What warms up faster than the temperature is the annual sunscreen market.
With the continuous enhancement of Chinese people's awareness of sunscreen, China's sunscreen market has expanded year after year, and the annual sunscreen time period has been stretched longer and longer.
At the same time, the pattern of the sunscreen market is also quietly changing.
According to the sales data of Tmall beauty category, the sales of sunscreen products fell by 61.99% in the first half of 2022, far exceeding the decline of other beauty subcategories.
On the other hand, hard sunscreen, represented by sun-protective clothing, began to rise rapidly. According to Guoji data, in April 2023, the top 2 searches for sunscreen-related items on the Xiaohongshu platform are sunscreen clothing and sunscreen hats, while sunscreen only ranks third.
Brands that have insight into the trend of "hard sunscreen" have come to the end: the outdoor lifestyle brand Jiaoxia has relied on hard sunscreen to achieve the TOP1 in the sunscreen market, and other sports brands such as the traditional outdoor brand Arc'teryx, the vertical sunscreen brand OhSunny, as well as sports brands such as FILA, Anta, and Decathlon, as well as regular wear brands Uniqlo and Bosideng, have also launched sunscreen clothing items. In addition, a significant portion of the market is occupied by non-branded white labels.
Under the scuffle, there is no shortage of chaos such as the lack of standards and the opaque values.
In April this year, Jiaoxia, a lightweight outdoor lifestyle brand and a TOP1 brand of sunscreen clothing, jointly released the industry's first "China Sunscreen Clothing Industry Standard White Paper" (hereinafter referred to as the "White Paper") with iResearch, and joined hands with spokesperson Yang Mi to take the lead in announcing the six-dimensional standards and quantifiable parameters of sunscreen clothing.
After the release of the "White Paper", the "China Consumer Daily" also published the "Proposal for Practicing the Concept of "Consumer First" and Making the Consumption of Sunscreen Clothing More Transparent and Reassuring", which issued an initiative to the industry to make the standards of sunscreen clothing open and the parameters transparent.
In the apparel industry, standards have always been the "weather vane" of brand development. The release of the "White Paper" has pointed out the real pain points and itching points of users for brands entering the sunscreen clothing market, and has become an important opportunity for brands to improve their competitive advantages and the industry to move towards a high level of development.
Last year, the "White Paper on Lightweight Outdoor Industry" was launched, and this year, the "White Paper on China's Sunscreen Clothing Industry Standard" was launched, and at the end of March, Bananaxia officially announced Yang Mi as the new spokesperson of the brand. This comprehensive voice not only has a 1+1>2 business efficiency, but also shows the responsibility of Jiaoxia to try to stand on the high potential energy of the industry, shape the category consensus, and promote the overall upward development of the industry.
Sunscreen clothing appeared in China in 2007 and has gone through three periods:
From 2007 to 2014, during the domestic research and development period, consumers' hard sunscreen measures at that time were still dominated by sunscreen umbrellas, and only a small number of outdoor people would wear sunscreen clothing of overseas brands.
Inspired by this, the domestic brand Bananaxia was inspired by overseas skin windbreakers and windproof jackets, and transformed and upgraded them to design the first generation of local sunscreen clothing. At that time, most of the mainstream audience was still female users who were more aware of sun protection.
Since 2015, with the increase in the marketing efforts of the head brand and the awakening of users' awareness of sunscreen, the domestic sunscreen clothing industry has ushered in a period of rapid development. At this time, the consumer group of sunscreen clothing is expanding, not only female users, but also more men and children have become the audience of sunscreen clothing, and the wearing scene is not limited to outdoors, and continues to expand to daily commuting, life and other scenes.
According to the white paper, it is estimated that by 2026, the market size of sunscreen clothing will reach 95.8 billion, and sunscreen clothing will account for more than 50% of it, and the scale will reach 55.4 billion.
The tens of billions market has naturally attracted more and more brands to enter the game, and the fierce competition has also deformed the actions of some brands, which are sales-oriented, and even do not hesitate to make false propaganda with exaggerated figures. The frequent chaos in the industry has also made the sunscreen clothing market enter a standardized period from 2023.
As long as you have searched for "sunscreen clothing" on major platforms, you must be no stranger to such an experience:
Although I have done a lot of homework, I know that I need to look at the sun protection index, and I know that I want to buy light and breathable, but I still can't understand what the English and numbers on the sunscreen clothing tag mean.
This is what the white paper points out, and there are three major chaos in the sunscreen clothing industry today:
First, there is a lack of standardization in the disclosure of numerical values.
For example, common sun protection standards are UPF, which is the lowest value in the test sample, and UPF (AV), which is the average value in the test sample, which is usually higher than the former. Therefore, some brands will change the concept and use the UPF (AV) value to represent the protection ability of the product, which is called "super protection", but in fact the value is inflated.
