BAN XIAOXUE Founder Ban Xiaoxue Talks About Entrepreneurship, Brand And Design

And most of them rely on buying shop sales.

Product

The mode is different. Ban Xiao Xue is taking another way. There are nearly thirty independent shops in two years, except for the other cities in the north.

In recent years, the retail environment is bad, but Ban Xiaoxue has relied on traditional channels to achieve good results. "People in many industries will take BAN XIAOXUE as a business case."

I never thought I would start my own business.

In 2012, ban Xiao Xue resigned from the job of "exception" chief designer. He did not have any special plans for career planning and brand creation, nor did he feel that he was fit to be a leader or set up his own team to lead others.

But because he participated in the competition organized by the The Woolmark Company, he founded the brand BAN XIAOXUE in Guangzhou in the same year. "The competition requires competitors to have their own brands. I just started the brand because of this, and now that we have a brand, we can't ignore it."

In this competition, Ban Xiaoxue won the 2012 China International Wool symbol award in China. He won the competition prize and savings. He started his career in Guangzhou.

In the early days of the business, there were difficulties one after another, such as the small production capacity, almost no factory willing to cooperate with him to do fabric development, special craft, and his own unsatisfied work had to be brought to the market, which made Ban Xiaoxue feel very miserable. He wanted to make good design works and unwilling to compromise with the design in order to survive, so at the end of 2013, he accepted external investment.

(above: BAN XIAOXUE 2016 autumn winter series press conference)

Accepting investment has brought me a lot of help.

After getting the investment, Ben Xiao Xue began to set up a team to give professional things to professional people. The division of labor was refined and the products became more precise.

In August 2014, Xiao Xue opened the first independent store in Guangzhou's good Plaza. In the past two years, the brand has opened nearly thirty independent shops in the whole country. Apart from the northern cities, they are self agency shops. The rest are agent shops. Class Xiao Xue said frankly, these agent shops are related to investment. "Most agents have rich sales experience, and they need to see profits and recognition through products. These two points are exactly what brands do after they accept investment."

When asked why the brand will accept the agency, Ban Xiaoxue said, "we are a new brand. It is very difficult to enter the market by relying solely on the strength of the brand. Therefore, we will choose high-quality agents to act as brand agents, and they can get the local resources such as the location of the mall by their experience and methods.

On the other hand, the team is not big enough to take care of external matters, which is a more suitable way of development for the early development of the brand.

At present, there are more than 20 agents in charge of brand BAN XIAOXUE. When it comes to the experience of contacting with agents, Ban Xiaoxue said, "I am only responsible for the design and marketing part of the company, and there are specialized colleagues in the sales channels to get in touch with each other. But I will meet and talk with the agents in important areas first. I want to know the extent of the agents' love for brands, the degree of understanding and the views on brand development. This is the most important thing.

In recent years, the traditional channels have been sluggish, but the sales of our brands are good.

Of course, our brands will have new products every twenty days and produce good sales every day. This enables agents to see that brand stability and product fitness are mutual.

(above: BAN XIAOXUE 2016 autumn winter series press conference)

Entering the traditional channel brand will have more profit space.

In the view of ban Xiao Xue, "whether it is a commercial brand or designer brand, it is necessary to accept the test of the market. Therefore, the sooner the traditional channel is, the sooner the better.

Brand opening in the mall means that customers and retailers can see the complete image of BAN XIAOXUE, the frequency of renewal and the stable style of each quarter, and will attract customers in shopping malls to increase the purchase rate.

In fact, most Chinese designers still rely on buyers to sell their products, but Ban Xiaoxue believes that the "buyer shop" is at a new stage of development. Its main customers are mainly professionals, and the public has not yet got to the habit of buying shop.

Moreover, there is no fixed rule in the location, style and cooperation mode of brand.

It is more difficult for a designer to make profits through a buyer's shop and have a good profit margin.

BAN XIAOXUE did not vigorously expand the online channels. Ban Xiaoxue said, "online channel is a very young, but more and more important direction. We have opened a micro shop to facilitate the purchase of regional customers who have not yet been covered by the brand, but we are not ready to fully develop online channels. After all, this is completely different from the entity's operation mode."

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(above: BAN XIAOXUE Beijing Chaoyang joy shop)

Controlling clothing pricing and supply chain

The clothing industry is complex and involves a lot of links. The two important links are product pricing and supply chain.

In terms of product pricing, Ban Xiaoxue thinks that a garment is important not only for its good fabric, comfort, and high price performance ratio, but also for "more cost-effective" brands, so that more customers will enter shops to buy products.

Ban Xiaoxue's important factor for product pricing is to see the final effect of clothing. "20 yuan, one meter fabric or 2000 yuan per meter fabric will depend on the final appearance of the fabric. The cost of some clothes is not high, but the value of the clothing is very high. It can increase profits. On the contrary, some fabrics are very expensive, but the value of the final fabric is not strong enough to reduce profits, or even to make profits with just passing profits, because the final object reflects the value of the designer."

On the production chain, Ban Xiaoxue said, "although the company has a small production workshop, it must depend on the cooperation with the outside factories, which is the best. On the one hand, the demand for brand products is increasing. On the other hand, the equipment and process needed for each product are different.

Product production or fabric ordering is a pain for most Chinese designers in production and supply chain. Ban Xiaoxue said, "most of China's quality factories are large factories, and large factories need support from" quantity ". This is a very practical problem.

We also encountered this difficulty in the initial stage of brand building. The solution is to reduce the color of clothing or design multiple styles with the same fabric. "

(above: BAN XIAOXUE 2016 autumn winter series press conference)

Design for solving the needs of the masses

How to take into account the design and business, ban Xiao Xue's design is like this. "Five years ago, I would position the customer as a good tempered, good figure, and design the perfect clothes. But when I went to the physical shop, I found that the location was not accurate. Some of the customers had big arms, big legs, or fleshy belly and so on. This means that the perfect clothes will not be perfect for them, and they can't hide their defects. So when I do the design, I will put people first, to solve the needs of the public, and to make people more perfect with clothes, so that the design will become more meaningful."

At present, there are nearly eighty employees at the headquarters of ban Xiao Xue company, excluding terminal shop salesmen.

For the future development of the company, Ban Xiaoxue said: "now the environment has given Chinese designers a lot of support. We must make good use of this opportunity. We can not stay in the former buyer's channel. Clothes can be sold and sold, and we can't sell them. We are now sending clothes to large stores in bulk and returning to" die "ourselves, so we should do our best to do the work well.

Finally, Ben Xiao Xue summed up his attitude towards the operation brand in the past few years with "ready" and "not ready". "Nothing is waiting for you to be ready to do it again. It is late at that time, but when doing things, we must have a ready mind, such as thinking everything is possible, and preparing solutions, so that we can not let ourselves have no way out."

Ban Xiaoxue: recommend two books: "Yamamoto Teruji: I cast a bomb" and "100 years of solitude", to see what our predecessors said and how to do in certain things will help us.

In addition, I will recommend to you a movie "the elegance of hedgehog", which makes me understand that whenever there is a belief in heart.