China Business Daily (Reporter Yu Jiaxin) The warm spring day has increased the frequency of people's outdoor sports and travel, and it has also brought fire to the fashionable, lightweight functional clothing of sunscreen clothing. According to the data, April to July is the hot season for sunscreen clothing, and the sales contributed by this period are close to 90% of the industry's annual sales.
From the beginning of its birth to the "spring and summer standard", the popularity of sun-protective clothing has made consumers continue to put forward higher requirements for it: not only can it be sunscreened, but also light and breathable, close-fitting and cool, and slim shape......
How is sunscreen clothing updated and iterative? In view of the current market, what indicators should consumers pay more attention to in order to bypass the "thunder pit"?
Sun-protective clothing ushered in the sales season
Flower viewing, hiking, picnics, hiking...... The warm spring day is a good time for people to get out of the house and enjoy the outdoors.
The popularity of spring travel and the improvement of residents' awareness of sun protection have gradually brought sunscreen clothing to the center of the stage in the dressing industry. "Wearing it outside is a sunscreen expert, and wearing it at home is an urban beauty", most of today's sunscreen clothing has both functional attributes and fashion attributes, and has become the "spring and summer standard" for people to dress.
Qifei observed the "Douyin 2024 Sunscreen Clothing Market Industry Trend Insights" and proposed that in 2023, the GMV (total merchandise transaction) of the sunscreen clothing market on the Douyin platform will reach about 3.73 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 217.4%, and the growth rate is very impressive. Among them, the first half of the year is the golden period for sunscreen clothing sales, and the sales of sunscreen clothing have exploded since March, with a year-on-year growth rate of 309%, and the period from April to July has contributed 88% of the industry's annual sales.
Entering spring, sun-protective clothing began to become a hot seller in the clothing industry. (China Business Daily reporter Yu Jiaxin/photo)
Consumer An An (pseudonym) told a reporter from China Business Daily that he had two sunscreen clothing. In the general outdoor occasions, she often wears the one with softer and more comfortable fabrics, but because the work requires long-term exposure to the wild environment, whenever she works outdoors in spring and summer, another black sunscreen clothing will become her "work clothes", which is both sun-proof and dirt-resistant.
In fact, it has been more than ten years since the birth of sun-protective clothing, but in the impression of some consumers, the earliest batch of sun-protective clothing not only does not touch the appearance and "fashion", but also is not comfortable in the wearing experience. With the improvement of consumer demand, sunscreen clothing from the niche to the mass market is becoming more and more "rolled", not only paying more attention to sunscreen performance, but also upgrading and iterating in terms of appearance, fabric, lightness and thinness.
Not only that, the sunscreen clothing that was originally dominated by women is being accepted by more diversified consumer groups, and children's sunscreen clothing and men's sunscreen clothing are beginning to appear more and more on the market. Some male consumers told reporters that sunscreen clothing is much lighter than long-sleeved jackets made of other fabrics, which is what attracts them the most.
Men's sun-protective clothing is increasingly appearing on the market. (China Business Daily reporter Yu Jiaxin/photo)
Where are the performance values different?
Returning to the name, the strength of sunscreen performance must be a key indicator to measure the excellence of a sunscreen clothing.
An An told reporters that he had done some homework before buying sunscreen clothing. She learned that the core indicator related to sun protection performance is the UPF value, or the "UV protection factor". Generally speaking, the higher the UPF, the better the UV blocking effect of the sunscreen clothing. In addition, she also asked the brand's customer service, and the other party said that her product parameters had reached the relevant standards.
When searching for "sunscreen clothing" on the Tmall platform, a reporter from China Business Daily saw that when different brand merchants marked the UPF value in the product name or poster, some were displayed as UPF50+, and some were displayed as UPF100, UPF1000, or even UPF2000+. Why are these brands so different in terms of numerical differences, and are the core sun protection properties of different brands of sunscreen clothing as different as these numbers?
