The “elderly style” brand The North Face is quietly turning around

“The North Face is so busy this year, so I have to keep busy.” This is a circle of friends posted by Wang Haokun not long ago. The picture is one of the 2017 autumn and winter men’s wear series jointly launched by the outdoor brand The North Face and the Japanese brand Junya Watanabe. A look. As for what he was busy with, he said he was “busy with purchasing.”

Previously, Wang Haokun worked as a fashion photographer, stylist, and fashion magazine editor. He is a serious fashion geek. But after becoming obsessed with outdoor hiking in 2015, his aesthetic taste shifted from designer fashion to outdoor brands. Now, The North Face is one of the brands he often pays attention to and “purchases”.

“Now I don’t want to wear uncomfortable clothes.” Comfort is the reason why many people like to wear outdoor clothing. Uncles and aunts often go to the world for a jacket because of the word comfort, but Wang Haokun also gave another purchase The North Face’s reason, “I really think some of its stuff is quite fashionable.”

These words may surprise many people. After all, The North Face, which was named, has always been the brand of jackets picked up by uncles and aunts in wholesale markets or A-markets in the minds of many people in China. It’s hard to imagine that it would catch the eye of professionals in the fashion industry.

But compared to customers like Wang Haokun, The North Face is even more busy: in addition to launching a cooperation series with Junya Watanabe MAN, The North Face also made functional down jackets and long windbreakers with its own trademarks available to another Japanese brand Sacai in 2017. The runways at the Paris Men’s Fashion Week in autumn and winter; and looking at the trend website HYPEBEAST, there is a lot of news about The North Face launching joint collaborations with street brands such as Supreme, as well as launching limited fashion items for different regional markets. Dazzling.

Just last week, the brand’s Urban Exploration (hereinafter referred to as UE) branch brand, which focuses on urbanized light functional clothing and looks more stylish, also held a conference with Mastermind WORLD (affiliated to Mastermind Japan) in Taikoo Li South District, Beijing. Collaborative model pre-order activity – “Can that collaboration series still be available for order today?” a fashionable male customer who didn’t seem to be an outdoor sports enthusiast asked in the Urban Exploration store. Unfortunately, the store clerk told him that the pre-order event had ended.

But from the “negative” teaching materials of fashion to the popularity of “North Face”, what exactly has The North Face done?

It seems that thanks to the “joint cooperation”, this outdoor brand, which was positioned by founder Douglas Tompkins as “producing the world’s best mountaineering products” when it was founded in 1966, finally has the opportunity to make a comeback in the fashion industry. body.

“It is this kind of partnership that allows this brand (The North Face) to leap from a ‘dad’s favorite’ that is all over the street to a ‘fashion’ that can be accepted by the fashion week.” The famous British fashion magazine Dazed once summarized it this way The reason why The North Face has become so popular.

Among them, the cooperation with Supreme that started in 2007 has had a profound impact. Up to now, every season’s release still attracts rush purchases.

“All products will be sold out within 15 minutes.” Peter Valles, the global creative vice president of The North Face who is in charge of joint cooperation, said proudly when talking about the cooperation between The North Face and Supreme in an interview with Women’s Wear Daily. Slightly different from what the outside world imagined, The North Face headquarters now receives numerous brands that want to cooperate with it, but the only real long-term cooperation partner is Surpreme.

Indeed, the cooperation between the two is a milestone in The North Face’s journey to become cool. But back in the 1980s, The North Face was already a “trendy brand” to some extent, especially in Europe and the United States. In 1996, “New York Magazine” wrote a special article describing rap, graffiti, and skateboarding on the streets of New York. A group of young people love The North Face.

It’s just that The North Face’s fashion has only stayed within a small group of people for a long time. Because it relies on the characteristics of comfortable, durable, rainproof and windproof and cost-effective mass consumer products, it has impressed those young people who live on the streets and do not have a rich income.

