Is It A Strategic Adjustment Of Everlane?

Everlane 2011 was founded in the west coast of the United States. Until July, it had been selling online on a separate website.

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In the Normcore trend that has been popular in the past few years, the minimalist Everlane has become popular. You may have seen it in many street filming.

Within a month, Everlane did not only get a new batch of silk tank vests and V collar.

It also opened the first offline concept store, which is somewhat more flavour reversal.

Because 4 months ago, Michael Preysman said in an interview that "now is not the time to open shop."

He even said, "the day when the shop opens is the day when the company closures."

Of course, the high-speed Internet and fashion industry has never been conclusive.

Everlane retail stores

Everlane has been in history for over 5 years since its inception.

Its Instagram account has more than 250 thousand fans.

Customers who are familiar with brands usually use "cheap", "pparent" and "moral" words to their friends, Amway.

Among them, the most incitement price advantage is established, the premise is that the brand does not set up shop under the line, thus saving part of the operating expenses.

Does the store belong to the strategic adjustment of the company? Everlane dubiously referred to the shop as "laboratory", Michael Preysman explained: "it is more like a retail test field, located at the bottom of the company."

Walking into the Everlane store in San Francisco, you will find that there is no obvious difference between J.Crew and Gap except for the simple wind, which is really puzzling because Everlane's previous style is the established rules for challenging the fashion industry.

Maybe we can change the direction of the problem. What made the founder of the company change his original idea?

Michael Preysman

In 2010, Michael Preysman was 25 years old when she founded Everlane, and has just resigned from a private placement agency.

"For the West Coast people, you will be influenced by the spirit of entrepreneurship around you so as to take risks."

His hometown, San Francisco, became famous overnight with the gold rush in nineteenth Century.

Here the climate is suitable, inclusive and open. The city government has provided many concessions to encourage entrepreneurship. Uber started here in 2009.

Michael Preysman got his double degree in Computer Engineering and economics, but he gradually realized that he didn't want to wait until he was 40 years old, and began to look for investment.

Everlane's start-up funds come from Silicon Valley venture capital company Kai Penghua (KPCB) and other investors, amounting to 1 million 100 thousand US dollars (about 7 million 296 thousand yuan).

In the early 2011, KPCB also invested in online leasing companies Rent the Runway and China luxury electronics business network (xiu.com).

Soon, Everlane appeared as a retail Challenger: there was no entity store, nor was it released in season.

In the two or three years since its establishment, Michael Preysman has almost always talked about the core concept of the company every time they receive media interviews.

He wore a pair of frame glasses with few exaggerated gestures, quick and precise speed, and liked to use figures to illustrate that the cost of a T-shirt priced at $50 was only $8.

And I have the ability to produce the same quality clothes priced at $15.

The cotton T-shirt as the first brand of the brand has ranked the best seller list.

Everlane costing

To put it this way, many fashionable brands in recent years are emphasizing the concept of "direct selling" online.

Or frankly speaking, small scale start-ups will try to get better if they try to bypass dealers.

There are both failures and successes, and the fashion brand Warby Parler, which was launched in 2010, is a success story. Warby Parler's co founder Neil Blumenthal's personal perception is: "after the direct sale, the gross profit is much higher, so your business can at least be done to cope with the daily operating expenses."

In the fierce competition in the tannin market, Mott&Bow also controls the price of jeans in the online direct selling mode of 96 dollars -128 dollars.

Compared with department stores such as department stores and boutiques, the profit of brand marketing will be 3-4 times higher than that of customers.

But when online brands become more and more, how to stand out is the key.

Everlane shows the hidden information in front of you. When you open the 170 dollar Lok shoe, you will see the Transparent Pricing. "We think consumers have the right to know the cost structure of products".

The flow chart shows the cost of fabric: $35.64; production cost: $18.36: Tax: $5.4; pportation cost: $5.5; total cost 65 USD.

The last figure is bound to alarm you: the traditional retailers are priced at $425.

That is to say, consumers should pay more than $255 for retail outlets such as distributors, store operations, brand marketing and so on if they buy the bill online.

If prices fail to make you change your mind, Everlane still has a strategy to attack, aiming at social responsibility.

In 2013, more than 1100 workers died in the collapse of the Bangladesh garment processing plant.

Michael Preysman decided to step on the news hotspots. He put photos and videos of the brand cooperative factory on the official website.

The first step is to draw a line with sweatshops and increase the credibility of the "pparent price list".

Take Le foo shoes for example. The factory behind is located in Brescia, Italy (Brescia).

The words and pictures on the website are just like tourist posts, which are placed in a medieval town surrounded by lake Esso, Lake Garda and the Alps.

There are over 60 shoemaking craftsmen in the factory who specialised in a fashion brand and recently turned to small luxury goods companies.

