■ Related company: Lori who ran away
■ Industry attributes: sportswear
■ Valuation / financing round: In 2017, the rampaging Lori completed tens of millions of yuan of angel round financing, which was exclusively invested by Dynamic Domain Capital. At present, the Series B financing is about to be completed.
■ Core competitiveness: Standing at the intersection of "her economy" and the rise of domestic products, with cost-effective fashion sportswear, taking into account the needs of women's fitness and daily wear
■ Future keywords: China's lululemon, cost-effective, she economy
Loli, an abbreviation for Lolita, is Nabokov's 14-year-old girl who later developed into a subculture in Japan to refer only to petite and cute girls; and "runaway" first appeared in 1995 Japanese anime to refer to a crazy anomaly.
Chen Nunyang, a Zhejiang girl born in 1990 and a fitness expert, used these two words as the name of her sportswear in 2014, "My height is relatively small, about 162, so I used the word 'Lori', and 'Runaway' was because I liked to read various comics at that time, and I felt that this word was very powerful." She wanted to use this name to "say no" to the long-popular "white and thin" aesthetic.
The combination of these two conflicting styles of words has knocked out an athleisure brand known to Chinese Gen Z women - SYLPHLIKE LOLI.
This year's 618, among a number of new brands, the pre-sale amount of "Runaway Lolita" on the Tmall platform rose by 1104% year-on-year.
The runaway Lori did not become famous in the first world war. Public information shows that the sales of the runaway Lolita have won the first place in the Internet women's sports brand for five consecutive years, and the total number of users on the whole network is about 12 million.
In an interview with the "Dialogue on Future Business" column of the Daily Economic News, Chen Nunyang revealed that at the beginning of her brand creation, there was no concept of a new consumer brand, "The reason why Lolita that is now rampaging will be classified as a new consumer brand is because most of the new consumer brands are more in line with vertical demand, and the rampaging Lolita is just in line with this feature." ”
In her view, the outbreak of the brand on Tmall 618 this year is the opportunity that the rampaging Lolita has been waiting for since its inception, and it is also the result of the thin hair of the new brand.
From internet celebrities to operators, from appearance to brand
The violent Lolita is a typical new consumer brand, from the beginning of its establishment, it has taken root in the Internet, and the label originally attached to Chen Nuanyang is also a word "net red" full of Internet colors.
While studying in the dance department of Hangzhou Normal University, she worked part-time as a graphic model. After graduating from school, in order to treat tinnitus, she got her first fitness card and gradually became obsessed with fitness. Around 2014, she began to post fitness updates on Weibo, and thus accumulated the first core fans.
But Chen Nuanyang did not choose to be only a fitness blogger, Internet celebrity or professional model chasing traffic, but embarked on the road of entrepreneurship.
It can be said that in the early days, the violent Lori was completely relying on this fierce "Leo girl" to rampage out of a shop. Starting from the search for factories and product design, Chen Nuanyang tried to play the role of an "operator".
Chen Nuanyang selects fabrics Image source: Courtesy of the enterprise
"At that time, many people around me would go to the stall to find goods, my sportswear was not found in the stall, this category is very special, I need to find the supply chain through a new way, so I went through the network to find some cooperative factories, a person to go to the physical factory to investigate."
Chen Nuanyang recalled that at the beginning of its establishment, the rampaging Lolita had no designers, and in product design, she also did it herself. "My previous major was dance education, but I also like art, in my opinion, art things are connected, as a girl, like what kind of design itself has a basic aesthetic, on this basis, I pay attention to foreign sports brands, their design will also give me inspiration." 」 At the beginning of the brand's founding, the market environment at that time was not as rich as it is today, or it was still in a relatively conservative state, "but I would try to be relatively bold in design." ”
In the first month of the Taobao store's opening, with the initial traffic of early fans, "Runaway Lolita" sold nearly 20,000 yuan; in 2014, sales exceeded 5 million.
