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How Does A Young Brand Growing Up In The 21St Century Define "Classic"?

2023/5/26 19:09:00 0

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In front of classic brands, young brands are often labeled with pioneer, niche and other keywords that are not closely related to the traditional "classic" explanation, or even completely run counter to it.

Of course, looking at the diversified expansion of the market scale in the past few years, the rewriting of fashion culture by young consumer groups such as Generation Z, the earth shaking changes brought by the Internet and social media to consumer behavior and value, young brands with unique creative logos and cultural values have made significant development and expansion in the past decade.

But the upsurge is frequent, and there are few winners for a long time.

What's more, the iterative speed of multicultural environment is still fast; The business logic and laws of the modern fashion luxury world are more optimistic about long-term value. Therefore, although the meaning of classics has changed, becoming classics is still the ultimate direction for young brands.

Classic, has it changed?

But it is undeniable that, for young fashion brands or managers, classics are indeed changing. As Calvin Luo, the designer, said to WWD China, the so-called classics have gradually become more like an image or a more abstract visual language from a particularly concrete element. People are not only marketing a certain figure, a logo, or a specific classic model Instead, these elements convey a more three-dimensional brand image.

"When it comes to hot girls and old money, everyone must have several irreplaceable brands", Calvin said.

However, compared with the emphasis on classics and the changes in the value of classics, it is not difficult to notice that RuirUiruI brand manager RUI YAO thinks more about tradition, in other words, "unchanging" in thousands of changes. She said to us, "Tradition represents the ideas, cultures, arts and crafts passed down from generation to generation with historical background and previous experience. Maybe in this era, different people have a new interpretation of" classic ", but for RuirUiruI," classic "is the essence that has been refined over time and has survived, RuirUiruI will strive to maintain its original intention to shape the classic and heritage of the brand in the current market environment. "

From the macro perspective of the industry, it is challenging to become a classic at any time, but RUI believes that it may not be called "challenge", "Because for every brand, almost all of them are compulsory courses, which need every manager to think and study quarterly and year after year. If they cannot survive in the new era, your classics will no longer be classics."

In this era, perhaps with the large-scale modernization of the industrial environment and market mechanism, fashion, brands and managers have more opportunities to enter the fast lane, but there is no shortcut. Therefore, for young brands, opportunities are at hand, and what we need is time; However, we need to be aware that it is not an opportunity to "reap the benefits of the fisherman".

On the way to becoming a classic,

What challenges will young brands face?

Ye Qian, founder and designer of Yes by Yesir, stressed to us that "classic" with quality is the most valuable investment, whether it is product or brand identity. But at the same time, he also said: "A certain type of 'classic' in the fashion industry has become super modular, and we are eager to create more differences." He mentioned the Yes By Yes classic star "light dress" series in a more subdivided field to us, and pointed out to WWD China that this is an important work of team design and research.

When WWD China mentioned the volatility of the market environment, the stylized and homogeneous risks in creativity, brand management, etc., Calvin agreed with this. "Achieving classics must be challenging. In my opinion, classics need to show the most representative elements of a brand with a particularly precise and concentrated design language or process, which is also the most direct way for consumers and the public to understand a brand."

Calvin also pointed out that design itself and marketing and publicity are indispensable after a long period of precipitation (decades, even hundreds of years).

RUI also said that more and more Chinese consumers began to focus on a few brands, or even one brand. "It is undeniable that in the past, the carrier of brand value was often products, but now we are talking about changing to design, psychology, service and other directions. According to Maslow's hierarchy of needs theory, under the premise that users' basic physiological, safety and belonging needs are met, they need to be respected, understood and cared for, and pay more attention to self realization of self value", She told WWD China.

But she also believes that classics need time to constantly optimize and innovate, and they also grow with the brand and continue with the development of the brand. For RuirUiruI, it has been trying to convey the message from Utopia, constantly making the brand more "clear" in the design products of the first quarter, finding its own place in the Utopian world, and also settling the classic of RuirUiruI in Utopia, giving the brand its own history.

How about young brands

Create "classics" through modern industrial logic?

No matter how the interpretation and meaning of classics change, the essential value will never change - there is a cultural logic behind classic products, and the test of time, aesthetics, society and market will be faced in the process of shaping classic brands, especially in the modern business environment and cultural context where consumers are constantly iterative and consumer awareness is more mobile, There are also challenges in this required course.

But on the other side of the coin, taking the Chinese market, where the current industrial scale and mechanism are constantly moving towards maturity and globalization, as an example, the overall environment also provides different dimensions of focus for young brands.

As a young brand born and growing in the environment of a clothing family, RuirUiruI's own resources are naturally an advantage. "Creating classics can not be separated from the support of different modern industrial resources, from design and development, production, to market communication, brand promotion, brand influence shaping," Yao Rui said to WWD China.

She shared with us the company's factory covering an area of more than 70000 square meters, including the product center and logistics center, two major operation centers, more than 1000 employees, and a processing output value of more than 100 million yuan. She said, "RuirUiruI need not worry about unprofessional production". In addition, the brands of Jijie Design Co., Ltd., from fashion brands to professional sports brands, will cooperate with multiple research and development institutions to carry out research and development on design and fabrics, so as to respond to the use needs of different scenarios quickly and directly from the product itself. In pursuit of the core concept of a utopian world, RuirUiruI will achieve sustainable development, environmental protection and regeneration, form a closed-loop functional fabric, and incubate the classic fashion and lifestyle of RuirUiruI.

The changes of the times and the improvement of the quality of life all reflect that some service models of traditional department store retail are lagging behind. With the expansion and reform of the market scale, it is increasingly confirmed that customer service needs need to be improved. RUI introduced that, in order to realize the convenience and normalization of the purchase link, "ONE-ON-ONE" was carried out with tailored services. In combination with the WeChat applet of the self operated channel, and the self-developed APP, fitting to home, from online selection consultation to picking up and fitting, customers' convenience and logistics timeliness were taken into full consideration.

For the designer Calvin Luo with the same name brand, starting with the design elements, Calvin believes that logo, Monogram, brand logo color, etc. are all necessary and even need to be maintained. "The non replicability is very important for the long-term sustainable development of the brand", he mentioned classic elements such as metal accessories or lock buttons, But Calvin also said to WWD China, "In fact, we are not specifically marketing these elements, but constantly expanding their use in more product lines, from suits at the beginning to bags and shoes now."

At the same time, Calvin also stressed that it is also important to analyze the advantages of brands

Further from the perspective of life scene and reality, Ye Qian believes that classics must be closely related to real life experience, "products that are enough to be called classics must enter the real life scene of consumers, whereas those that break away from life can only belong to the category of virtual clothing," he said.

In addition, in further exchanges, he pointed out a brand based on the balance between "sharp" and "round", "In many cases, while maintaining a certain 'sharp' personality, maximizing the protection of 'roundness' is also a prerequisite for greater acceptance, and popularity is also a classic subsidiary cultural strategy." He shared the new "Yes i am by me" autumn and winter 2023 series focusing on evergreen products with WWD China, Explore more possibilities of classic products through the combination of various possibilities; As well as the "Shu Yu Me" group portrait exhibition of contemporary women in Chengdu, which was held in Chengdu, combined with our light dress image of hardness and softness, it presented and paid tribute to the fresh and independent pioneer women in various fields in Chengdu in a diversified and free exhibition.

When asked how to give consideration to classics and flexibility, Ye Qian said that only by continuing to create a "strange familiarity" can the classics become more and more fresh.