Sneakers are one of the most popular fashion categories in the world in the past few years, especially in the Chinese market. While more fashion and luxury brands have entered the market, a number of cutting-edge brands with great potential have emerged.
In the midst of this wave, the Japanese shoe brand grounds, which has only been established for three years, has been sought after by many fashion lovers with its unique sole design. At AW21 Tokyo Fashion Week, grounds have a high presence.
It is reported that the annual sales of the grounds brand have reached hundreds of millions of yen, while maintaining rapid growth.
How did the young Japanese designer Mikio Sakabe (pictured below, left) co-found and lead the design, explore and determine the brand positioning and product characteristics, and how to emerge in a competitive market? What are the brand's plans for the future? With these questions in mind, Gorgeous Chi remotely connects Takushi Kanemaru (pictured below), CEO of FOOLS Inc, a grounds brand operating company, and Masayuki Tonoe, chief marketing officer (right, below).
Using shoes as a medium, we redefine the relationship between the human body and gravity
With LEAP GRAVITY as its brand concept, grounds attempts to explore the different relationships between the human body and gravity.
Takushi Kanemaru said, "Gravity is inevitable, so leaving gravity has limitations. At present, the sneakers on the market are doing lighter, in a sense, with the goal of getting rid of gravity, and we are wondering if there is a more diversified way of interpretation? In addition, gravity itself exists objectively and cannot be completely separated, so how can we establish a completely new relationship with it? ”
September / 2021 Series, So Mitsuya Photography
For example, the brand's classic JEWELRY collection, whose sole is made of transparent spheres, is like a jewel, which will make the wearer and others turn their attention to the feet. The sphere of the sole is both a whole and independent, and will change with the movement of the footsteps after wearing. This sole structure provides the wearer with an experience of "adsorption" with the ground. But the soft materials used, combined with a seamlessly knitted upper, provide an extremely soft and comfortable fit.
JEWELRY AURORA BLACK / NUDE 鞋底
In 2019, with the help of a survey by Japanese partners, the purchase rate of users who tried on grounds shoes at a store reached 83%, and "consumers will like and accept them as long as they try our products," Takushi Kanamaru told Gorgeous.
Xiaohongshu user commented: "What amazes me is that the wearing feeling is too good." Please close your eyes and imagine the feeling of stepping on the huge haribo bear fudge... "So thick bottom, not only is it comfortable to wear but it is not heavy".
In this era of 'clothes can't sell', shoes will become the core category of Maison
Back in 2018, Mikiro Sakabe partnered with a Japanese technology company to launch a fashion project to create a fashion house (Maison) with shoes as the core category and originated in Asia.
As a new generation of designers active in Japan's fashion design, fashion education and other fields, Sakabe Mikiro studied at the ESMOD Fashion Art Academy in France and the Royal Academy of Arts in Antwerp. After graduating in 2006, he founded the eponymous brand MIKIO SAKABE and was finalist in the LVMH Prize Young Designers Grand Prix in 2016.
In September 2018, grounds' first collection was unveiled at Paris Fashion Week. In an interview with Japanese media Fashionsnap, Mikiro Sakabe said bluntly: "So far, the core product categories that can be crowned maison are mainly concentrated in bags, perfumes and underwear. But I think it's shoes that consumers spend the most money on shoes now than bags, especially sneakers, which are a demand for both male and female consumers. In this era of 'clothes can't sell', perhaps shoes will become the core category. Previously, 3D printing could only make hard objects, but now it is possible to make strong and soft materials, which is also a very important time node. The second is the market. For technical reasons, most brands, including fast fashion, have the most difficult category to deeply participate in is sneakers. ”
October / 2021 Series, Dev Dhunsi Photography
In 2019, the brand spun off from that tech company and changed its name to grounds. It is also from this time that brands no longer emphasize the relationship between fashion and technology as in the past, but integrate technology into the production process, focusing more on the product itself. Takushi Kanemaru told "Gorgeous" that in the entire product development process, the core is the research and development of the sole, in addition to the need to try different materials and test in different ways, because it uses a very special shape design, it is necessary to create a new mold. At present, the research and development cycle of brand soles is about 1.5 years.
Cross-border cooperation is all-encompassing
As a DTC (Direct To Consumer) brand, Grounds releases two series a year, and its website is updated every month. Up to now, grounds has launched jewelry, INTERSTELLAR, VORTEX, MOOPIE four product series.