Sun Wei, a brand marketing researcher at Tsinghua University, has summarized the three characteristics of new consumer brands, namely: in recent years, the popularity, fans are new and new young people, mainly formed through the Internet.
In fact, Lolita is not the only brand founded by influencers.
In January 2021, the brand "Neva Family" born out of Li Jiaqi's dog Never entered Tmall to open a brand flagship store, and in April, more than thirteen Hanfu Guofeng brands obtained a round of financing of more than 100 million yuan, and more than thirteen founders Xiao Cardamom is also an Internet celebrity.
Chen Nuanyang said that there are indeed some founders from Internet celebrities in the clothing brand circle, including her, this group of Internet celebrity founders are very hard to fight, "I personally feel that everyone is dedicating to their own brands day and night, treating the brand as their own children in the conception, watching it grow up step by step." ”
Nowadays, Chen Nuanyang has transformed from an Internet celebrity into an operator, the team has expanded to more than 100 people, Chen Nuanyang revealed that the company's overall team is very young, most of them are post-90s, which is also the general appearance of the founding team of new consumer brands, their alternative experience and cognition of the world, is the source of brand development.
Positioning "light movement" and grasping the needs of the hanging class
The explosive product that made a big splash in the 618 this time is a new product of the rampaging Lolita this year - a sizeless sports bra.
Chen Nuanyang found that more and more girls like more "light" sports, such as yoga, Pilates and other soothing sports, without wearing high-strength tight bras. Another detail is that she found that when working women go to the gym after work, they have to change into sports bras again, is it possible that the fitness clothes are directly worn? Save yourself the hassle of changing outfits? In European and American street photography, more and more women use gym clothes as fashion items as a lookout.
In response to this pain point, she asked the R&D team to create a sports-free bra, combining the two demand points of "both fitness clothes and daily collocation". The American Lycra Company, which has been cooperating for four years, provides a so-called "liquid Lycra" technology fabric for the runaway Lolita, which meets the wear needs of female consumers in fitness, work, shopping and other scenes. This bra is priced at 299 yuan, and as soon as it was launched, it gained popularity.
Perhaps it is good luck, Chen Nuanyang stepped on the rhythm in time, and now, the "no size" track is more and more seen by all merchants, and they have invested their energy. The sizeless underwear also happens to fit the light movement method that Lori has been advocating. Sportswear is getting closer and closer to casual and trendy, and is moving toward an era when you can wear it outside and be able to go out on the street. Even some of the big brands with professional sports labels, such as Nike and Adidas, have launched sports and leisure product lines.
In fact, from the beginning of his business, Chen Nuanyang limited the runaway Lolita to a very small category. As a bodybuilder, she felt that the sportswear on the market at that time was monotonous, "In my opinion, the style is not good-looking, and the wearing experience is not very good, but I know that after the gym, girls especially hope to have good-looking sportswear, she can wear it to show off her body, and show the results of her training on social media." 」 ”
The positioning of the rampaging Lori on herself Image source: Courtesy of the enterprise
Chen Nuanyang hopes that the rampaging Lori can break through the black and white and gray tricolor in the product, make the color of the sportswear more abundant, and at the same time, be more close to the people in terms of price, "When I founded the brand, I was still a student party, and I felt that the price of the brand's sportswear was a bit expensive." ”
In 2014, the violent Lolita was born in the form of a Taobao store; in 2015, the violent Lolita entered Tmall and began to go online and enter the formal track; in 2016, the violent Lolita began to gradually expand to other channels.
From the beginning of its establishment, Lori has a clear self-positioning: focus on women's sports consumption, target young people aged 18-35, lock the price within 300 yuan, and reduce the user's decision-making costs.
It can be said that the violent Lolita is just standing at the intersection of the three booms of "her economy", sports and fitness consumption and the rise of domestic products.
Fastdata pole data shows that from January to April 2021, the sports and fitness industry disclosed a financing amount of 6.3 billion yuan. According to Euromonitor data, the market size of China's fitness clothing in 2019 was 130 billion, with an annual growth rate of more than 10%, and it is expected that it will not be less than 150-200 billion in the next 5 years.