Everlane also said "we love the sandals of last year", but found that the longer the shoes were, the bigger the shoes were, so they were replaced by this manufacturer.

Brescia factory

Everlane currently has 18 cooperative factories in 6 countries around the world, and a factory in Ho Chi Minh City is responsible for knitting. A 30 year factory in Vicenza produces leather handbags; Shenzhen and Jiangmen also have suppliers of Everlane, producing shirts and wool products respectively.

At the end of last year, Bloomberg reporters followed him to visit factories in Dongguan.

That time, Michael Preysman almost brought 1/10 employees to China, including Rebekka Bay.

She once helped H&M, a fast fashion group in Sweden, set up COS, a high street brand, and has been a creative director for Gap for two years.

In August 2015, she switched to Everlane.

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Michael Preysman inspects staff rooms from workshops and factory canteens, and takes pictures.

Michael Preysman's concerns include: whether hot water and air conditioning are provided in dormitories; how many people return to their homes during the Spring Festival; working hours and corresponding remuneration per day.

Factories must accept the shooting requirements and agree to make their production cost public.

At that time, Michael Preysman obviously paid more attention to the image and had delicate beards. When wearing glasses, they no longer wore frame glasses.

However, he still emphasizes that he is a "fashion outsider", claiming that he wants to have the product of C line appearance and Patagonia moral height.

The American brand Patagonia, the main outdoor clothing company, created the "1% For the Planet" project, which donated 1% of its sales to environmental protection organizations every year.

In the eyes of Michael Preysman, Dongguan's factory is the No. 1 troublemaker. It produced 1000 shoulder bags in 2014.

The brand was forced to recall the inferior products, and in view of the bad working environment of the factory, Everlane decided to use the travel time to find more reliable partners.

The factory has repeatedly asked for anonymity to avoid affecting the existing luxury goods customers in Europe and the United States.

Soon after the mission returned to the United States, Michael Preysman rushed to the design studio in New York for a meeting with the creative team.

To date, Everlane has never published any sales related data.

We only know that it launches 350 products every year, and the total number of employees is 100%, and the company is still recruiting people to find entrepreneurial talents.

In 2013, Everlane publicly reported sales of $12 million and doubled in a year.

Privco, a private research firm, expects its revenue last year to be around $35 million, which is likely to be a customer of Banana Republic and J.Crew.

BoF got a higher figure from market practitioners, about $50 million.

"Our main market is in New York, San Francisco and Losangeles."

Michael Preysman has tried to launch a short-term international delivery and found that China's demand is huge. "Before opening international sales, we must first ensure that our strategy is sensible and provide quality shopping experience".

The big problem behind this is whether the online mode is enough to meet the subsequent development of the brand when the brand expands more and more. At the same time, we can see that the existence of distributors is still of great value.

Most Chinese customers are aware of Everlane under the guidance of celebrities and KOL.

But when the consumption desire is stimulated, it is found that the purchase channel is only sea.

Not everyone is familiar with the process of Hai Tao, otherwise they will accept Taobao's purchase price which is higher than the official price 30%-50%.

Consumers in other countries are even more unhappy than Chinese buyers with strong sea rush.

Compared with the physical store, the website loses authenticity. You can't observe and touch the clothes in natural light, let alone try it on.

Everlane is also aware of this, so its brand development is gradually extended from jacket to trousers and shoes.

In all product atlas, you can hardly see tights for the body. The information of the shoe will tell the user the size and width.

If the high fashion house resists the electricity supplier is a pedantic stereotype, it is also dangerous to be self assured in online brands.

The online brand of Warby Parler, which has been operating for three years, has opened up a physical store in 2014. Its number of stores now exceeds 31.

Physical stores do not erode online sales. On the contrary, many customers purchase second, third times online after completing a consumer online.

From the Internet, men's clothing business Bonobos has also taken a "top-down" road.

Not long ago, brand CEO Andy Dunn was looking for a "foothold" for Chicago's physical stores. "70% of Chicago people are not familiar with Bonobos, and we hope that this store can bring more new customers."

He admitted that when he founded the online business in 2007, he decided that the store was going to be out of date, but in fact, it only changed its role, for example, the fitting room.

The real fitting experience often stimulates customers' consumption desire. Andy Dunn simply calls the entity store "Guide Shop".

Another problem that may shake the brand concept is whether the pparency strategy can work well when the scale expands to a certain extent. In order to meet more consumer demand, the company will need to enhance productivity, meet the "moral standards", and the manufacturers who are interested in working with it may not be enough.

At this point, will Everlane choose to compromise or invest more cost to find suppliers?

According to the early prediction of the founder, 2016 will be a critical moment for the brand to make a profit.