Second, the core function lacks a test report.
Especially in the past two years, the very popular concept of "original yarn sunscreen" should have added nano-level sunscreen factors to the molten yarn raw materials, and passed the washing resistance test, it can be called "original yarn sunscreen", but many brands known as "original yarn sunscreen" cannot provide corresponding test reports.
Third, too much emphasis is placed on a single capability and a lack of comprehensiveness.
Although "sunscreen" is the first sex of sunscreen clothing, it is not enough to have sunscreen, consumers also need comfortable fabrics, breathable, and light materials, but these equally important characteristics only stay at the level of emotional description, and there is no set of quantifiable standards.
When brands flock to the upper limit of "volume", in fact, the "bottom line" is the guarantee for the sustainable development of the industry. It is also based on this that as a leading outdoor lifestyle brand in the industry, Jiaoxia chose to launch the "White Paper on China's Sunscreen Clothing Industry Standard" and the six-dimensional standard for sunscreen clothing, in order to clarify the bottom line of the sunscreen clothing industry.
The origin of banana and "sunscreen" can be traced back to ten years ago. In 2013, Bananaxia, which started from a small black umbrella, initially broke through in the hard sunscreen market with its aesthetic value with a great sense of design and the functional value endorsed by protective technology.
In the early stage of brand development, Jiaoxia continuously improved the product matrix around the keyword of "hard sunscreen", and successively exploded sunscreen masks, sunscreen sleeves, sunscreen hats, sunscreen clothing and other single products, with a number of R&D patents, supported the core of the product, and established a stable mind in the sunscreen track.
According to the prospectus, Jiaoxia has 123 patents in China and is applying for 72 patents, and plans to build a performance testing laboratory, product design and innovation space in the future, and increase investment in basic research and development of fabrics and special materials.
It is also difficult to ignore that the brand has grown to a listed scale in less than ten years since its establishment. According to the prospectus, from 2019 to 2021, Jiaoxia's revenue was 380 million yuan, 790 million yuan and 2.41 billion yuan respectively, with a compound annual growth rate of 150.1%.
When the sunscreen clothing market enters a period of standardization and adjustment, in order to ensure the sustainable development of the industry, it is imperative to formulate standards, and the industry's leading brands have to shoulder heavier responsibilities. As a result, Banana stood up and announced the six-dimensional standard of sunscreen clothing, which has always been the "internal bottom line", to the industry.
After the sunscreen clothing market has changed from supply-side to demand-side, consumers have become the new driving force for the development of the industry.
The truth is that this generation of consumers is becoming less and less likely to be "fooled". In the past, brand advertising was what it said, but today's consumers not only want brands to show "evidence", but also study and compare various details of products.
Search for "sunscreen" on major content platforms, and there must be such a picture on the first screen - a person divides his back into more than 20 pieces, applies different brands of sunscreen, and is exposed to the sun for three hours, with the title: "Human Body Measured Product Effect".
In the face of more serious consumers, what brands need to do is to dig out their real voices, and pour out their real needs from them, and feed them back to the products.
Therefore, Jiaoxia and iResearch jointly conducted a survey on consumers across the country and found that today's consumers have more diversified needs for sunscreen clothing:
In addition, "comprehensive performance", "skin-friendly", "multi-scene wear", "lightweight and portable" and "style trend" are the top five elements in consumers' overall expectations for sunscreen clothing, and in terms of performance, a garment's sunscreen power, breathability, ultraviolet blocking power, sunscreen durability, etc., are all concerned by consumers.
However, looking at the market, there is currently no set of quantifiable measurement standards to help users make purchase decisions, they need to spend a lot of time looking for values and reading evaluations, and complex data dimensions and incomplete information disclosure make them "do their homework for half a lifetime, and still can't understand the indicators when they return".
Therefore, starting from the function and somatosensory dimensions of sunscreen clothing that consumers are most concerned about in the survey, Jiaoxia extracted the six core demands that sunscreen clothing needs to meet: sunscreen, no sweating, durable, cool body, light weight, and sunburn protection.
At the same time, in response to these demands, Banana has proposed a "six-dimensional standard" for sunscreen clothing, including:
The UPF value and the ultraviolet blocking rate are two indicators that correspond to the demand for "sunburn/damage".
Jiaoxia comprehensively considered the sunshine time in each quarter and region of the country in 2023, and set the bottom line standard for sunscreen tanning as "effective ultraviolet light blocking within 12h+", that is, UPF50+ (ultraviolet transmittance is 2%), which is also the highest level that can be marked on sunscreen clothing stipulated by the state.
However, considering that Xinjiang, Yunnan, Hainan and other special areas may have more than 15 hours of sun exposure in summer, Banana has added the standard of 99% ultraviolet blocking rate on the basis of the highest UPF50+, which can achieve more than 20 hours of ultraviolet protection.
