Can Forever 21'S Strategy Work In China?

Wang Xiao still remembered one time when she was shopping on the Nanjing road. When she was waiting for a red light at the corner, the girl who stood in front of the two blonde girls turned to ask, "Hello, where is this brand?"

That day, she was carrying it.

Shopping bags.

It is said that there are two kinds of yellow color everywhere in the streets of the United States: one is a taxi, the other is Forever 21 shopping bag.

This fashion brand from Losangeles is very popular with young people.

It has announced that it will open 600 new stores in the world in the next 3 years, which means that by 2017, the brand will have 120 thousand stores worldwide.

Compared with other fast fashion brands in China, the development of Forever 21 is not smooth and slow.

Once crashed into the Chinese market

In September of 2012, Forever 21 was officially opened in Shanghai.

The four storey building with an area of more than 7000 square meters is the largest flagship store in China.

"Before the opening ceremony, there was a large advertising campaign along the street."

When it was officially opened, Wang Xiao went around in a circle. "People are many, things are many, but the price is cheap, but it always feels like a mess."

Since its entry into China in 2012, the movement of Forever 21 has not been very active. It only symbolically opened shops in Hongkong, Beijing and Shanghai and announced no new moves after entering the Chinese market.

Until last year, it opened another 6 shops.

According to official website, up to now, Forever 21 has only 10 shops nationwide.

In the layout, in the mainland, in addition to the northern Guangzhou and Shenzhen these four first tier cities, Wuxi, Hangzhou, Wuhan and Chongqing also have access.

Compared with other fast fashion shops, this brand's development route is almost a strategy of a city store.

。

Although the global plan for opening stores in the next three years has been put on the agenda, the expansion of Forever 21 in China is still more conservative.

The brand's team in China told reporters that "this year's plan is to open at least one new store in Shanghai, Beijing, Wuhan, Xi'an, Zhengzhou, Hongkong, Macao and Taiwan."

If it is currently counted in 600 stores around the world, China has a small share of its share.

And why it is so cautious may be able to see one or two from its previous failure.

As early as June 2008, Forever 21 opened its first store in China.

With competitors ZARA, GAP came in to occupy Shanghai and Beijing and other first tier cities, Forever 21 chose to shop in the four line city Jiangsu Changshu.

In December 2009, Forever21 closed its first and only one store in China, completely withdrawing from the Chinese market due to the location error, the small shop area, and the problems of product quality and style.

A person engaged in the clothing retail industry pointed out that the reason why Forever 21 failed is that the brand was compared with "dew" because the main brand was American style sweet girl dress, which was too avant-garde for consumers in the country's county-level cities.

Because the design of Forever21 is completely completed in the United States, the distribution of Chinese market can only follow the American market, and there is no way to adjust the regional market.

It wasn't until 3 years later that Forever 21 decided to return to the Chinese market and open its first store in Hongkong.

Forever 21 brand senior marketing manager and brand founder Do Won Chang's daughter Chang Chang said Forever 21 did not want to act rashly again. This time, the market was fully investigated before returning to the Chinese market, and the conclusion was that the market was mature enough.

{page_break}

Is "cheap" still feasible?

Vertical comparison of a fast fashion brand, you can find that UNIQLO is the strongest fabric, ZARA strong in design, H&M advantage in the shop display, and Forever21 most relish is very rich accessories line and every day hundreds of new speed.

It is understood that Forever21 before returning to China to test the Chinese market, had previously opened flagship store on Taobao Tmall.

The official website is consistent with the United States and South Korea. It has 50~60 new times each week, maintaining 300~400 new weekly rates.

Far higher than the same fashion fast fashion two times a week's frequency.

In Forever 21's Beverly Hills store, customers carry large shopping bags and choose the clothes they want. Many people hardly watch the price tag.

In the US, the annual sales volume exceeds 3 billion dollars.

None of the items sold was more than 60 dollars.

Linda Chang said, "we also have a shoulder skirt and T-shirt priced at less than $20."

This means that customers do not need to look at labels in a fright.

Such civilian pricing has also been well implemented in China.

If you stroll around this store, you will find 19 yuan of suspenders, 39 yuan T-shirts and 100 yuan jeans in the shop.

And the discount rate is very high.

But its user experience is not good.

As Wang Xiao said, "goods are stacked everywhere, and no one collate them at all. The price is cheap, but the quality is really not flattering."

Many people who bought the brand think that the quality of clothing is even worse than that of HM (the latter is considered to be of the quality of several fast fashion brands).

Analysts believe that Forever21 is popular in the United States because it is "fast enough for goods and cheap enough for things."

But this kind of sales mode seems to be very difficult in China.

The quality of goods has been criticized in the Chinese market.

The above analysts said that the difference between Chinese and American clothing culture is very big. Maybe American consumers have been used to throw away a dress once, but most Chinese consumers want cheap and fine goods, and can not accept a dress to wear only once or two times, at least to ensure that they can wear a season.

But under the operating system of Forever21, it is very difficult to maintain the low price and improve the quality of clothing.

In the view of Matthew Crabbe, director of Asia Pacific analysis and research, the Forever 21 is also a case of fashion brand developing its Chinese market with its pure foreign brand image.

"If Forever 21 wants to win Chinese consumers, it must have effective interaction and communication with them.

The combination of online and offline is a good channel.

Matthew Crabbe told reporters, "however, it seems that the Chinese websites of FOREVER 21 do not see the content that can be directly related to Chinese consumers.

Clothes are like clothes that can be seen in any shop.

On FOREVER 21's Chinese website, almost all foreign models, even with an Asian face, are actually a girl with long blond hair.

"In a place where not many people understand their brand image and do not know what it represents, if consumers do not adopt the marketing strategy that focuses on the local market (China), why do consumers pay for a brand that is not related to them?" he said.

In a competitive Chinese fast fashion market, after all, smarter consumers are not so fooled.