In comparison, Supreme has also become popular on the streets. With its marketing strategy based on a precise grasp of skateboard culture, and the idol effect caused by the leading figures in the small circle, it has gradually entered the vision of more mainstream people. Today, it has created countless marketing anecdotes, and its cooperation with Louis Vuitton also proves that it has risen from a subculture brand to one of the representative symbols of consumerism.

This also determines that although the two brands Supreme and The North Face both have street culture accumulation, they have different relationships with the fashion circle. When Supreme cooperates with fashion brands, it often gives people a more equal feeling. The North Face is more like the one that borrows the light, because its brand image is generally still functional clothing worn in the outdoor polar regions – but in fact, whether it is a contemporary designer brand or a street brand, in addition to using The North Face North Face’s success in functional clothingDue to its business advantages, in the face of the current fashion industry where street style dominates, The North Face’s passive position in the past being pulled by the big fashion brands has also undergone fundamental changes.

What I have to say is that The North Face embarked on the road of fashionization because it caught up with the right time, place and people.

In recent years, as an important branch of street culture, the penetration of functional equipment into fashion has reached a high point. Brands such as OFF-WHITE, Prada, and Undercover have incorporated a sense of functionality into their brand designs through functional fabrics or tape bonding techniques that replace seams. At the just-concluded 2017 Autumn and Winter Shanghai Fashion Week, designers Wang Tianmo’s The Museum of Friendship and Li Jiapei’s Andrea Jiapei Li also used functional fabrics to add uniqueness to their designs.

At this point, The North Face will be noticed by more and more fashion brands due to its functional advantages. Tim Sedo, senior brand manager of The North Face Urban Exploration, also told Jiemian News that since he developed the concept of UE, he has received many cooperation invitations from brands and designers every day. And its own products have also caught up with the trend and are more easily recognized by the public’s aesthetics.

From another perspective, whether it was in 2003, when The North Face launched its first sub-line, Purple Label, or in 2007, when it launched a joint collaboration with Supreme, the brand made a splash in the global fashion industry. , none of them have been as exciting as the past one or two years through cooperation and opening up new branch lines.

This has little to do with the size of the brand’s actions. It’s a cliché to say that this needs to be attributed to the development of social networks, because information is disseminated faster and more widely.

At the same time, the development of social networks has also diluted the sense of authority that fashion media was proud of in the past. As Sabrina Fung, executive president of Fung Retailing, a private retail company under Hong Kong’s Li & Fung Group, said, “We no longer believe in the brand strategy dominated by a single brand, because a single brand is too easily controlled by fashion trends.” This makes there no one brand. Dare to believe in my own power again at this moment, and feel that I can rely on the communication ideas from T stage to magazines in the past

Road to create a trend. This gives The North Face the opportunity to create popularity through collaboration.

Another key point is the audience’s attention. In this era where news of new collaborations comes almost every day, customers are familiar with and accept this form. Although some people are already tired of it, when a brand with a broad consumer base like The North Face announces cooperation news , can still attract a lot of attention.

“We will continue to promote The North Face’s cooperation with fashion and art people and brands.” In addition to creating topics, Peter Valles believes that the joint cooperation will mainly help The North Face access new market opportunities. “We are creating projects suitable for the city. Products for lifestyle customers, we are also seeing (through partnerships) customers starting to accept us in urban environments, allowing us to compete in this space.”

This is the “timing” factor for The North Face’s reversal.

After having fun outdoors, turning to the “city” has become a crucial step in The North Face’s fashion process

In conjunction with the 2021 performance outlook released by VF Group, the parent company that holds the brand, and The North Face’s own strategic planning at the group’s financial report meeting, we will better understand Peter Vallis’s intention to gradually bring his attention from the wild back to the city. .

According to VF’s plan, from fiscal year 2017 to fiscal year 2021, VF Group will maintain a compound annual growth rate of 4%-6%. Among them, 90% of the growth will come from its brands Vans, Timberland and The North Face.

