Author: Li Jinglin
During the May Day holiday, music festivals and concerts have received a large number of people and attention, and they are also a good node for brands to strive for exposure. At the Beijing Strawberry Music Festival, Bosideng appeared with sunscreen products.
"Best-selling 72 countries".
"No. 1 in mid-to-high-end sunscreen clothing sales".
The slogan is loud. In a venue where young people gather, Bosideng tries to bring its high-end products closer to young people.
At the Beijing Film Festival that just ended, Bosideng sunscreen clothing also held a show. Italian designer Pietro, creative director of Bosideng brand, described the concept of the show: "Inspired by the movie "Last Year in Marienbad", the set design is inspired by the film shooting location, using the light and shadow changes in the film to create a fantastic catwalk scene. ”
Bosideng will enter the field of sunscreen clothing in 2022, and the brand that does winter business will extend its tentacles to summer, with the same high-end and high price, down jackets have exceeded 10,000 yuan, and sunscreen clothing has also exceeded 1,000 yuan. Zhu Gaofeng, chief financial officer and vice president of Bosideng, once said, "The fact that sunscreen clothing can be sold for thousands of yuan is based on the golden age of the rise of Chinese brands, and Bosideng should make better products and grow into a mid-to-high-end brand." ”
Many analysts have recently given Bosideng's high expectations, positioning sunscreen clothing as the second curve of the Bosideng brand. Bosideng disclosed in the earnings call that Bosideng's sunscreen clothing revenue in fiscal 2023 will be 500 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of more than 300%, and their target for 2024 is 1 billion.
But can Bosideng really be so optimistic in the sunscreen clothing market? When sunscreen clothing gradually becomes consumers' daily wear in spring and summer, and more and more brands step into the track, is Bosideng competitive enough?
In just two or three years, the sunscreen clothing market has been stirred into a red sea. According to data released by iResearch, from 2021 to 2026, the market size of sunscreen clothing is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 9.4%, which will become a new 100 billion scale industry. In 2023, Douyin will make a GMV of 3.73 billion yuan on one platform, maintaining a growth of more than 200%.
There are more and more people trying to carve up this piece of the pie. Traditional outdoor brands such as Banana, Camel, Kaile Stone, and Beimian that specialize in sun protection, clothing brands such as Bosideng, Uniqlo, and Semir, and new consumer brands such as Bananai, Moxun, and Sinsin...... There are countless factory white labels, Zhejiang Yiwu Ruiya Garment Co., Ltd. account manager said in an interview that after the Spring Festival this year, it began to step up stocking, and now it is gradually entering the peak season, with an output of 100,000 pieces a day.
Bosideng's idea of exploring the second curve may not be easy to realize.
Price is becoming an increasingly important decision-making factor in today's consumer market, and sun-protective clothing is no exception.
First of all, it is important to be clear that the cost of sunscreen clothing is not high. A fabric supplier in Shaoxing Keqiao Industrial Belt said: "From the perspective of industry prices, 30-40 yuan/meter is already a high-end fabric in nylon, and it is about a meter of cloth to make a piece of clothing, even if you add dyeing, printing, anti-ultraviolet additives and other processes, that is, the cost of adding more than 10 yuan, the wholesale price of the high-end line of normal sunscreen clothing is about 60 yuan." ”
Chop Pepper also learned from an outdoor clothing foundry in Shishi, Fujian Province, that the sunscreen clothing fabrics they produce are divided into two types, the supply price of products with knitting as raw materials is 39-42 yuan, and the supply price of products with nylon as raw materials is 42-53 yuan. The person in charge of the company said that for some brands with large orders, there will be more price advantages in taking goods. The merchants supplied by this foundry, including white-label merchants who only sell 69 yuan, and brand merchants in the price range of 100 yuan, "We have cooperated with several of the top 20 merchants in the sunscreen clothing on Dewu, and the cooperative brands have also appeared in the live broadcast room of making friends and walking with Hui." ”
To understand the cost of sunscreen clothing, let's look at the price segment of different brand products.