According to QuestMobile data, as of 2021, the number of female mobile Internet users in China has reached 547 million.
Among them, female users aged 24 and under have a prominent monthly use time, which has exceeded 170 hours.
In 2016, the sales of the Lolita brand exceeded 100 million, and the cumulative sales in recent years exceeded 800 million, with a total of about 12 million users on the whole network, as of now, the lolita has sold a total of 1600w+ sportswear.
This year 618, the violent Lolita ushered in a big outbreak. On Tmall, the pre-sale amount of Lolita increased by 1104% year-on-year; the 2 hours before the opening were sold all day last year, and sales increased by 189% compared with last year's opening activities.
According to reports, the current annual repurchase rate of Lolita has reached more than 25%, and the number of fans on the whole network is currently 12 million, and the number of members is more than 5 million.
Under the background of the epidemic, with the help of live streaming and other forms of goods, women's interest in shopping and shopping has accelerated its transformation to online. In January 2021, the penetration rate of female users in the field of integrated e-commerce has reached 84.3%, an increase of 6.1% over the same period last year.
Chen Nuanyang found that contemporary girls are no longer in a blind follow-up, they have begun to have more subjective aesthetics, have their own judgments about the quality of products, and new consumer brands are learning how to respect Generation Z consumers more.
All this made Chen Nuanyang feel lucky, when the brand founded by Chi Yong was in line with the consumption trend of recent years, and the track has undergone earth-shaking changes in the past few years.
"Women's sportswear was only a small category in those years, and now more and more new consumer brands and foreign brands are beginning to pay attention to this category, and competition has begun to become fierce." Chen Nuanyang said.
<h2>
Big-name attacks and the rise of new products face the Competition in the Red Sea
</h2>
Indeed, the rapid start of lolita may be lucky to have more elements, and if she wants to continue to grow up, she will face competition in the Red Sea in the future.
The "2020 Online Sports Market Female Consumer Insight Report" shows that with the awakening of national health awareness, the sports market continues to expand, since 2017, the online sports market size has reached 100 billion, and it is expected that in 2021, the scale of online sports will reach 196.3 billion.
In addition, the survey shows that the proportion of women with fitness habits is as high as 70%, and more than half of women maintain more than 3 times a week exercise frequency.
Today, international sports giants are also noticing the potential of women in sports consumption.
In March 2021, Adidas launched a new product of THE FORMAT WOMEN's sports series, with the theme of "Change Me", launching sports underwear, leggings, jackets and other skin-friendly fabrics.
Also in early March, Skechers officially announced the new spokesperson Chen Xiaohong, and launched its own yoga series products.
In addition, as early as 2018, Nike announced an increase in female consumption. Dong Wei, then Nike's global vice president and general manager of Greater China, said at the time that the growth rate of Nike's female business in recent years has even surpassed that of men, and she also said that Nike's layout in the women's sports consumer market at that time was divided into three levels - through information transmission to establish resonance and emotional connection with women, strengthen product innovation, and meet specific needs with personalized services.
More than just big-name offense. The "Daily Economic News" reporter noted that in the field of new consumer brands, brands focusing on the same track have also begun to rise.
In July 2020, the sports brand "Ming Ni Fei" has completed the 10 million yuan Pre-A round of financing, and the main investor is Hongtai Investment.
In November 2020, the women's sports brand "MAIA ACTIVE Maya" announced the completion of nearly 100 million yuan of B round financing, and the investor is Huachuang Capital. According to the official website, in 2019, Maya's annual growth rate reached more than 300%, and online sales alone have exceeded 100 million yuan.
Under the pressure of competition, is the Lolita Moat, which has not yet completed the B round of financing, stable? This is a question that many new brands need to answer.
When talking about core competitiveness, Chen Nunyang believes that the main advantages of the violent Lolita lie in: high quality, high value, and diversity.