The North Face has set a growth target for itself that is higher than the group level, with a compound annual growth rate of 6%-8%. At the same time, it also clarified the way to achieve this high growth: it will target the core Mountain Sports (Mountain Sports) – this business will always account for 60% of the brand’s revenue, and the newly segmented Mountain Fitness (Mountain Athletics) ), Mountain Lifestyle and Urban Exploration and other business segments to carry out more targeted design, marketing, production and transportation work.

It is worth mentioning that, except for the mountain sports segment that corresponds to high-performance professional equipment such as jackets, compression pants, and hiking shoes, the other three businesses are all related to the urban market, and the functionality they once focused on has been weakened to varying degrees compared to the former. But it obviously strengthens fashion. The North Face estimates that the average annual sales growth rate of these three businesses from 2017 to 2021 is higher than the 4%-6% of the mountain sports sector.

Specifically, mountain fitness refers to fitness exercises in places other than the gym, which can be in the wild or in the city. The North Face opened the world’s first Outdoor Training Station in Shanghai in early April this year to promote this business segment. Most of the products sold in the store are the same as Under Armor, Nike and other sports and fashion brands. The growth rate of this business is planned to be stable.��At 11%-13%.

Mountain life refers to leaving the city to go camping outdoors. Currently, this business does not have independent stores, but the products involved include clothing and tent lighting equipment. Its growth rate is also expected to reach 8%-10%.

Urban Exploration (The North Face Urban Exploration) is the most consistent with the city among all the sections. It can be said to be completely developed for life and sports in the urban environment. Its first global store of the same name was also opened in Shanghai. It opened in the K11 shopping mall in 2015 and subsequently went to Hong Kong, Beijing, Taiwan and London, UK. When approaching UE’s store, consumers can intuitively discover the difference from the main line: “UE’s packaging boxes will not use red squares, but black; for store decoration, UE uses wood, cement and black iron. The theme of the promotional video here is not climbing mountains, but climbing stairs,” said Tim Sedo.

The main customer group of UE is those fashionable users who often browse trendy websites such as HYPEBEAST and Highsnobiety. The North Face has also created a branch line for this business segment that can only be sold in its exclusive stores of the same name – Black Label (Urban Exploration Black Series). Its annual sales growth rate is estimated to reach 9%-11%, while Mastermind WORLD This is its new partner. Later this year, Black Label will also launch a joint series with Sacai.

When the sales growth of the brand’s core business has encountered a bottleneck – according to a set of data cited by the New York Times from the market research organization SportsOneSource, in 2012, The North Face had achieved 33.5% of the market in the United States, its birthplace and largest market. The market share is more than 20 percentage points ahead of second-placed Colombia. Finding and developing new growth points is a wise choice. And cities are the growth point The North Face needs.

Ultimately, according to the plans of VF and The North Face, the above-mentioned businesses developed in cities are expected to contribute 44% of the brand’s sales in 2021. This figure was 39% in fiscal 2016.

However, unlike what many people expected, The North Face’s exploration of urban market opportunities actually preceded such elaborate division of business segments and formulation of growth plans, even before the brand and eYe COMME des GARCONS Junya Watanabe MAN The first joint cooperation was launched in 2006, which was even earlier.

The specific time can be traced back to 2003. That year, The North Face signed a brand licensing cooperation agreement for the Japanese market with GOLDWIN, a Japanese outdoor clothing brand agency, and launched The North Face PURPLE LABEL, which was designed and produced by nanamica, another local urban functional fashion brand owned by the latter. (purple label).

For those fashionistas, Purple Label is a must-follow whenever there is something new. On the one hand, it has already broken The North Face’s stereotype of being functional but lacking in fashion sense, and has attracted a group of fans.

On the other hand, the rule that Purple Label can only be sold in The North Face Standard, The North Face March and nanamica stores in Japan also makes this branch line more mysterious and attractive. As a result, many domestic brand buying stores use unconventional methods such as purchasing on behalf of others or through parallel channels to purchase goods.