According to the data provided by Youmiyun, from March 1 to December 31, 2023, the price distribution of Douyin e-commerce sunscreen clothing will be less than 200 yuan. Among them, products of 0-50 yuan accounted for 21.59% of sales, 50-100 yuan accounted for 26.83%, and 100-200 yuan accounted for 19.82%. These three price segments account for nearly 70% of the total sales of sun-protective clothing on the platform. In terms of sales volume and price, products in the 200-300 range contribute the largest share of sales.
From January to March 2024, products below 200 yuan accounted for 80% of the total sales of sunscreen clothing on the platform. Of course, January to March is not the sales season for sunscreen clothing, and with the gradual increase of subsequent data, the corresponding proportion will also change in detail.
Image source: Youmi Yun
Compared with 2022, the price segment of sunscreen clothing has shown an overall upward trend, and in the same period of 2022, the sales of products in the 0-100 price segment accounted for more than 65%. A comprehensive comparison of the data of 2022 and 2023 shows that the main increase in sunscreen clothing occurs in the 100-200 price range.
Image source: Youmi Yun
Based on the above conclusions, let's look at the specific brand performance.
Referring to Miyun data, from January to March 2024, the top five sunscreen clothing brands in Douyin e-commerce sales are Moxun, Jiaoxia, Boxihe, Camel and Magic Weiwei. Although January to March is not the peak sales season for sunscreen clothing, and the sales of the No. 1 brand are only 7.5 million to 10 million, the data in front of you can probably reflect the brand preferences of consumers. The average sales price of these brands is basically around 200 yuan, and only the average price of Bo Xihe exceeds 400 yuan, reaching 409.62 yuan.
From the data, we can draw such a conclusion: consumers' main choice range is 0-200 yuan, some star new consumer brands can be sold in the range of 200-300 yuan, as for the high-price segment, more occupied by professional outdoor brands, its consumer group has a more hard-core functional demand for products.
In this way, Bosideng is indeed expensive.
From January to March 2024, the average sales price of Bosideng's sunscreen clothing on Douyin was as high as 453.12 yuan, far exceeding the main price range of this category. Reflected in sales, Bosideng's sales on Douyin are only about 250,000-500,000. Looking back at 2023, Bosideng's sales performance on Douyin is not outstanding, from March to December, it has completed monthly sales of 5 million to 7.5 million, even ranking behind the beauty brand Huaxizi.
In terms of price segment, the majority of Bosideng's sunscreen clothing sales in 2023 will be in the 300-500 price segment, more than 50%. As for the 1,000-yuan sunscreen clothing, which was widely discussed by the media last year, it only accounted for 8.58% of the brand's sales. Even if consumers recognize Bosideng's sunscreen clothing, they will still choose products with relatively high cost performance.
Image source: Youmi Yun
Douyin is becoming Bosideng's fastest-growing sales channel. According to the data of Jiuqian and Cicada Mother, in the first quarter of 2024, Bosideng's sales on Tmall, JD.com, and Douyin totaled 2.452 billion yuan, of which Douyin accounted for half, and the growth rate of the brand on the platform was also as high as 67.36%. Here, we choose Douyin e-commerce data to demonstrate the sales of Bosideng's sunscreen clothing, which can play a role in peeping at the leopard in the tube to a certain extent.
The cost of sunscreen clothing is generally low, although there are many links between the brand from the factory to the consumer terminal, plus the natural "brand premium", but when more and more people understand the value of the product itself, perhaps the brand really has to tell a sufficient and attractive story for this outrageous price difference.
To tell stories, sell sales, and seize market share, marketing has naturally become an indispensable competitive element in the sunscreen clothing track. The competition of various brands on the marketing side is even more fierce than the price competition.
Let's take a look at a few sets of data first, according to the "2023 Summer Economy Sunscreen Market Insights" report released by QuestMobile:
- On Xiaohongshu, a grass planting platform, Bosideng's investment amount in April last year was as high as 1.71 million yuan, surpassing brands such as Lancôme and Jiaoxia, ranking first in the marketing investment of sunscreen products. During the same period, in terms of the marketing of sunscreen products on the Douyin platform, Bosideng's investment amount was 2.193 million yuan, ranking third after Jiaoxia and Misting.