In order to get close to the target consumers, Chen Nuanyang revealed that the rampaging Lolita has a wealth of SKUs (inventory units), "We have many product styles, because we advocate the diversity of goods, in addition, each of our styles will have different colors, in terms of color diversity than competitors." ”
Of course, behind this kind of weightless statement, it is still inseparable from the construction of the supply chain.
The rampaging Lori began the fine management of the supply chain in 2018, and concentrated on 4 aspects:
1) Establish a supply chain scoring system, including price, quality, delivery time, production capacity and other dimensions;
2) Build a supply chain automatic order receiving system and dispatch system, cooperate with Ali's Rhino Intelligent Manufacturing, and have a powerful system behind it to mobilize the supply chain;
3) Open the shared factory mode, provide equipment and manage SOP for the factory, and the process from the beginning of the order research and development to production can improve efficiency;
4) Open the hosting mode, entrust a large amount of goods to large suppliers, and have cooperated with international brands and core supply chains.
But obviously, if you want to continue to break through, the competitive pressure is still not small.
Become "China's Lululemon":
How to go to long red?
Chen Nunyang said that as a new consumer brand, from the moment she became popular, she began to think about how to go to long-term popularity.
As a brand focusing on vertical categories, the rampaging Lolita has almost experienced the development of the women's sports consumer market from 0 to 1, and the brand has also grown with the consumer population.
Chen Nuanyang said that in the future, the rampaging Lolita will continue to focus on the vertical women's sports consumer market. She has mentioned the brand's three-step strategy on many occasions: the first stage, taking advantage of e-commerce, striving for the first network sales; the second stage, focusing on brand upgrading, and striving to become a national brand; the third stage, committed to advanced manufacturing, and strive to achieve international quality. At present, the rampaging Lori has reached the second stage.
Chen Nuanyang said that if you must look for a benchmark company, then the rampaging Lolita wants to become "China's Lululemon".
On closer inspection, the rampaging Lolita does have similarities with Lilulemon in some ways.
First of all, they are also DTC brands - Direct-to-Consumer, that is, direct-to-consumer. Bloomberg believes that these DTC brands are both manufacturers and retailers, avoiding the low profits of wholesale sales, have cost and efficiency advantages, and are therefore easy to be favored by capital.
Second, the two product categories are relatively close. In 1998, Lululemon started with yoga clothing, and took a pair of nude tight sports pants with a price tag of 750 to 1000 yuan and rare discounts as a perennial "explosive product", making the yoga circle its most loyal and largest user group. The runaway Lori first appeared in viavia's sports bra in April 2021 in via's live broadcast room, and sold out in less than 1 minute. Then in the 618 big limelight, with a sports sizeless bra, it became the Top 1 of the Tmall subdivision category, consolidating the advantages of the rampaging Lori on the sports bra track.
Third, both brands use community marketing to continuously "plant grass" for loyal users.
In its early days, Lululemon relied heavily on working with yoga instructors and sponsoring yoga classes to reach more potential users. Yoga teachers and fitness instructors are invited to become brand ambassadors, providing them with clothing, and each brand ambassador is a sales channel. Through word of mouth from professionals, borrow a small group of people to reach a wider audience. On weekends, Lululemon stores are transformed into health clubs led by brand ambassadors or other fitness instructors, and registered members can sign up for classes for free. Because of this sense of exclusivity in niche communities, users gain an identity.
Zhu Xiaohu, a well-known investor and partner in charge of GSR Ventures, once said that China's new consumer brands start in a different way from traditional brands, most of them are proficient in traffic play, with new media such as Weibo, Xiaohongshu, Douyin, and B Station as the main marketing platform, and e-commerce and live broadcast channels as the main sales positions. Douyin and Xiaohongshu are the two most important grass channels for the rampaging Lolita at present. In addition to the regular KOC and KOL cooperation, stars such as Xu Lu and Spicy Yoko are also raising their popularity. Before 618 this year, the new brand spokesperson, Yu Shuxin, a member of the THE9 women's group, also officially announced that he wanted to use the "rice circle economy" to attract young female users.
