On the fast fashion brand track, people always habitually mention SHEIN.
Indeed, SHEIN, which started with wedding dresses, has become a "dark horse" among China's cross-border e-commerce overseas brands by virtue of its flexible supply chain model of "small single fast return".
In the May 2021 "Brand Z Top 50 Global Brands in China" report, SHEIN topped the list of fast fashion brands, followed by ZAFUL, another fast fashion brand that has emerged in recent years and started in swimwear, ranking second.
Like SHEIN, ZAFUL also starts from the apparel segment.
The difference is that ZAFUL in 2021 has experienced more. Stripped from the main body of Global Tesco, it took the lead alone, but it happened to coincide with a turbulent year in the cross-border e-commerce industry. ZAFUL CEO Lin Xuchao looked back and hoped, "2021 is a difficult year, but even so, we still expect that in 2022 and the future, ZAFUL can restore the glory of the past." ”
01
Taking advantage of the "East Wind" of the epidemic, ZAFUL sales and brand voice "rose together"
According to the statistics of the first textile network, in the first half of 2021, the 88 textile and garment listed companies in Shanghai and Shenzhen achieved an overall revenue of 132.749 billion yuan, but their inventory items were as high as 96.087 billion yuan. Since 2021, under the pressure of 96 billion inventory of listed apparel companies, there is such a track that is quietly growing, that is, DTC.
In the clothing DTC track, SHEIN and ZAFUL are brand representatives in the cross-border industry. In overseas markets, most of the clothing e-commerce consumption is done through independent stations. Boosted by the epidemic, the scale of the online independent station shopping consumer market continues to rise, and the revenue of these clothing DTC brand e-commerce independent stations has not declined but has risen. Taking ZAFUL as an example, the revenue in May-June 2020 increased by more than 100% compared with 2019, and the order volume even exceeded the "Black Five" in 2019.
In this regard, ZAFUL CEO Lin Xuchao also admitted, "The impact of the epidemic on the offline market is large, especially since April 2020, ZAFUL's online traffic has ushered in a wave of outbreaks, and sales have also rushed to a record high." ”
(Source/ZAFUL)
In Hugo's cross-border view, in addition to the promotion of the general environment, the outstanding performance of ZAFUL during the epidemic is inseparable from the joint efforts of its own model, traffic composition, business line expansion and other comprehensive factors.
First of all, from the perspective of the model, since its establishment in 2014, ZAFUL has taken the vertical field of swimwear with low cost, high profit and high repurchase rate as the entry point, and the follow-up is to enter the independent station operation of the product-oriented stage in the "designer + buyer" model to build a brand.
Secondly, from the perspective of traffic, ZAFUL exerts its strength from multiple matrices such as community, M-end, APP end, and social media to create a closed loop of traffic. According to the 2020 annual report of Cross-Border Connect, as of 2020, ZAFUL has registered users of 50.3251 million. During the reporting period, ZAFUL established cooperation with more than 100,000 global Internet celebrities and 15 million + social channel fans, and the community active users of the Z-Me community exceeded 80w and the popular posts exceeded 86w.
Finally, from the perspective of business lines, ZAFUL started to swimwear in 2014, and after the brand was based overseas in 2016, ZAFUL began to lay out in men's and women's clothing. In 2020, there was a wave of explosion, which further created momentum for ZAFUL's brand voice overseas.
Different from the traditional textile production and circulation methods, the "personalized consumption" and "small single fast reaction" model of fashion e-commerce have become the general trend. ZaFUL is precisely by virtue of a powerful traffic matrix to penetrate into the consumption front end, and the back-end production linkage, so that production manufacturing - shelf - user purchase only 7-10 days time.
In May 2021, ZAFUL was ranked 43rd in the "Brand Z China Top 50 Global Brands 2021". Ranked No. 2 in the online fast fashion field, setting a record of four consecutive years in the list.
Lin Xuchao believes that "it shows that global users still recognize the brand ZAFUL, recognize its quality, its service, and the fashion trend it leads." Because from the user's point of view, ZAFUL's user age group is between 18-25 years old, this part of the group has very high requirements for fashion and brand freshness. Therefore, this is actually a user's endorsement of the ZAFUL brand. ”
Hugo cross-border learned that in the field of fast fashion DTC, Generation Z is the main group with strong online consumer influence. Whether it is SHEIN or ZAFUL's positioning in the user group, it is more accurate. According to the Global Fashion Brand E-commerce Report released by common Thread Collective, the transaction volume of the fashion e-commerce industry is expected to grow to $1 trillion by 2025. Fast fashion DTC is a track that can be expected in the future.
02
ZAFUL, who will be reborn in Nirvana in 2021, is still looking forward to reinventing its glory
The epidemic in the past two years has brought sales and brand voice to ZAFUL, but also brought some supply chain problems to the brand. Especially in 2021, ZAFUL will be spun off from global Tesco entities, not only to repair the relationship with suppliers, but also to deal with many difficulties at the level of cross-border logistics in the market.
Lin Xuchao recalled, "In the first quarter of 2020, in the early days of the outbreak of the epidemic in China, China's production supply chain was greatly affected, many of the supplier's factory employees were Hubei nationals, and the inability to start work due to the epidemic had a greater impact on our supply chain; the more significant impact in 2021 was the rise in logistics costs, the port blockage of the maritime market, resulting in the transfer of some sea freight traffic to the airline, and the lack of superimposed airline pilots, resulting in high logistics costs." ”
At the same time, in 2021, ZAFUL spun off from the parent company and established "Shenzhen Saf Commercial Co., Ltd." to operate independently as a subsidiary, embracing new opportunities with a new attitude.
"In fact, ZAFUL still has some difficulties in 2021, after the divestiture from Global Tesco, the relationship with suppliers at all ends is still being reshaped, and the overall business is in a climbing stage." Lin Xuchao said.
03
Regarding the future of ZAFUL, Lin Xuchao still has some hopes and prospects
In terms of categories, ZAFUL has made achievements in swimwear, women's clothing, men's clothing and other categories. In the future, we will make positive attempts in the direction of beauty, children's wear, and plus-size women's wear.
From the perspective of the market, as we all know, ZAFUL's main market is in mature countries such as North America and Europe. Lin Xuchao told Hugo cross-border that on the basis of continuing to deepen the basic disks such as the United States, Canada and Europe, it will also increase its investment in the Middle East, Mexico, Southeast Asia and other markets in the future.
In its view, the purchasing power, business volume and e-commerce infrastructure maturity of the two major markets of the Middle East and Mexico are relatively sufficient. For example, the unit price of customers in the Middle East market is high and the user's purchasing ability is strong; the payment and logistics channels in the Mexican market are mature. In the case of sufficient financial capacity conditions, it is more logical to enter these two major markets, and the ceiling can be expected to be higher.
Although ZAFUL faces many difficulties in 2021, for users, ZAFUL always emphasizes fashion, quality and service. Lin Xuchao said that to do independent stations, the user's repurchase is the core logic, relying solely on the amount of purchase, which is not sustainable in the long run. Therefore, in the future period of time, ZAFUL will still focus on its target users, will not rush to expand the product, price band, category line too wide, but stand at the forefront of fashion, the current best and hottest elements, fabrics and styles to provide users, serve their target users.
"As long as we do a good job in our quality and service, and come up with the most fashionable products, I believe that ZAFUL's brand can be recognized by users overseas, and users will be willing to pay a premium for the brand." We still look forward to 2022 and beyond, when ZAFUL can restore its former glory. He said.