- The amount of Jiaoxia on Douyin reached 3.915 million, and Xiaohongshu was 901,000.
- In Xiaohongshu and Douyin, the number of brands participating in the marketing of sunscreen products in April 2023 will reach 489 and 104 respectively.
This is the data for 2023, and this year with the arrival of the peak season for sunscreen clothing, this data is likely to continue to be refreshed. Behind the huge amount of capital investment, Chop Pepper summed up three key directions for the marketing of sunscreen clothing.
The first is that brands compete for spokesperson resources.
In 2023, Jiaoxia signed a contract with Jay Chou, and not long ago they officially announced that Yang Mi would become the brand spokesperson, and they were under heavy pressure on the sunscreen clothing track. The specific signing amount is unknown, but according to the information circulating on the Internet, Jay Chou's endorsement fee is generally 20 million to 25 million. In just two years, Jiaoxia's investment in spokespersons is very likely to exceed 10 million.
The effect of the spokesperson is obvious. Chop pepper previously interviewed Jiaoxia CMO Guo Xiao, he said that because of the signing of Jay Chou last year, Jiaoxia began to widely attract male users, and by last winter, Jay Chou's sales of the same jacket were also good, of which male users accounted for 40%. In Jiaoxia's view, the spokesperson is the traffic entrance of the brand, and in the process of brand upgrading and transformation, the spokesperson improves the efficiency of brand story communication.
The spokesperson of Bosideng's sunscreen clothing is Yang Zi. In October last year, Bosideng signed Yang Zi, and in the spring of this year, Bosideng's advertisements can be seen in many residential and office elevators in Beijing, which shows the scale of its offline advertising. The spokespersons invited by Banana are traffic stars Wang Yibo and Zhao Lusi.
Mo Xun officially announced the spokespersons on Weibo in March this year, namely Dong Jie and Wu Xin. Dong Jie's success in Xiaohongshu has made it synonymous with a quality lifestyle, and choosing Dong Jie's endorsement will help the brand move closer to fashion and quality. Wu Xin has always had a personality in the fashion circle that pursues individuality, and these two spokespersons can help Mo find a concrete brand expression carrier.
In addition, SINSIN, an emerging brand that won the first place in the industry in the field of shark pants last year, entered the field of sunscreen clothing in a high-profile manner, and its spokesperson chose Qi Wei. Although SINSIN is a cutting-edge brand, its actions in brand marketing are not conservative, from shark pants to sun-protective clothing. From the very beginning, the professional outdoor brand Bo Xihe relied on the star effect to break the circle, and many stars such as Yang Kun, Hu Ge, Tong Liya, and Hawick Lau have successively become the spokespersons of Bo Xihe since 2012. In the second half of last year, the brand has already begun preparations for listing.
In the clothing industry, the most intuitive factor that makes consumers want to buy is to look good in it, and the best carrier to show the upper body effect of this dress is a star with good looks and figure. Yang Mi, known as the "Queen of Goods", has been praised for her walking hangers many times because of her outfits that lead the fashion trend. Her "missing underwear" wearing method is still being imitated to this day, and the shark pants, fishnet stockings, yoga pants, etc. that she brought to fire have become popular styles.
Choosing a spokesperson is only the first step, and how to use a spokesperson well is the key. At present, it seems that the use of spokespersons by brands is mainly focused on image display and brand exposure, and TVC advertising is the regular way.
Since last year, Jiaoxia has begun to shoot TVCs around spokespersons, and they have specifically found Qun Yushan, a leading advertising consulting company in the industry. Ma Xiaobo, chief strategy officer and chairman of Qunyushan, once elaborated on the idea of designing the brand content of Jiaoxia in an interview: from a high-dimensional perspective, everything that leads to islanding between people, indifference and alienation is the real opponent of Jiaoxia, and the object of Jiaoxia's imitation is companies like Nintendo and Disney, whose mission is to create happiness, not to die on technology, and technology should be handed over to hard-core technology companies. Guo Xiao said to chop pepper that what the banana wants to do is IKEA in the outdoor field.
