Luxury Goods Industry Enters Into Slow Growth Period

Four days after closing its store in Queen's Road Central, Hong Kong, coach, an American luxury brand, quietly reopened its official online flagship store on tmall. In today's "luxury winter" season, coach's move is considered to be a landmark event for luxury industry to lower its profile and actively embrace the Internet.

　　 Cooperate with domestic e-commerce giants

In fact, this is not the first time coach has been stationed in tmall. Shortly after its launch, tmall became its first flagship store in Hong Kong just one month after its launch in 2011. Coach explained that the original agreement was to set a one month operation period.

Three years later, the reopening of tmall flagship store is related to coach's own strategy adjustment under the overall downturn of the luxury industry. It has won the brand positioning of "luxury stores" and "brand transformation" from "luxury stores" to "luxury brands" in June.

According to coach, "China's e-commerce market is growing rapidly and has great potential. Fully exploring the unlimited potential in the digital field is one of coach's global strategies and an important part of coach's brand transformation journey. " According to coach, as of the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2015, it has directly operated 151 physical stores in 55 cities in mainland China, and its official website has sold its products to 300 cities in China. Therefore, in addition to building its own official shopping website, they also hope to reach a wider consumer group in China through tmall.

The reporter saw that in the flagship store Clothes & Accessories The prices of men's and women's series such as accessories and accessories are in line with the self built official shopping website. However, if such luxury goods are sold online at the original domestic price, there is still a question mark on how attractive they will be even if they are guaranteed to be authentic. The reporter saw in its flagship store that the price of a lady's handbag with the number of 3440 is 5950 yuan, while that of Taobao is less than 3000 yuan. Even if it is another store that specializes in overseas authentic luxury goods, the price is only 3999 yuan.

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This is a precedent for Burberry, another luxury brand operated by baozun e-commerce, which helps coach operate tmall flagship stores. Burberry opened tmall's flagship store in April 2014, which is one of the first luxury brands to join tmall and covers all its categories. However, according to the sales record of tmall, the perfume with the highest sales price is still perfume with low price, while the handbag and windbreaker with high price have no transaction record for a long time.

Another form of cooperation between luxury brands and domestic e-commerce giants is Hugo Boss and Jingdong, not in the form of brand flagship stores, but in the form of self-supporting mode, Jingdong buys nearly 10000 products of four series from Hugo Boss in the form of wholesale, and then carries out online sales. The reporter saw that the sales volume in the front is still underwear, belt and other commodities with prices of about several hundred yuan.

For domestic consumers who are more price sensitive, it is more popular for some luxury brands to authorize special sales in vertical luxury e-commerce such as charisma, Siku and zhenpin.com. This kind of vertical luxury e-commerce is also increasingly favored by capital. On May 19, zou.com completed round C financing of US $30 million; on May 25, zhenpin.com announced that it had obtained round a financing of 60 million yuan; on July 8, siku.com announced that it had obtained more than US $50 million of round e financing led by Ping An Innovation Investment Fund. On the same day, charm Hui also announced that it had obtained Alibaba strategic investment with an amount of more than $100 million, and Ali super shares 50%.

　　 Change the cautious attitude and launch the Internet

However, with the sluggish growth of the luxury industry and the change of global consumer habits, luxury brands can not be proud of themselves. Previously, their use of the Internet was more focused on marketing, and their attitude towards e-commerce was relatively cautious or even repelled. But now they can't sit still and begin to embrace the Internet with a low profile.

Zhou Ting, an expert in luxury goods industry, believes that the Internet has become a prominent trend in the luxury industry. "On the one hand, it is to build an overall e-commerce platform on its own; on the other hand, it participates in the third-party platform; e-commerce sets up flagship stores; the e-commerce guides the flow to the brand; the brand controls the logistics and information flow, and communicates directly with consumers."

In 2010, Richemont, a luxury goods group, acquired net-a-porter, a British luxury e-commerce business, for 350 million pounds. Kaiyun, another luxury goods giant, established a joint venture with Yoox, an e-commerce platform, to operate its online stores including Bottega Veneta, Saint Roland, and Barisco. In March this year, the two e-commerce platforms announced the merger, which is expected to be completed this month. After the merger, the new company will be named Yoox net-a-porter group, with both Richemont group and Yoox accounting for 50% of the shares. This is considered by the industry as a major competition and cooperation action of Lifeng and Kaiyun in e-commerce. Recently, LVMH, the world's largest luxury goods group, has just recruited a chief digital officer from apple to fully develop its digital business. Meanwhile, LVMH has invested in British fashion e-commerce LYST.

Many luxury brands around the world have launched their own e-commerce platform attempts. Fendi, for example, has launched e-commerce networks in 28 European countries at the beginning of this year, and plans to expand to the United States and Japan by the end of this year. Industry insiders believe that the self built platform can control all aspects of sales. Not only can the website image conform to the brand style, but also the best supplier can be selected in terms of logistics and customer service to ensure customer satisfaction.

Herm è s also officially launched manifeste, a new men's wear digital platform, on September 8, including ready-made clothing series Shoes 、 Leather products All products are featured by videos, texts and lists, which can be purchased online directly. It is reported that Hermes will also launch a special platform for women's wear series. Axel Dumas, Hermes CEO, had declared that "e-commerce and physical stores are complementary channels", and it is understood that its brand online sales channels have covered 19 countries.

Even Chanel, who has always rejected e-commerce, has begun to try to "touch the Internet". In April this year, it cooperated with net-a-porter to open a sales zone for coco crush, a boutique jewelry series with a price range of 1970-19000 euros. Later this year, Chanel will also sell glasses products on the U.S. e-commerce platform. Moreover, Chanel plans to officially launch a global e-commerce network next year.

According to the report of McKinsey, a world-famous consulting company, the sales of luxury goods in e-commerce channels amounted to 14 billion euro last year, accounting for 6% of the total sales of personal luxury goods in the world, with an increase of 50% compared with the same period in 2013. It is estimated that the sales volume of luxury e-commerce channels will reach 70 billion euro by 2025, and the sales proportion will also be greatly increased to 18%, while the United States and China will be luxury e-commerce consumers The fee is large.