“Because the trademark owner of The North Face in Japan is different from other regional markets in the world, we are not allowed to export Purple Label to other markets,” Eiichiro Homma, the manager of Purple Label and Nanamica, said in an interview with the trend website Highsnobiety He explained the reason why Purple Label is only sold in Japan, “And Purple Label has an important product development principle, which is to be completely suitable for Japanese people in terms of tailoring.”

After that, GOLDWIN also developed the Unlimited series also for the Japanese market in 2005. The design style of this branch is generally similar to that of Purple Label, but it puts more emphasis on product functionality. In 2014, GOLDWIN entered the Korean market and launched the White Label (The North Face WHITE LABEL) series with more fast fashion attributes. The existence of these branch lines, like joint cooperation, is seen as an assist for The North Face to move closer to the fashion industry and market segments.

At present, in addition to purple label, white label and Unlimited branches have been brought into Greater China and other overseas markets by UE stores through purchasing inventory.

“Our customers come from the Mainland, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. They have always paid attention to purple labels, white labels, etc. from Japan and South Korea. They will also go to Chinese stores and ask why these branches are not sold in the Chinese market.” Tim Sedo said in the acceptance interface In a news interview, he said, “So we thought we had an opportunity, so we created the UE retail concept, which was initiated and managed by VF Asia.”

According to public information, The North Face direct market managed by VF Asia only includes mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. Unlike GOLDWIN, which enjoys greater autonomy when controlling the Japanese and Korean markets, VF Asia’s decisions generally require approval from VF’s US headquarters. To a certain extent, this has delayed The North Face’s progress in becoming trendy and cool in the Chinese market.

But looking at it from another perspective, the Japanese market does have the capital to make The North Face fashionable first. Because compared with China, and even many European and American markets, its approach of combining foreign culture with localization even refers to “foreign monks”.” They have been raised to a new level. Similar cultural learning and self-extension have always been what the Japanese are good at – this, from the country’s cultural reference to China, European and American countries to Disney’s authorization of Japan’s Oriental Amusement Park Company (OLC), the precedent of localized management of the park can be seen

To say that Japan is ready, one means that after Japan’s economic boom in the 1980s, the level of disposable income of residents has greatly increased, providing an economic foundation for carrying out outdoor sports and purchasing outdoor equipment; and then it collapsed in the 1990s. The consumer bubble has made more people feel uncertain about the future and made them want to stay away from the city, which further stimulated their interest in outdoor sports and outdoor equipment.

In addition, since the 1980s, driven by waves of pioneering designers such as Yohji Yamamoto, Issey Miyake, and Ryo Kawakubo, Japan has gradually become a design capital and the birthplace of trends that can have an impact on the global fashion industry. Japan The aesthetic demands of the entire society are constantly increasing, which puts forward rigid requirements for the fashionability of outdoor products.

Of course, Japan’s rich designer resources also provide assistance for The North Face’s fashion. For example, several brands that have co-branded with The North Face, except Supreme, almost all come from Japan; and UE Black Series, which is based in Greater China, also found Japanese brands mastermind WORLD and Sacai to cooperate to launch the 2017 autumn and winter. It’s the same as the men’s and women’s collections.

“Japan is indeed far ahead of us in this regard, at least ten or twenty years,” Wang Haokun said based on his observations in Japan. “I have seen that in Japan, even on very simple hiking routes, the Japanese They will still wear the equipment for climbing snow mountains. In fact, it is not necessary, but you can see how much they attach importance to the appearance and functionality of the equipment.”

But times have changed, and the current Chinese market may be just like Japan in the past, providing The North Face with the prerequisites of favorable location and people.

For Chinese consumers, the enthusiasm for The North Face may not be as simple as the bombardment of numerous joint models and fashion runways.

We have mentioned more than once in our past reports that there are many similarities between today’s Chinese society and Japan around the 1990s. For example, there are now some people in Chinese society who have completed a certain amount of wealth accumulation and want to escape from the city when faced with rising housing prices, falling stock markets, fast pace of life, and huge work pressure. As the lyrics say, they want to pursue “poetry and distance”.

