieves this result, you jump out of the volume, the volume is essentially your differentiated value, do you have a reason to choose you and not others?"
However, for brands, how to see the trend, lead the trend, and survive in the differentiation of new products is a big problem. Nielsen market monitoring data shows that the "mortality rate" of new products on the market has reached 90%, and many new products have a life cycle of less than one year.
This requires brands to have a high degree of market acumen and insight, and to be flexible and agile enough to adjust product strategies in a timely manner according to market needs and trends.
The popularity of the sugar-free tea market in 2023 has made a large number of voices asking "whether the product is sweet" and "is there any sugar in it" in the comment area of the freeze-dried fruit tea brand Otter. After seeing these comments, Mo Mozi, co-founder and chief operating officer of Otter Tonton, quickly responded to the needs of consumers and adjusted the product direction in a timely manner. "Applying more fresh extraction reduction processes to the freeze-drying line, so that the flavor of the fruit can be fully released, so that we can achieve it without adding sugar or other sugar substitutes. ”
Last year, Otter tons have achieved sugar removal and white saccharification across the board. This cutting-edge brand, founded in 2021, has also successfully completed tens of millions of yuan in Pre-A round of financing in the first half of 2023.
This also proves that any trend in the consumer market is a new opportunity that brands can seize, and only by seizing the opportunity can the brand get a new lease of life.
The brand's "innovative partner"
Innovation requires certainty.
In an environment of rapid market changes and economic cycles, it is important for brands to use external forces to improve the accuracy and speed of seizing opportunities.
To achieve muscular growth brought by new products, Tmall provides a path that has been proven by countless cases.
Tmall makes new products, not simply to bring new products to Tmall to sell, but to let new products be born on Tmall. At the New Talk 2024 Tmall Consumer Innovation Annual Open Class, the relevant person in charge of Tmall, Wei Shan, said, "If the research and development of new products is divided into two links: 'research' and 'development', then Tmall has installed a very strong digital power engine on the two wheels of research and development." ”
Tmall New Product Innovation Center (TMIC), by virtue of the new product development stage, can use Tmall consumer observation to provide brands with a series of new product development products and tools services, which has become the preferred and necessary choice for more and more brands to carry out new product development and enterprise development.
On the one hand, Tmall has a wide range of mainstream consumer groups, which makes TMIC have the advantage of having a higher sample size and obtaining more comprehensive user demand research. This can help brands "speak with data", more keenly capture the popular trends in the current consumer group, and improve the success rate of new product launches. "The data behind the Tmall platform is essentially the calculation of people's hearts, we must not only know the algorithm of the platform, but also the algorithm of people's hearts, and we see the changes of people's hearts behind the data. Jiang Nanchun said in the 2024 Tmall Consumer Innovation Annual Open Class.
For example, Lifespace has done 4 months of detailed research with TMIC, and has captured the trend of young people's afternoon tea, and has been inspired by innovation; The rich big data dimensions of crowd portraits and price segments finally sorted out 11 potential new trend colors, and confirmed the colors of 2 new blockbuster sofa products in 2023.
On the other hand, TMIC has also iterated on technology, changing the new product development chain from laboratories, designers to consumers, and achieving reverse innovation in C2B through digital technology - developing new products based on consumer needs. With the support of this technology, brands can also shorten the growth cycle of new products. In past cooperation cases, TMIC has helped brands shorten the incubation cycle of new products from an average of two years to six months, and shorten the time from the launch to the explosion of a new product to one month at the earliest.
This is the case with the aforementioned Calvin Klein "sun-free clothing". TMIC's data helped it identify the high-growth "sunscreen clothing" track, and customized functional fabrics in the supply chain based on consumers' sunscreen pain points and sunscreen scene needs. Before the launch, TMIC also helps brands conduct intelligent testing through Tmall, calibrate the preferences of the target group, and optimize the adaptability of selling points to demand, so as to improve the success rate of new products on the shelves.
This year, in order to help brands solve the problem of short product life cycles from the perspective of the industry, TMIC also provided brands with digital intelligence tools and services such as consumer trend insight, user demand research, and intelligent model testing by upgrading the "Trend Center", releasing the "Efficacy Map" of the FMCG industry, and launching the "Fashion AI" AI model product for the apparel industry.
The so-called "trend center" is to provide inspiration for brand merchants and quickly capture business opportunities by providing current hot trends, monthly hot trends, and annual hot trends. At the same time, through AI algorithms, it helps brands identify potential incremental market opportunities from a large number of market segments, combined with their own products and brand advantages.
This undoubtedly provides brand merchants with new ideas for market adjustment. According to TMIC data, Philips understands that Chinese users, especially mother users, attach great importance to their children's eyes, so they have created an eye-friendly street lamp that can feel very comfortable when staring at the eyes, which is also one of the distinctive innovations in the products created by Philips in 2023.
The "efficacy map" of the FMCG industry can tell beauty merchants which elements are combined to make products with higher hit rates, and will display monthly efficacy and ingredient lists to help brands make efficient decisions in scenarios such as trend tracking, new product positioning, competitive analysis, and new product design.
After using the "efficacy map" and understanding that young people began to study the mechanism of action of the product's ingredients, La Mer launched a firming knife essence positioned as "firm" and "not loose" last year, and took the ingredients of "V-Micro micro-carved particles and deep-frequency lifting net" as an opportunity to grow, and focused on fitness and medical beauty in product promotion, and sold tens of millions of dollars on Double 11, and this product quickly became the first place in the list of new products of Tmall liquid essence.
TMIC's AI product "Fashion AI" in the apparel industry can quickly generate a variety of clothing styles through AI technology according to the demands of merchants, helping small and medium-sized apparel merchants to quickly make payments and capture hot spots. "It can give a full range of references to the brand's trendy styles, fabrics, and styles. "It can also allow more designers to get more inspiration in the design process. The relevant person in charge of Tmall, Wei Shan, and the general manager of Tmall women's clothing industry, Yi Xi, said successively.
In recent years, there have been many new products that have become popular on social media with gimmicks, but there are not many new products with high real influence, wide popularity and strong vitality. TMIC is doing its best to help more and more brands to achieve the ultimate market insight in "research" and agile action in "development", so as to find the right direction, constantly calibrate, and finally detonate new products in the fierce competition for new products.
More and more innovations are breaking through the ground, born to the sun, and converging into a new forest, which is the innovation ecology that Tmall wants to build.