Washability corresponds to the need for "wearable". Through research, Jiaoxia found several important data: the annual high-frequency wearing of sunscreen clothing is 2.3 months, the cleaning frequency during the period is 1.7 times per week, and the average replacement period is 2.1 years.
Through the logic of "washing times = annual wearing time * years / cleaning frequency", Jiaoxia sets the washing resistance of a single sunscreen clothing as "the sunscreen value is still UPF50+ after 30 washes", so as to meet the average wearing needs of consumers.
The air permeability corresponds to the demand for "no stuffiness". But there is a certain contradiction between breathability and sun protection, in the vernacular, the thicker the clothes, the denser the weaving, the better the sun protection effect must be, but this will inevitably lead to lack of comfort. Referring to the national standard GBT5453-1997 "Determination of Breathability of Textile Fabrics", 100mm/s is the qualified level, 200mm/s is the better level, and the air permeability rate of 180mm/s is selected as the bottom line value of the air permeability of sunscreen clothing.
The cooling coefficient and gram weight correspond to the needs of "cool body" and "light weight" respectively. In these two indicators, the logic of setting the bottom line value under the banana is similar to the air permeability, which is based on the national standard and industry experience, and the value above the market qualification level is selected for knitted fabrics and woven fabrics as the bottom line standard of the industry.
This set of six-dimensional standards has two major features:
The first is synthesis. This set of standards has iterated the market's requirements for sunscreen clothing from the simplest "suntan/injury" to a more comprehensive six dimensions, and these dimensions are based on consumer research and refinement, which is "more suitable for today's Chinese baby's physique" sunscreen clothing standard.
The second is balance. There are conflicting parts of the key metrics that consumers care about, such as sun protection and breathability, and this set of standards sets a baseline for each dimension, guiding brands not to overdo one specific metric at the expense of other dimensions of experience.
As the first in the industry to mention the "six dimensions", since the establishment of the brand, it has always been the bottom line standard of products, and constantly iterates products according to the needs and experience of consumers.
In the latest new 2024 spring and summer products, the sunscreen clothing under the Jiaoxia brand is divided into five categories: cooling line, sports line, light and thin line, breathable line, and exposure line.
After all, when consumers come with a clear purpose to buy, brands often have to answer not "who am I", but "how am I?"
Since the new brand positioning was proposed last year, Jiaoxia has successively launched the brand trilogy of "Shocking Order", "All the Suns" and "Simple Love", and officially announced Jay Chou, which has fully penetrated the new lifestyle concept of "lightweight outdoor", and has also received good market feedback.
After making a few timeless big pieces, it takes courage to dare to step out of your comfort zone and redefine "what a brand is". The battle to upgrade the brand positioning of Jiaoxia is not beautiful.
And this year, Jiaoxia officially announced Yang Mi as the new brand spokesperson, and when the influence of the fashion clothing circle was further enhanced, he chose to jump back to the brand starting point of "sunscreen" and start to formulate standards. From a business point of view, the two key actions achieve each other, and the brand's professionalism is more efficiently transmitted.
For Bananaxia, this is not only a look back of the brand's "original intention", but also a responsibility to continuously explore the most suitable sunscreen standards for Chinese in the case of a blank industry standard, promote the overall upward development of the industry, and make the cake bigger and better.
Of course, from the perspective of brand building, in the track where the competition pattern has not yet been completely fixed, it is undoubtedly the highest level of category brands to become the track standard and shape the category consensus.
After all, the essence of human society is consensus. For example, money is worth because everyone thinks it's worth it. Therefore, in order for the brand to be deeply rooted in the hearts of the people, what the brand needs to do is to create a consensus, and the larger and deeper the consensus, the stronger the influence of the brand.
This is also why, the oat milk brand OATLY released the "White Paper on China's Oat "Milk" Industry in 2021, the color pupil brand moody released the "White Paper on the Standardized Fitting of Color Contact Lenses" in 2022, and the skin care brand UNISKIN also announced in 2022 that it participated in the compilation of the "Evaluation Standards for Human Skin Aging".
Trout once said in the book "Positioning": The mission of a brand is ultimately synonymous with becoming a category. The competition in the same dimension will definitely enter the cost competition, so the brand should use a higher strategic vision and lay out one step ahead.
On the way to compete for the right to speak, as a means of scientific marketing, the brand and the third party jointly publish the white paper, which is an effective way to communicate with the C-end, and it is also an effective means to stand on the high level of potential energy in the industry and transparently convey the brand voice downward.
Of course, empty standards are not enough, and brand building is not a day's work. In order to make the professional and safe image of the brand deeply rooted in the hearts of the people, everything needs to return to the product itself.