Analysis Of Brand Market Share Of Chinese Women'S Underwear Market

Victoria's secret, once synonymous with sexuality, unified the standards of the era for the ideal body.

However, in 2017, the situation deteriorated sharply, and the North American market shrank. Weimi began to look for emerging consumer markets around the world, and also tried to open up the Chinese market with a big show full of Chinese elements. However, influenced by the trend of feminism, the underwear consumption market has ushered in drastic changes. T-station is no longer beautiful and sexy, and few people pay for it.

Recently, Weimi, which has been silent for a long time, once again stepped into the public's attention. Weimi China sold 49% shares of its Chinese business subsidiary at a price of 45 million US dollars, and the buyer was virgin, its long-standing OEM factory.

Vivienne, an underwear manufacturer, is a Hong Kong listed company and used to be the main IDM (innovative design and manufacturing) foundry of Weimi. According to its latest financial data in 2021, after the sales volume of Weimi declined, the customer structure of virgin tended to be diversified, including CK, Nike, ADI and UNIQLO.

　　 Virgin customers at a glance

It can be understood that the joint venture with Chinese OEM in China can be understood as Weimi's attempt to exploit the market, bundle interests and share risks with local companies. This is not the first time Vespa has done so. In 2020, Vespa established a joint venture with next PLC, a British high street retailer, to jointly operate the British market.

Wei Mi still seems to be nostalgic about the Chinese market.

　　 China is not a good place to start

The ratings of Weimi show have always been regarded as a barometer of its operation. At its peak, it created 10.3 million viewers.

But by 2015, the number of viewers dropped to 6.59 million, 30% less than the previous year, according to fashion headline. In 2016, the Chinese supermodel group composed of Liu Wen, he Sui, Xi Mengyao and Ju Xiaowen made it to Weimi T-stage, which was also a Weimi show with the strongest Chinese elements. However, the audience rating of 18-49 years old was only 2.1, which was two points lower than that of 2.3 in 2015.

　　 Ratings data of Weimi Dashu

In terms of specific operations, after 27 consecutive quarters of growth, the company's revenue for the first time fell 9% to $7387.2 million in fiscal year 2017.

North America failed, and China was once regarded as a gold mine for breaking the situation

According to "intelligent research consulting: the scale and growth rate of China's women's underwear market from 2016 to 2021", the scale of China's women's underwear market exceeded 150 billion yuan in 2017, with an annual compound growth rate of 7.73%. However, underwear consumption accounts for less than 10% of the per capita clothing expenditure. Compared with nearly 20% of foreign clothing expenditure, there is still a lot of room for China's market.

At the same time, the market share of top brands of Chinese women's underwear is less than 2%, and the top five brands are no more than 10%. Numerous white brands and small brands have digested 90% of the market. Compared with foreign countries, big brands are expected to be highly concentrated here.

Smart research consulting: China's women's underwear market size and growth rate from 2016 to 2021

With the grand show of Weimi held in Shanghai in 2017 as a symbol, sexy Weimi has officially entered the Chinese market. The brand opened China's first offline direct store in Shanghai and located in China's office. Subsequently, it opened stores in several core business districts of first and second tier cities such as Hangzhou Hubin Yintai and Nanjing Deji square. In the same year, it officially settled in tmall and opened a brand flagship store.

In the same year, Martin waters, CEO of the company's international business department, said at the investor conference that China was the "number one target" of the company.

However, in the past five years, "No.1 target" has not brought the expected growth of Weimi. As of the latest financial statement of 2021, Weimi has 65 Direct stores in China, and tmall has accumulated more than 4 million fans. However, in 2021, the net sales revenue of vibe International (including greater China and UK markets) was USD 477million, accounting for only 7% of the total revenue, and the growth rate also lagged behind the North American market.

　　 Revenue of vimil's North American stores and international markets

The main revenue of the company still comes from the North American market, while the strategic Chinese market has failed to curb the decline of the company. In 2018-2020, the revenue of Weimi will continue to fall, and its stores in North America will continue to shrink until 2020, when the epidemic situation occurs, the stores will be closed substantially. There are three landmark events:

1. On February 20, 2020, l brands, the parent company of Weimi, announced a strategic deal with sycamore partners, a private equity fund: l brands will sell 55% equity of Weimi and its sub brand pink for us $1.1 billion, and retain 45% equity;

2. On june9,2020, Weibi UK went into bankruptcy liquidation, closed all local stores and dismissed a team of more than 800 people;

3. On August 3, 2021, Weimi was officially separated from the parent company l brands group and officially listed on the New York Stock Exchange.

After a series of twists and turns, Weimi finally eased over last year. According to the first financial report after independent listing, sales of local stores increased by 50% to $4.194 billion in 2021 thanks to the recovery of the North American market. The annual net sales increased by 25% to 6.785 billion U.S. dollars, and the net profit was 646 million US dollars. Weimi finally stopped the decline and resumed growth, although there is still a big gap compared with that in 2019 before the epidemic.

　　 Sales data of Weimi in 2021 and comparison of previous years

　　 Consumers abandon "sexiness"

When Weimi entered China in 2017, it claimed that China has a broad market for sexy underwear. However, at the same time, known as "China's Secret maintenance", the business situation of the sexy urban beauty has gone from bad to worse. In 2016, the net profit has been cut back on a year-on-year basis, and has been in a loss since then.

　　 Net profit trend of urban beauty over the years

It is not difficult to find that in recent years, from film and television to literature, from the workplace to the family, "big lady", "her economy" and "her power" have all become the annual vocabulary. The new generation of women is considered to be in the "awakening era", and this awakening is directly reflected in the underwear consumption field.

