Interface News Reporter | Zhou Fangying
Interface News Editor | Xu Yue
On April 7, star Wang Hedi's personal brand D.Desirable officially opened for trial operation one day after the Qingming holiday. D.Desirable is located on Anfu Road, Xuhui District, Shanghai, which is also a trendy neighborhood where designer brands such as Short Sentence, Lost in Echo, and Harmay gather.
The store's first day of trial operation was by invitation, and it was only opened to the public on April 8, and many Wang Hedi fans came from other places to line up. There is still a long queue at the entrance on rainy days, which is also related to the measures to limit the flow of people in the D.Desirable store, which allows three people to pass at a time.
The entire D.Desirable is divided into two floors, the first floor is a café, and the second floor is a clothing area, interspersed with large D.Desirable labels, as well as Wang Hedi's own collection of artwork and NBA memorabilia.
On Xiaohongshu, many netizens have begun to share their shopping income and reply to the stock status of hot-selling products in the store in real time. Best-selling products such as rainproof jackets, black pink D T-shirts, necklaces and bracelets have begun to sell out. In order to put an end to the situation of scalpers, a sign was also set up at the door indicating that each person is limited to 1 piece per person per day.
There is no doubt that the popularity of D.Desirable's opening is closely related to the influence of Wang Hedi himself. This is similar to the path of many established fashion brands starting from the community and community culture, but in order to truly achieve commercial success, D.Desirable must go beyond Wang Hedi's influence and establish its own design style and elements.
D.Desirable is a personal brand founded by Wang Hedi at the end of 2022. Tianyancha shows that the operating company behind D.Desirable is Guangzhou Chuangzao Brand Management Co., Ltd., with Wang Hedi and Kang Kang holding 51% and 49% of the shares respectively. According to public information, Kang Kang is a relevant person of Wang Hedi's brokerage company.
Wang Hedi's holding of the apparel brand reflects that he participates in brand management to a certain extent, and is not completely "hands-off". As the core figure of the brand concept, the degree of participation of the celebrity itself determines whether the brand has the determination to operate for a long time.
For example, less than two years after the launch of Yang Chaoyue's personal brand BATT, the brand logo and online channels have also been adjusted accordingly. Yang Chaoyue soon withdrew from the ranks of shareholders of the brand's entity operating company, which also means that he is untied from the brand. She only held 20% of the shares before the withdrawal.
At the beginning of its establishment, D.Desirable was only sold online through the official flagship store of Douyin, and it was sold in limited quantities. The concept of pre-sale and limited edition not only creates brand scarcity, but also saves operating costs for start-up brands, after all, the inventory problem is the main pressure on clothing brands.
After some of the hot-selling models are sold, D.Desirable will return to the market according to market feedback. However, this form of sales also invisibly raises the threshold for non-fan consumers to understand the brand, because mass consumers will hardly follow the dynamics of a new brand all the time like fans.
Like other celebrity brands, D.Desirable has played a safe card in the design. Sweatshirts, T-shirts, baseball caps and other categories with high tolerance are printed with large brand logos, and then changed to different colors, and these basic items occupy the majority of the brand SKUs.
D.Desirable WeChat official mall currently shows more than 60 products, the price band is around 1000 yuan, T-shirts, sweatpants, hats, earrings, sweatshirts, rings and other hundreds of yuan of single items have been sold out, and a price of 1599 yuan full of diamond D bracelet has also been sold out.
Half of the few products still on sale are garments priced at more than 1,000 yuan, such as goose down vests and denim jackets with more intricate materials and workmanship.
In order to break the circle to the public, D.Desirable also launched a co-branded sneaker with the French sports fashion brand Paladin, launched a co-branded watch gift box with G-SHOCK, and cooperated with the independent designer brand Feng Chen Wang to co-brand. All this is based on Wang Hedi's own influence value in the business circle.
Wang Hedi is not the first star to open a trendy brand, and he will not be the last.
Although the opening of an offline store within a year of the brand's establishment is already a good result among similar celebrity fashion brands, the experience of the past indicates that D.Desirable still has a long way to go to truly expand its commercial influence.
Edison Chen's trendy brand Juice has closed several stores in Chinese mainland one after another, and the subsequent conversion of new stores to pop-up stores is an example. Compared with Juice, the mass market is more familiar with Edison Chen's other trendy brand, CLOT, because CLOT has a first-mover advantage before the street trend booms.
By the time Juice expanded around 2015, overseas street brands such as Off-White and Supreme had already begun to swell in China. D.Desirable is facing similar star fashion brands such as TEAM WANG Design founded by Wang Jiaer and Goodbai founded by Bai Jingting.
In addition to competing for the purchasing power of fan groups, the commercial difficulty of these brands lies in how to connect with the public through offline store activities and other forms of marketing, and truly let the brand be the protagonist. For example, at the end of 2023, TEAM WANG Design and Budweiser Beer jointly held an Under the Castle-themed Halloween event in Shanghai, creating festival-themed activities such as secret rooms and markets.
Marketing is only part of the market, and whether the product quality can match the premium is also part of the market test.
Shortly after the release of the WeChat mini-program, the price of some products close to 1,000 yuan quickly triggered a "crusade" from a large number of netizens. Some netizens pointed out that the pajamas priced at 988 yuan are made of polyester fiber and cotton, the materials are ordinary and not breathable enough, and the pure white appearance also lacks a sense of design.
This public opinion directly sentenced the nabi brand to a "death sentence", the brand's WeChat mall has ceased operation, and the official account has also stayed at the tweet of the first "Cloud Capsule Series" on sale, and there has been no update.
In addition to whether D.Desirable can get out of the circle is related to the fashion influence of the star himself, it is still the core product strength that supports the brand to go further.
Whether the design can lead the trend, whether the quality control can be guaranteed, whether the after-sales service is in place, these problems that test the mass commercial brand, will still fall on the head of the celebrity fashion brand, and the celebrity manager will sometimes become a magnifying glass to magnify these problems.