In line with this idea, Qunyushan and Jiaoxia jointly created TVC content such as "Shocking Order". After signing Yang Mi this year, Jiaoxia further changed the TVC content from metaphysical brand concept transmission to product standard establishment, and spent a year and four or five TVCs to deeply connect the brand concept and products.
SINSIN also released a commercial after announcing Qi Wei's endorsement. SINSIN migrated from the shark pants category to sun-protective clothing, and the connection of brand logic is smooth. They don't have a large span of transformation from parasols to outdoor products, so they don't need to do a lot of logical combing work in TVC content like Banana.
ACCORDING TO THE BATTLE REPORT RELEASED BY SINSIN, AS OF APRIL 17, THE SINGLE-DAY TURNOVER OF ITS ICE-SKIN SUNSCREEN CLOTHING EXCEEDED 5 MILLION, ACHIEVING THE FIRST PLACE IN THE CATEGORY OF YINYIN SUNSCREEN CLOTHING. Qi Wei participated in the variety show "Sister Lang 5" that was being broadcast, and during the broadcast of the show, SINSIN also operated the marketing action of letting the guests wear their sunscreen clothing, and the communication effect was full, and the content of "Sister Lang with the same style" abounded on Xiaohongshu.
Moxun, a brand that grew up from Douyin, is seeking a greater breakthrough in the fashion level on the one hand, and fully mobilizing its channel resource advantages on the other hand. This year, Moxun collaborated with British designer brand ROKSANDA to create 52 pieces of clothing and 13 accessories in 17 colors, including a sunscreen series, which were featured in London Fashion Week and Shanghai Fashion Week.
Being featured in Fashion Week helped build the brand image, and then a number of fashion influencers on Douyin participated in the dissemination, including e-commerce experts Yu Ge and Mao Maojie, actor Zhou Jieqiong, fashion creative media fashionzoo, etc. Obviously, Mo Xun has taken a fashionable path of sunscreen clothing, showing new ideas among many brands.
The marketing actions of outdoor brands are generally not as fancy as fast fashion and new consumer brands, such as Bo Xihe and Camel, etc., once the brand awareness is established, there will be a relatively stable customer base. Camels have taken the cost-effective route, and the average price of sunscreen clothing like Boxi and sunscreen is more than 400, and there will still be relatively stable sales.
As a functional product, volume functional data is another major direction of brand marketing.
Banana is at the forefront, they not only roll data, but more importantly, publish industry standards. Indeed, with the increase of market participants, the industry has become dazzling, what kind of sunscreen clothing is the one that really meets the demand, many brands do not make it clear, and even confuse the concept on a single data. Through the formulation of industry standards, Jiaoxia is establishing the image of the industry leader and leader in the hearts of consumers.
Searching for sunscreen clothing on e-commerce platforms can be seen in an interesting phenomenon, almost every brand will mark their own advantage data on the title and conspicuous place of the product detail page, which is extremely rare in other categories of products. Among them, UPF (ultraviolet isolation index) is the main selling point, some brands write 50+, and some brands write 100+.
To sum up, UPF, cooling index, and air permeability index are the direction of the focus of most brands. Digital has become the core selling point of sunscreen clothing.
After clarifying the core competitive elements of the sunscreen apparel market, we turned our attention back to Bosideng.
Cheng Weixiong, a brand management expert in the textile, footwear and apparel industry and founder of Shanghai Liangqi Brand Management Co., Ltd., said in an interview, "Bosideng's entry into the outdoor and sunscreen track is mainly to make up for the lack of seasonal income in the main category of down jackets. Yi Qian, a clothing brand management consultant, believes that Bosideng's sunscreen business is more like a strategic supplement. On the main track of down jackets, a new category has been added, if it can occupy the minds of consumers in summer products, it can not only increase sales, but also enhance the brand's combat effectiveness.
SINSIN ALSO EXPRESSED A SIMILAR LOGIC FOR CHOPPED PEPPERS, "THE SALES OF SHARK PANTS FLUCTUATE SEASONALLY, WITH WINTER BEING THE PEAK SEASON, BUT SUMMER DEMAND IS RELATIVELY SMALL. Sunscreen clothing is a larger market, which is conducive to the brand's continuous expansion of the crowd", SINSIN's goal is not to be the first in the sunscreen clothing category, but to take a share of this market segment.