It seems that at the same time, female consumers all over the world have abandoned sexuality, and Weimi just stepped on this embarrassing time point when she entered the Chinese market.

The Chinese market is not as expected. On the one hand, Weimi's rigid sexy label is not grounded. On the other hand, it is also the strength of local new brands. At the same time when Weimi entered the Chinese market, the new female underwear brands incubated on the Internet and focused on Taobao tmall and other e-commerce platforms are growing rapidly. Waiwai, ubras, jiaonei, etc. have become new online brands, all established in 2016-2018. They mainly focus on the concepts of "pleasing oneself" and "freedom", and cut into the subdivision fields such as no steel ring, no size and zero pressure, and obtain the market by meeting the diversified underwear demands of new consumers.

New brands have created brand personality in line with the needs of the new generation of female consumers by tacit understanding. Whether it is the founder's story, the brand concept, spokesperson, and even the talent samples selected from xiaohongshu and Shuo Yin, they are striving to win a broader consumer group

According to the founder of umbras, modern young girls no longer need the traditional underwear that sexy gather to hold up their business line. Instead, I should go to work when I should go to work, and I should exercise when I should. Underwear is the external thing.

Internal and external expression starts from making an underwear that is free in body and mind and pays attention to women's physical feelings. Encourage more women to better understand themselves through underwear, which is the most intimate product with the body.

On the spokesman level, ubras chose Ouyang Nana and Jiao Nei signed Zhou Dongyu. In the past, underwear spokesmen are almost all the same "Lin Zhiling".

More than the concept, new brands generally adopt DTC mode (direct to customer), and establish more frequent and close contact with consumers in R & D and production with the help of emerging media platform.

In the early stage of the brand establishment, it focused on communicating with target users, collecting opinions, and summarizing three representative breast types, namely disc chest, hemispherical chest and papaya chest, to develop targeted products. Finally, the sales will be completed through e-commerce, live broadcast, KOL and other means to achieve closed loop.

The perfect infrastructure of e-commerce and the brand mentality of tmall flagship store also enable new brands to stand on the same starting line with big brands without the short board of stores under sight.

Reflected in the results, the sales volume of ubras tmall flagship store will exceed 1.5 billion in 2020, with an annual growth of 8 times. The sales volume of jiaonei will reach 1 billion in 2020. In 2021, tmall double 11, ubras, jiaonei, UNIQLO and Nei Wai ranked among the top four categories of underwear sales, while Weimi ranked only 19th.

　　 List of transactions of tmall double 11 underwear in 2021

If Li Ning Anta's achievements in challenging international giants in recent years are impressive, then in terms of underwear categories, domestic brands that know more about local consumers have collectively established barriers to the Chinese market.

The changes of women's underwear consumption also happened in foreign countries. From 2016 to 2018, the market share of Vimy in the United States has dropped from 33% to 24%. The new brands that have eroded its market share are the US e-commerce underwear brand thirdlove, which is similar to China's new brands, savagex Fenty, a new brand of Rihanna, and lively. The market share of the three companies reached 36.2% in 2019.

As a former senior executive of Weimi, the founder of livey said that the original definition of sexuality was no longer enough to maintain a large number of female users, and that the image of ordinary girls could move them.

"Millennials no longer agree with the beauty standards advocated by Wei MI, but advocate new sexual standards such as self-interest, equality and tolerance." Foreign analysts also believe that the key to the backwardness of Weibi lies in its failure to adjust its product strategy in time to keep up with the new generation of consumers.

　　 Is it not too late for giants to turn around?

Weimi, who is behind one position, is trying to reshape its brand image.

In the latest financial report, Wimbley said: the decisive actions we have taken recently to develop our positioning and promote inclusiveness and diversity will enable us to attract new customers and deepen our ties with existing customers.

Inclusiveness and diversity have become the new key words of Weimi, which is first reflected in the brand spokesmen. In China, Weimi has successively selected women with different professional and public images, such as Yang Mi, Zhou Dongyu, Yang Tiantian, Gu ailing, etc., as spokesmen to promote diversified beauty.

If you look at Weimi's public account, the push cover and topic selection are full of desire for survival. From different skin color to body shape, from workplace to family, it is full of elements such as equal rights, freedom and awakening. In Wei Mi's little red book, comfort is the key word of notes. In terms of dithering sound, works about products without steel rings account for the highest proportion.

In all consumer oriented channels, Weimi conveys the same message: I'm no longer the old one. Please get to know me again. Even in terms of price, efforts are also being made to tear off the label of "sky high show style", which not only keeps up with the price of many brands, but also keeps on promoting sales information in the shop, marking the word "price reduction" on the title.

As new consumers pay more and more attention to brand and quality, white brands are declining, and the scale of brand underwear is growing. The low concentration of underwear industry has become the past. Now, the market share of top 10 brands has exceeded 31%, which can be called a fully competitive market.

Like VIMI, new brands that are maturing are also looking at the world in tacit agreement. According to the overseas data of tmall Taobao in 2021, underwear category accounts for more than half of the top ten domestic goods growth rate list, including internal and external, milk sugar pie, ubras, banana, and a tree. Both inside and outside China planned to open stores in San Francisco as early as 2020, and the overseas official website was launched in the same year.

With the help of a sound cross-border e-commerce platform and independent stations, the new brand can quickly copy its mature online marketing experience overseas. Wei MI, once a sexy leader, is modestly copying the work of a new brand.

Whether the giant turns around and whether it can take a share of the Chinese women's underwear market remains to be verified. The underwear market, which is regarded as the last piece of cake in the clothing industry, also poses a new global challenge to the brands involved.