Underwear Market Competition Fierce? Both The Virgin And The Urban Beauty Went Down The Altar.

Xi Mengyao is getting married soon, and Lin Chiling has announced his marriage.

The two goddesses waved their sleeves away from us. Together, there is the world's most trafficking sexy underwear brand "Vitoria secret" and national underwear "city beauty".

The former abolished the annual underwear show, the underwear myth L Brands fell down the altar, the latter was not so popular in China, and the market value evaporated HK $8 billion in 3 months.

2019, it seems that the underwear industry is not a friendly year. Wei Mei and urban beauty, a luxurious and aesthetical and integrated body, are full of Chinese streets and lanes, and the market is full of breath.

There are many media reports, such as product structure failure, fierce market competition, and outdated marketing strategy. Synergy is that the Chinese market is experiencing the fastest technological innovation and upgrading of consumption in half a century.

The traditional brand hopes to continue its brilliance. Fast fashion giant UNIQLO and Zara want to get a slice of it. 400 billion of the underwear market is far more intense than imagined.

Trafficking sexy, pleasing others

Two years ago, a gorgeous underwear feast came to Shanghai. China's social media was crazy. The T of Xi Mengyao, a supermodel, has been upgraded to a hot topic of the whole nation.

The secret of Vitoria. The name of "Nian Nian" is full of sexy taste.

In 1977, Roy Raymond, who graduated from Standford hills business school, opened his first secret store. It was because he bought his underwear with his wife that the underwear on the market was ugly and not friendly to men. So he chose to create a new brand himself.

Unlike other lingerie stores, they are classified according to their code number. They will classify and display all kinds of styles of underwear. Men only need to choose according to their styles and choose the right size.

Raymond opened 5 stores, and finally sold it to The Limited Brands because of the capital chain problem. The latter took care of the sex and beauty after taking over.

In 1995, it launched the annual show that affected the whole underwear industry. Since the first time, it has attracted the attention of countless male consumers. It has become the headlines of various newspapers. In 2001, the show watched more than ten million people.

Together with the popularity of the secret show, it is the performance of the underwear. In 2003, its sales amounted to $2 billion 800 million, and it had more than 1000 stores worldwide. In 2009, it sold 600 underwear per minute.

In those days, sexy was the benchmark of underwear, and the gathering, business lines and cups appeared frequently in underwear advertisements, and consumers also used the tall chest effect as the criteria for choosing underwear.

Taking advantage of this sexy trend, a number of brands have also sprang up in China across the ocean, among which the urban beauty is one of the biggest brands.

In 1998, the city beauty was founded. At that time, Hongkong and overseas brand underwear were very expensive, and there were no formal brands of cheap underwear in China. The appearance of urban beauty made up the market gap between brand protection and cost performance.

Since then, urban beauty has been expanding rapidly in the form of single store affiliation. In 2014, it surpassed Ann Li Fang as China's largest underwear retailer and owned 7026 stores.

At that time, the city beauty signed the sexy goddess Lin Chiling, the brand name and performance ran all the way. From 2013 to 2014, revenue increased from 2 billion 916 million yuan to 4 billion 8 million, an increase of over 1 billion. In 2015, it was ushering in the peak of its performance, and its revenue was 4 billion 953 million.

In order to expand their influence, city beauty also imitated Mimi's underwear show, invited Miss Universe to show off, and strengthened her sexy label.

In a sense, there is the same label on both the Vic and the beautiful people: trafficking sexy and pursuing fashion.

In June 2014, urban beauty successfully listed on the main board of Hongkong, becoming the "first brand of Chinese underwear" with a market value of more than 14 billion Hong Kong dollars.

By 2016, urban beauty became the most popular brand in China's underwear market, higher than the total of second to fifth. Despite this, the market share of urban beauty is only 3.2% before the booming demand for underwear in China.

　 How tragic is the $400 billion underwear market?

Cheng is also sexy, but also sexy.

Two years later, the angel Xi Mengyao, who caused the topic, married to the rich and powerful, and the figure was no longer the same.

First, the number of people watching the show decreased year by year, from 12 million 500 thousand to 3 million 270 thousand in 2018.

Then frequent shops were closed, and only 35 stores were closed in the first quarter of 2019. Behind the closure is the successive drop in sales performance. In the first quarter of this year, Limited Brands sales of its parent company were 2 billion 629 million yuan, and net profit fell 15%.

In June of this year, Lin Chiling, the spokesperson of the city beauty, announced his marriage. The spokesperson was changed to Guan Xiaotong, and the goddess of sex became "national daughter". From April to July this year, the price of urban beauty fell 68.27%, and its market value shrank by nearly HK $8 billion.

Before the "full" world knows, now no one knows the price. The lingerie lingerie is not just abandoned by the times, but rather a problem of its own positioning. Whether they are Wei or urban beauty, they use underwear to define sexy ways to please men. The uniform steel ring and thickened chest pad satisfy men's imagination of perfect chest, but sacrifice the comfort of women themselves.

The context of the times will eventually change, and feminism and feminism are transmitted to the consumption level, which is the function of women in pursuit of nature, comfort and underwear.