For most brands, sun-protective clothing is mainly used to complete the category, rather than the core item.
Bosideng's income is a bit skewed seasonally. According to Bosideng's financial report, the revenue in the first half of fiscal year 2024 (March-September 2024) will be 7.472 billion yuan, and according to the forecast of Western Securities, Bosideng's revenue in the entire fiscal year 2024 will reach 21.63 billion yuan, and the revenue in the first half of the year will only account for 1/3 of Bosideng's annual revenue. Hibernation in summer and harvesting in winter is the norm for Bosideng.
Therefore, as early as 2019, Bosideng put forward the strategy of "branding, seasoning, and internationalization" in an effort to narrow the revenue gap between different seasons. However, the effect was not good, and Bosideng opened up the Four Seasons apparel business at that point in time, expanding into men's wear, women's wear, children's wear and other fields, and by 2011, the number of Bosideng stores that had expanded rapidly reached the peak of 14,400.
The aggressive strategy brought disastrous results, with profits falling for the first time in 2013, and revenue from fiscal 2014 to fiscal 2016 not retaining, declining year after year. Gao Dekang, the founder of Bosideng, was reluctant to even mention this history: "It's too miserable, don't mention it." ”
Now Bosideng has restarted its diversified business attempt, but it is not as radical as before, and has bet on summer sunscreen clothing, and Bosideng is building a matrix of peak season down jackets + off-season sunscreen clothing + light and thin series products.
Will Bosideng be able to do it this time?
First of all, Bosideng has positioned its sunscreen products at the high-end. You must know that Bosideng's high-end mentality in down jackets has not been consolidated, and it has chosen a high-price segment for sunscreen clothing, which is tantamount to choosing an extremely difficult path for itself. Analyst Yi Qian once said that consumer loyalty is very low now, and consumer trends have also changed, either to buy cost-effective things or buy things with high emotional value. Bosideng's sunscreen clothing can neither provide customers with high emotional value nor cost-effectiveness, so how can consumers place orders?
In addition, Bosideng's sunscreen mentality is also difficult to establish. Their minds in the field of down jackets are too strong, and now they suddenly cut into the field of sunscreen, there are professional outdoor brands in the past, even if they sell more expensive than Bosideng, but the brand has a stable and loyal customer base;
In addition, according to the above summary, Bosideng's marketing is not out of the circle. Jiaoxia has a complete output in terms of both spokesperson and brand logic, and brands like SINSIN can quickly grab the attention of consumers by relying on spokespersons and their own strong live broadcast e-commerce channels. In comparison, Bosideng's marketing actions are somewhat decent.
In terms of products, Bosideng is also difficult to say about its advantages. UPF100+, air permeability 665mm/s, cooling index 66%, these data are not low, but not eye-catching. Open Tmall to search for sunscreen clothing, and almost no products say that their UPF is less than 100. Cheng Weixiong said that unlike down jackets, Bosideng does not have the right to speak in the industrial chain of sunscreen clothing accessories, production, process production and other aspects. "Sunscreen series is not Bosideng's specialty, and Bosideng deviates from the main channel and deliberately supplements the category, which is easy to repeat the mistakes of the past and step into the pit of 'blind' diversification again. ”
Of course, due to the larger scale of the brand, Bosideng has a more prominent advantage in the channel side. For the six months ended September 2023, the total number of regular retail outlets (excluding peak season stores) of Bosideng's down apparel business decreased by 110 to 3,313 from the end of the previous fiscal year, the number of self-operated retail outlets decreased by 193 to 1,206, and the number of retail outlets operated by third-party dealers increased by 83 to 2,107. It's decreasing, but it's still sizable.
By making full use of the offline network and promoting sun-protective clothing during the off-season of down jackets, Bosideng has the opportunity to get closer to consumers than other brands.
If Bosideng wants to break through in the sunscreen clothing market, it may only rely on a miracle.