"Grass Growing Economy" is a popular niche personality new fashion brand

In recent years, with the rise of "planting notes" and online red live broadcasting, a large number of fashion brands, domestic brands such as fashion brands, Hanfu, accessories, and fashion shoes have ushered in a period of outlet, becoming a new phenomenon of high-profile consumption. Experts said that behind the increasing popularity of the "grass planting economy", bloggers have become an important bridge for new fashion brands to enter consumers, and content platforms such as the Internet community will play an important role in the growth of future brands, and new domestic brands will usher in broad prospects for development.

Fashion new brands are favored

Founded in 2018, the pioneering shoe brand lost in echo has been selling well online for more than a year and has become a "net red" product sought after by many beauty lovers. According to Rest in echo founder Yu Qing, as a domestic product of Lost in echo the main shoe designer brand, since its launch has quickly attracted the attention of young consumers, at present in China's buyer channels, Lost in echo has occupied the first position in footwear consumer sales.

Mashairi is a domestic jewelry brand founded in Shanghai in 2016. Mashairi founder Wang Shiwen said that at that time, he found that many jewelry in the market were foreign big names, and there were very few accessory brands for daily matching, so he founded Mashairi, "The original intention of the brand was to provide urban women with jewelry that can be designed and textured without spending too much price." With live streaming, from September to November 2020, Mashairi's monthly sales on Little Red Book increased by 5 times and the number of trading orders increased by 4 times.

With the new generation of young people's love for the national tide and national style, "Hanfu" has also begun to become increasingly popular in recent years. Oriyuji is a Hanfu brand created by star Xu Jiao, and in recent years, it has also been loved by many consumers online. According to Xu Jiao, the brand manager of The Weaving Feather Collection, the rise of Hanfu reflects the young netizens' love for traditional culture and national self-confidence. Oriwa hopes to integrate Chinese elements into the clothes, so that the younger generation will fall in love with traditional culture and inherit traditional culture.

The rise of new domestic brands has become a major highlight of the consumer market. On the first day of the "Double 11" sale in 2020, there were 357 new domestic brands on the top 1 of the sub-category. In the industry's view, the signs of the rise of domestic consumer brands have become clearer in recent years.

The "2020 China Internet Consumption Report" released by CBNData shows that the new generation of consumers mainly after the 90s and generation Z are becoming the main players in consumption, and they have a new brand mentality - easy to be planted and willing to taste new; at the same time, they pay more attention to quality and experience, rather than the identity premium brought by the brand logo. The new generation of consumers has a better aesthetic, they pursue niche personalities, not blindly following the big names. Domestic brands can combine these characteristics to localize mature categories and capture their "hearts" through more aesthetic and cost-effective products.

The Internet community is very helpful

Behind the rise of many new fashion brands, there is the help of the Internet community website "Planting Notes".

"In 2020, Lost in Echo is growing so fast, it is the leverage of a lot of content, through the content to pry the market." Yu Qing said that Lost in echo began to cooperate with the content platform Xiaohongshu in 2019, and there are about 300 or 400 bloggers who cooperate, "Bloggers need content, and we also need bloggers as a medium to help spread." ”

On August 16, 2020, Lost in echo cooperated with a number of bloggers of Xiaohongshu to broadcast live, driving brand sales to break through one million that night, and with the recommendation of bloggers of different styles, it won the love of different fan groups, and realized the "breaking of the circle" driven by live broadcasting.

Mashairi began to work with bloggers on Xiaohongshu at the end of 2016 and slowly established its own brand Xiaohongshu account. In Wang Shiwen's view, every brand hopes that their good things can let others know, there are many ways and channels in this regard, in some Internet community platforms such as Xiaohongshu, you can cooperate with bloggers for content, without paying to buy user data and traffic, "For emerging brands like us, it helps us find accurate users at the fastest speed, this path is the shortest." Without this content platform to help us build a field, it would be difficult for us to engage with consumers and bloggers. ”

In the "grass growing economy", bloggers play an important role. Chen Yihui, who has been a flight attendant for six years, is a blogger of Xiaohongshu, and she is often invited by many international brands and emerging domestic fashion brands to participate in brand launches and brand co-creation. In Chen Yihui's view, after the blogger receives the brand's product and really uses the experience, he can let the fans better understand the product through his own expression. "Bloggers are a bridge between customers and brands, and they are very good at conveying the message that brands want to convey, as well as collecting a lot of fan feedback."

According to the relevant person in charge of Xiaohongshu, as an accelerator of brand development, KOLs/KOCs (KOL: key opinion leaders; KOC: key opinion consumers) on the Xiaohongshu platform are the seed users of the brand, which affects more ordinary users through their sharing and accumulates word of mouth to complete the original accumulation of brand value. This is the B2K2C influence closed loop established by Xiaohongshu between the three main bodies of brand, KOL/KOC and user.

Content platforms interact efficiently

For new fashion brands, content platforms such as Xiaohongshu are the concentrated position of bloggers' creativity, and a number of emerging fashion brands have led the "new fashion" through the sharing of bloggers.

Co-creation is an important embodiment of Xiaohongshu's B2K2C model. With the help of the Little Red Book B2K2C model, brands amplify their influence through the experience sharing of bloggers, so as to gain more fan likes and recognition. For new brands that have just entered the market, value verification is also carried out in the most convenient and efficient form, and the word of mouth and feedback of seed users are obtained, providing direction for the next round of product iteration or brand upgrading.

"More and more brands want to achieve co-creation with users, hear the real voice of users, and brands can interact with users through KOC, so the future brand will be co-created between brands and users." Qu Fang, founder of Little Red Book, said.

Qu Fang revealed that the content category of Xiaohongshu is expanding, and at the same time, a complete business ecological closed loop from "planting grass" to "pulling grass" has been established, and based on the unique B2K2C model, it has increasingly become an important stop for future brand cultivation, old brand renewal and international brands entering China.

In order to help the growth of new fashion brands, Xiaohongshu has held a number of offline fashion activities since June 2020, such as holding fashion salons and hosting "blind dates" for brands and Bo; landing the future brand support plan, introducing "buyers' clubs" into live streaming for the first time; and holding "fashion buyers' meetings" to help more new brands with texture but still growing to connect with well-known anchors and accelerate future brand growth.

Liu Zhaohui, partner of Baojiehui Innovation Consumer Fund, said at the "2020 TBI Outstanding Brand Innovation Summit" held in Shanghai recently that "brand" represents a sense of quality and recognition, and is the basis for creating functional value and emotional value for consumers and bringing a premium to entrepreneurs. In the digital era, the success of innovative consumer brands should grasp several important trends: social e-commerce promotes industry change, information distribution decentralization and long tail effect open up the growth space of domestic brands; the integration of content communities, live broadcasts, social media, and e-commerce platforms has spawned a new pattern of "human goods yards"; domestic brands have increased short videos and live broadcasts; private domain traffic has helped brand penetration growth; and through the three stages of planting grass, raising grass and pulling grass, brands have built a closed loop of operation.

Source/Economic Reference

Editor/Fan Hongwei