Chen Nunyang has always acted as a model for his own products Image source: Courtesy of the company
Chen Nuanyang said that the investment in marketing of the violent Lolita is not low, but it is within the normal investment range of new consumer brands, except for individual brands with high investment of 40%, the marketing investment of new consumer brands generally accounts for about 15% to 30% of the whole.
However, lululemon's high-end positioning brings a sense of niche circle that cannot be compared with the runaway Lolita, which emphasizes "high cost performance".
However, in the case of intensified competition in the yoga segment, Lululemon has been busy "out of the circle" since 2019, gradually extending its business from a single women's yoga clothing to running, training, leisure and swimming, and even entering the beauty and personal care industry; terminating its children's wear business and focusing more resources on expanding the scale of men's wear categories. At the same time, its brand CEO Calvin McDonald also revealed that a large number of tests are being carried out on footwear products.
The rampaging Lori also began to expand its product line. Since 2016, the casual sweatshirt launched by the stormy Lori, even if the price is as low as 150 to 300 yuan, has been mediocre in the Tmall flagship store, perhaps due to seasonal factors. In 2018, another casual sneaker and a fitness running shoe were launched. Today, the runaway Lolita covers a sporty casual costume for multiple scenes such as running, yoga, fitness training, boxing and casual.
It can be seen that all entrepreneurial projects that come out of the subdivision field, whether it is the front wave or the back wave, from "niche" to "mainstream" is a road that cannot be bypassed. The experience of giants including Nike, Adidas and ANTA shows that only a wide range of categories can gain a larger market.
Nowadays, Nike, Adi and other sports giants have gradually begun to adopt the DTC model, which has the advantage of flexibility and mobility, and does not give up the physical channels of the past, whether it is lululemon who started offline, or Lori who broke the circle of "Tao brand", they are aware that they still have to go to the omni-channel layout of the front and the giants.
<h2>Reporter's Note| Why does Chen Nuanyang have to "run away"? </h2>
The violent Lolita has completed the accumulation from 0 to 1, but the outside world's doubts about new consumer brands have always existed, from popularity to long red, to achieve from 1 to 100, to achieve sustainability and scale space, the current growth momentum often comes from a large number of marketing expenditures, and is not sustainable.
Zhu Xiaohu said that a new consumer brand from 0-1 is indeed very easy, but from 1 to 10, from 1 to 100 is really difficult, in the 500 million to 2 billion stage, you need to consider multi-channel, brand matrix, including online and offline joint operation, this time began to need to be organized.
"2-5 billion is very difficult, this stage is very testing the organizational strength of a company, you must be able to do omni-channel, all-format layout, you must be able to break through their own bottlenecks internally." Zhu Xiaohu believes that on the basis of product strength and organizational strength, if we can use the rapid development of capital, we will have the opportunity to achieve a 10 billion brand.
In 2017, the rampaging Lori completed tens of millions of yuan of angel round financing, which was exclusively invested by Dynamic Capital. Chen Nuanyang revealed that at present, the rampaging Lolita B round of financing is about to be completed.
On the channel, the violent Lori walked offline to open a brand experience store in an attempt to complete the "breaking the circle" in the consumer population. In addition, Chen Nuanyang revealed that lolita is also actively expanding overseas markets.
The wayward girl who liked to dance "in order not to have to go to class" is now shouldering the heavy responsibility of the development of a new Chinese consumer brand, and Chen Nunyang must not have thought that this brand would come to this step when he founded "Lolita of the Runaway". Recalling that year, she laughed and said, "When I started my business, I didn't spend much money, and at that time I felt that it didn't matter if I failed, and I didn't know how to fear setbacks at that time." ”
But now, such a relaxed mentality no longer exists, she must go forward to "run non-stop", and it must be fast and stable, not arbitrary.
Every intern reporter Chen Ting
Edited by Liu Xuemei
Vision: Cai Peijun
Typography: Liu Xuemei
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