More interesting is the joint series of grounds high frequency. Although cross-border joint branding has become an indispensable part of the growth process of today's fashion brands, the list of cooperation that opened grounds is particularly all-encompassing. It works with different brands, including artists, rock bands, star idols, etc., such as Walter Van Beirendonck, one of the "Six Gentlemen of Antwerp", designer brand th products, well-known rock band oasis, former Nogisaka 46 member Ito Wanlihua, former AKB48 member Haruka Shimazaki and so on. These collaborations have brought different dimensions of influence to the brand, but also penetrated into more circles.
grounds x Walter Van Beirendonck
In an interview with Japanese media Fashionsnap, Mikiro Sakabe once defined the co-name of grounds, that is, different designers/artists collide and innovate behind the same brand: "Connect with all the designers to create a 'cloud branding' brand that becomes an incubator for the entire fashion industry." Students and young designers want to expose them to machines, technologies, etc. that are not available in the entrepreneurial stage, and then apply the experience and new discoveries they have gained to their own business. ”
According to Takushi Kanemaru, the brand's initial users were 20-25 year old fashion young women, accounting for more than 50%. Today's core customer base is 25-30 years old, with 70% of women and 30% of men.
Step into the "amazing" Chinese market
Before the brand officially entered the Chinese market, many consumers have been able to see on social media that they have purchased and publicly displayed, and many users have left messages below to inquire about purchase channels and methods. In February 2022, the brand officially entered the Chinese market through the Dewu App, and became the first Japanese brand directly operated in Dewu.
In fact, before officially entering the Chinese market, grounds products have long been in the hands of Chinese consumers through different channels such as brand official websites and purchasing agents. Looking at the Little Red Book, there are more than 7,000 articles related to grounds, many of which are clothing and wearing submissions. Some customers lamented when posting a single in the Little Red Book: "After waiting for three months, I finally received a grounds sparkling shoe purchased from Japan on Christmas Eve... If it wasn't that long, I would like to have another pair. ”
In 2020, grounds opened a Chinese social media account to quickly attract a group of fans; posting a photo on The Little Red Book received 12,000 likes, far beyond the brand's imagination. "At that time, the brand was not sold or operated in China, and we were amazed at the efficiency and speed of the news dissemination. The number of fans has also grown rapidly in a very short period of time, which shows that the Chinese market has great resilience and potential," said Masayuki Yuanfeng.
The strong demand in the Chinese market, the pursuit of social media, and the offline retail space that can better show the core of the brand have all prompted grounds to make up their minds to explore the Chinese market. Yuanfeng Masayuki told Hualizhi, "At the beginning of the establishment of the brand, Chinese consumers bought 100 pairs of shoes at a time. We are very amazed that the Chinese market has such a demand. In addition, we saw gentle Monster(Korean fashion eyewear brand) opening a store in Beijing SKP-S, with a design beyond imagination. It is difficult to see such a creative permanent store in Japan, and from this point of view, the Chinese market actually has enough capacity and space to allow brands to play, which cannot be achieved in Japan. ”
Today, the United States, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Chinese mainland are among the top four overseas regional markets for grounds. In fact, before this settlement, grounds has already conducted a small wave of "testing the waters" in the Chinese market. In October 2020, the brand sold to domestic buyers through showroom and received a good response.
In the past two years, whether it is the global market or China, the market performance of the footwear category is very eye-catching.
The 20th edition of the Bain Luxury Study, jointly released by Bain Consulting and the Italian luxury association Fondazione Altagamma, points out that the footwear category has seen sales growth in all regions of the world, with casual shoes such as sneakers and boots being the most popular. In 2021, sales in this category will increase by 25% from 2020 and 11% from 2019 to 23 billion euros.
In the Chinese market, the growth momentum of shoes, especially sneakers, is very rapid. Tencent and the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) released the "Grasp the Change and Change of Generational Inheritance - Insight Report on the Digital Trend of China's Luxury Market (2021 Edition)" pointed out that in 2021, footwear became the second fastest growing category with an average penetration rate of 48%, and its growth background is mainly the spread of sneaker culture in the luxury industry, especially the post-90s customer base has driven the demand for casual shoes, and the penetration rate of post-90s male customers exceeds that of women.
This time officially entering the Chinese market, grounds will take the lead in online, but also hope to cooperate with Chinese designers. "I look forward to the process of expanding the Chinese market, we can collide with new sparks, find Chinese partners, agents, cooperative shopping malls, and even Chinese investors such cooperation opportunities, we are happy to see." We are also actively operating in the capital sector, and the entry of overseas capital can bring different cultures and help us to have a deeper understanding of the situation in the target market," said Takushi Kanamaru.
In September 2020, FOOLS Inc, the operating company of the grounds brand, completed a new round of financing of 56 million yen, and FOOLS Inc was established in March 2019 with the goal of "driving fashion brands into the future". This round of financing is mainly used for the development of new shoe soles, strengthening joint cooperation with overseas fashion brands and artists, providing more language choices and diversified content through online channels, opening pop-up stores overseas, strengthening social media marketing in the Chinese market, and shortening the time from sample production to market launch.