More than one report on the lifestyle of China’s “middle class” also mentioned that outdoor sports have become one of the emerging hobbies of China’s middle class after purchasing luxury goods.

“More and more Chinese people like to go outdoors,” Lin Haiyun, senior Asia-Pacific marketing director of The North Face, told Jiemian News. “Although the complexity and development of this sports market are not as high as those in foreign countries that have been playing for 30 or 40 years. years, but it is growing quickly because this lifestyle can easily become addictive once you are interested.”

Wang Haokun’s experience just supports Lin Haiyun’s statement. In 2015, he just started to try outdoor hiking because he was tired of the same old city tours. Unexpectedly, he couldn’t stop once he started. Now, he maintains the habit of hiking every weekend. Moreover, he also established his own outdoor hiking club, attracting more and more like-minded members to join the ranks of outdoor sports.

“However, many of our members are still reluctant to buy and wear professional outdoor equipment.” Although he sees more and more people playing outdoor sports, Wang Haokun found that most of them still have a fun mentality, so they rarely Want to buy specialized equipment, “But overall, everyone’s demand and attention for equipment, especially the attention to the fashion of equipment, have been greatly improved. For example, many male members saw that I often wear compression pants. Wearing another pair of shorts, I started to imitate them, and I often use myself as an example now.”

It is precisely because of the upsurge of consumerism that they have experienced in the past that Chinese customers, while consuming physical energy in exchange for spiritual cultivation, are worried about not looking too “outdoor”.

Lin Haiyun also feels that customers in the Chinese market have higher aesthetic demands for products. He said that without sacrificing functionality, in addition to launching new concept stores like UE, The North Face has also made overall adjustments to the fashionability of its main line products.

He also added that The North Face wants to design its products to be fashionable and good-looking, and also considers social needs. As social networks become more developed, customers not only understand fashion and trends from around the world, but also have an increased need to share their beauty.

It sounds like the Chinese market has been changing with the trend. But when thinking about the world’s first UE store and outdoor training station theme store located in Shanghai, the Chinese market seems to be…�Have a head start.

“I found that in addition to young people, older people in the Asian market are also very concerned about fashion. In the United States, if a person is still paying attention to fashion in his forties or fifties, then everyone may think he is a bit strange, so I think that in the Asian market Consumers should be more willing to accept new things.” Tim Sedo added the reason why UE opened a store in the Greater China market first.

Judging from the size and growth rate of the entire market, the Chinese market is large enough to accommodate UE, its exclusive Black Series, and the recently opened outdoor training station theme store.

According to the “2016 China Outdoor Products Market Research Report” released by the Outdoor Products Branch of the China Textile Business Association, in 2016, the overall retail sales of China’s outdoor products market were approximately 23.28 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 4.91%. VF predicts that as the opening date of the Beijing-Zhangjiakou Winter Olympics approaches, China’s outdoor sports market will usher in another round of growth, or even more rounds. This will bring opportunities for The North Face and its various business segments to develop in China.

As a brand operating globally, the Chinese market is large and has great potential, which indeed provides The North Face with a space to test new business. But at least so far, the Chinese market is still only a small part of the entire brand-the entire Asia-Pacific region will only account for 11% of the total brand size by 2021 according to the plan. Therefore, if a brand wants to become more fashionable as a whole, it still needs to make efforts in other markets.

UE has already begun to expand into overseas markets. According to Tim Sedo, stores in Germany and California are already planned. In the VF 2021 plan, UE will open 100 stores worldwide by 2021.

Peter Vallies has also prepared subsequent co-signature candidates. For example, Olivia Kim, creative cooperation director of department store Nordstrom, will debut in the second half of 2017.

It seems that more fashionable winds will continue to drift from the north, and people’s attitude towards this wind must be like a spring breeze.

Source: Jiemian News