People familiar with the matter told reporters that the UPF value presented in the publicity interface of sunscreen clothing is quite different, because some brands have the problem of "inflated value" in the labeling.
The national standard "Evaluation of Ultraviolet Protection Performance of Textiles" proposes that when the UPF of the sample is greater than 40 and the T(UVA)AV is less than 5%, it can be called "anti-ultraviolet product". In the actual labeling of the product label, when the UPF ≤ 50 < 40, it should be marked as "UPF40+", and when the UPF is > 50, it should be marked as "UPF50+".
"In other words, according to the existing standards, there are actually only two types of compliant labeling methods: 'UPF40+' and 'UPF50+', even if this value really reaches 2000, 3000, or even higher, it should be marked as 'UPF50+'. In addition, the labeling method may mislead consumers into believing that the performance of sunscreen clothing labeled with 'UPF50+' is not as good as that of 'UPF2000+', which is a manifestation of unhealthy competition between brands. The above-mentioned people familiar with the matter said.
The person familiar with the matter also revealed that at present, some sunscreen clothing brands still have the situation of confusing UPF and UPFAV, the latter reflects the average UPF value in the tested fabric of a sunscreen clothing, but the location of the tested fabric is different, and its UPF data may be different, even if the average value is up to standard, there is also the possibility that the value of the fabric in some areas is lower than the standard.
Product standards need to be further standardized
In addition to the inflated UPF value, some consumers have found before and after purchase that properties such as "coolness", "lightness" and "breathability" have become the selling points of most sunscreen clothing, and different brands will often mention these keywords in the publicity process. However, without the relevant quantitative values, consumers cannot judge the specific performance ability of these performances through emotional descriptions, and it is difficult to compare brands literally.
At present, sunscreen clothing has a variety of subdivisions such as quick-drying and cooling. (China Business Daily reporter Yu Jiaxin/photo)
"I refer to the recommendations of some well-known review bloggers before buying sunscreen clothing, but it is not until I wear it on myself that I have an intuitive experience of the adjective 'coolness'. Consumer Miss Wang told reporters.
It is reported that for the sunscreen clothing industry, the relevant departments have not yet launched a special unified national standard. In 2019, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) launched the textile industry standard (FZ/T 74007-2019) for outdoor sunscreen skin clothing, which regulates safety, size and appearance, color fastness, moisture permeability, ultraviolet protection performance, etc., but does not stipulate performance indicators such as "coolness".
It is understood that some enterprises are making efforts to further standardize the industry standards for sunscreen clothing. On April 8 this year, Jiaoxia and iResearch jointly released the "White Paper on China's Sunscreen Clothing Industry Standard" to investigate the current situation of the domestic sunscreen clothing industry and user pain points, and proposed to use the six indicators of "UPF value", "ultraviolet blocking rate", "cooling coefficient", "air permeability", "gram weight" and "washing resistance" and related parameters to measure whether the performance of sunscreen clothing is qualified.
Bananaxia proposed to use the "six-dimensional standard" and related parameters to measure the performance of sunscreen clothing. (Picture taken from "White Paper on China's Sunscreen Clothing Industry Standard")
For example, the white paper proposes that "raw yarn sunscreen" is a popular technology in the sunscreen clothing industry in recent years, but some brands do not provide relevant test reports when promoting the use of this technology. If the product does use raw yarn technology, it must be tested for wash resistance and at least reported on the product page. In addition, for the cooling value of sunscreen clothing, the white paper cites the textile industry standard of "Contact Cool Knitted Garment", and recommends 0.18-0.20 as the basic coefficient of coolness of sunscreen clothing.
The white paper believes that at present, users' awareness of sunscreen clothing is gradually improving, consumers' needs are more diversified, and the market has also entered the stage of being reversed by consumers. Therefore, the industry needs to be further transparent and realize that there are data to check and standards to follow, so as to achieve better, more stable and long-term development.