Wei and urban beauty, who are on the sexy image, have begun a long way to go.

In 2015, the sales of Limited Brands of its parent company amounted to $11 billion 200 million, and its market share reached 63%. Since then, the performance has continued to decline, underwear sales of single store year-on-year decline of 6%-14%.

In fiscal year 2016, its sales volume was $7 billion 780 million, and its revenues dropped 9% to $7 billion 300 million in the 2017 fiscal year.

In March of this year, Limited Brands released its 2018 annual earnings report, which was dragged down by its secret performance. The group's net income was $6 billion 440 million, down 24% from the same period last year, the lowest in years.

Urban beauty also appeared in 2016 for the first time in both revenues and profits. Revenue dropped by about 8.9% to 4 billion 512 million yuan, and profits were reduced by 55.2% to 242 million yuan.

Just in the past July, urban beauty released a profit warning for the first half of the year. It is expected that net profit will exceed 80% over the first half of the year, and Lin Chiling and Guan Xiaotong will not be able to save it.

In collaboration with it, the lingerie consumer demand is booming. According to Technavio data from the consultancy, the global underwear market will grow at an annual rate of 17%. By 2020, it will surpass 58 billion US dollars (about 400 billion yuan), while the Chinese underwear market can reach US $33 billion.

According to the financial report, the gross profit margin of urban beauty in 2016 was 44%, and the gross profit margin of similar underwear enterprises was generally close to 60%.

Brisk market and substantial profits have made brands and businesses jump into the Red Sea. In the US, the latest quarter sales of the Aerie, the rival brand of the private label, rose 32%, and for the first time last year, they entered the 500 million dollar club.

Aerie is contrary to the sexy line emphasized by Wei. It does not have sexy supermodels, nor has it exaggerated lace products. It invites various models to shoot advertisements, and even pregnant women's stretch marks are printed on advertisements, aiming at encouraging women to bravely "please themselves".

In addition to Aerie, the famous singer Rihanna's underwear brand Savage x Fenty is also popular among young consumers because of its friendliness with all kinds of shapes.

In China, more and more entrepreneurs see the market opportunities brought about by the awakening of women's consciousness. They begin to penetrate into the underwear market, without steel ring underwear, no trace underwear, sleeping underwear, and the main brand of comfortable and healthy underwear has sprung up.

New brands such as internal and external, oxygen, and Frey girls also joined the battleground. Even the fast fashion giants such as UNIQLO and Zara began to make underwear and harvest young users. According to Tmall's data, more than 7000 underwear brands are now in place, with a growth rate of more than 30%.

Tmall underwear category director Yu Yu said that in 2018, sales of Tmall bra category products accounted for 60% of the sales of stainless steel underwear, and continued to maintain rapid growth and huge market potential.

　 Is there any drama between the city and the city?

Can you rebound after touches the bottom?

The first thing that Wei faces is the reconstruction of image. Earlier, Ed Razek, the chief marketing officer of the company, said in an interview that they had no interest in big codes or denatured models, which made the brand fall to the bottom.

The Australian model Robyn Lawley proposed a fashion show to boycott the "narrow aesthetic" on the petition website, and launched the topic of "#WeAreAllAngels" on social media such as Instagram, with numerous respondents.

Stopping the "secret show" is the first step in terms of cost and brand image reshaping.

In addition, with the help of the trend of fitness in recent two years, Wei Ming began to create new topics by advocating the lifestyle of supermodels and keeping healthy bodies.

At the same time, the parent company L Brands also tried to win more time by replacing leaders, and put the heavy burden of recovery on the hands of John Mehas from Tory Burch.

John Mehas said that its top priority is to improve the underwear business and Pink series, and it will also strengthen the optimization of product marketing, brand positioning, internal talent and the cost structure of store investment portfolio.

When the society is no longer "sexy" Carnival, it needs to think about how to abandon the sexy marketing model, and really start from the actual needs of consumers.

The secret side said that although the 20 stores will be closed by the end of this year, it will also accelerate its expansion in the international market. Following the opening of 6 independent flagship stores in mainland China last year, the first flagship store in Hongkong, China, opened in July and will open new stores in France and Italy in the future.

The first step in the transformation of urban beauty is to replace the spokesperson with the younger generation of idol Guan Xiaotong. It is not only getting rid of the sexy image but also inject new vitality into the aging brand.

Last year, the city beauty also injected new forces into personnel. The former president and CEO Sharen Jester Turney became the chief strategy officer of the city beauty. Tang Shen, the head of the former Wacoal Technology Department, joined the urban beauty at the end of last year and was appointed chief technology officer to study underwear structure and future fabrics.

After the new team was built up, urban beauty began to crack down on one of the core issues, product aging.

In the middle of 2018, the urban beauty began to subdivide the product style according to the consumer's living conditions and put forward the concept of "4F". They are Free (simple nature), Flirt (seduction), Fun (playism) and Function (functionalism) four categories, including Function, including pregnancy, body building, sports and other specific occasions of wear demand, is also the fastest growing part of the current performance.

Despite the continued decline in the city's beauty and urban beauty, the rebound and rise are not hopeless.