Polish The New Generation Of Chinese Luxury Brand SHINELI From The Hat

Although hat decoration has been popular for centuries, it is still a minority category in China, and few well-known brands appear. In such a big environment, the independent hat designer brand SHINELI has sprung up, and is very brave to locate in China's local luxury brands.

Unlike most of the designer brands that rely on buyers, SHINELI does not enter any third party channels, do not do any agents, do not set up online channels, and sell on their own offline channels. At present, SHINELI has set up a physical store in Beijing SKP, Beijing Sanlitun Taigu Li, Shanghai Jingan Kerry Center and other top shopping centers, and has very high quality shops. Among them, Beijing's SKP, SHINELI, ranked second last year in the world's shopping malls, maintained its top three sales in seven years.

Hat is a fashion item that is not just demand, but SHINELI's customer loyalty is very high. Nearly half of its sales are contributed by old customers. We have studied several SHINELI customers. When asked why they love SHINELI, they get the same answer: good-looking and unique. They want to buy it when they see it.

It is the ultimate goal of most of the new generation of fashion entrepreneurs to create a high-end brand that is free from the "price war" constraint and emotionally connected to the new generation of consumers. How does SHINELI build its own brand moat?

Accurate cut into the market blank

In October 2012, Li Shan and Su Wen set up a SHINELI brand with the idea of "everyone wants to buy a hat to think of SHINELI". They have only one simple idea: make the best hat suitable for Chinese people and wear habits.

Li Shan found that there are great differences between Chinese and Western heads. Western heads are elliptical, and Chinese head circumference is more round and flat. In the habit of wearing cap, Westerners used to put their hat on their head lightly. Chinese prefer to fasten their hats to their heads. In order to make a hat suitable for Chinese people, Li Shan did one thing: she worked with several barbers, and asked the barber to help collect the head data of their guests. According to these data, Li Shan began to make the hat mold. In order to make the ratio of a mold accurate, Li Shan will adjust 20 or 30 times at least. She told us: "hat is very particular about proportion. Some subtle changes in the angle will directly determine the quality of the product and the effect of the consumer's wear." At present, SHINELI has more than 100 different hat moulds.

The immaturity of the hat industry is also directly reflected in the production supply chain. Because Li Shan finds it difficult to find a satisfactory hat factory, he can only build a workshop on his own. According to Li Shan, SHINELI is still the only Chinese local hat brand with its own workshops.

Building symbolic products to enhance brand premium capability

According to the brand sales channels, we can see that the price of China's mature clothing brand is mainly from 50 to 200 yuan; the price of light luxury brands such as KENZO and CalvinKlein sells mainly from 500 to 1200 yuan; the price of luxury brands such as Gucci and Balenciaga sells mainly from 2000 to 4000 yuan.

The price tag of SHINELI will be between 2000 and 4000 yuan, which is no different from international luxury brand. It is absolutely not easy for consumers to accept a brand new local luxury brand.

In 2012, Li Shan launched the first product of SHINELI, a hat with metal cat ears. This unique design element soon brought SHINELI to the first batch of loyal customers. Some of them even bought many cities that they brought back to their home at one time as gifts for their friends, because they could not see such a new hat elsewhere, which indirectly created more new fans for SHINELI.

Li Shan said: "when I design a product, I must include some very unique and symbolic elements. When customers see this iconic product, they think of SHINELI. Nowadays, many people will think of SHINELI when they see their ears and caps. They are not just the ones we are doing. But many people will take photos of them and see if they are SHINELI's hats. I will be very happy because at least consumers will associate their ears with SHINELI.

Since then, SHINELI has launched the 3D stereoscopic tiger head modeling hat, and a series of products named "ROBO" built on the rabbit made by Li Shan.

These three animal modeling series have become the classics of SHINELI. Every season, Li Shan will update them.

Like clothing, SHINELI regularly releases two quarter products a year. On this basis, SHINELI will also be on the 10, 20 and 30 of every month for the small batch, and the new style will be released one day in advance by micro-blog and WeChat. Su Wen said, basically, on the day of the day, the new style was largely reserved for the old guests.

A loyal customer of SHINELI said that SHINELI had a new monthly payment, and she looked forward to it. She would buy it, not only to buy it herself, but also to her friends abroad, because there was no such thing in foreign countries.

Find the most suitable sales channel for the brand

Most designer brands rely on third party channels, especially the sales of buyers' stores. The sales performance of buyers' stores directly determines whether the designer can make money. A few designer brands, after years of development and operation, have the ability to start a direct store.

Since its inception in 2012, SIINELI has been insisting on setting up only direct outlets under the Internet, not entering any third party channels, not acting as an agent or opening online channels.

Li Shan and Su Wen knew that online Taobao, Tmall and even third party buyer shops were distributed with SHINELI consumers who could not be overlooked. But they could not do so: "selling a hat of two or three thousand yuan is not an easy thing to do. We need to pass the store image, through every salesperson, clearly convey the brand idea, image and product of SHINELI. As a hat brand with no discount, it is difficult for me to ask the buyer shop to insist on no discount in any case and to match our new rhythm. Actually, opening a store is a very tiring thing, not only to do shop image management, shop staff training, but also to tax, business terms and so on. But we found that after persisting in carrying it, it turned out to be our advantage, so we would not easily go to the third party sales channel.

When the brand was founded, Li Shan boldly opened the shop target to Beijing SKP, where almost every fashion and luxury brand dreamed of entering. There is no doubt that there is a large number of SHINELI precise customers here, but how can SKP, a seemingly unattainable SKP, accept a brand new local designer?

At the beginning, Beijing SKP only gave SHINELI a temporary berth. The brand settled here needs to sign a contract with the mall every month, and the sales will be bad, and it will be left at any time.

Li Shan recalled, "after this temporary position, the pressure was very great, but I was not afraid at that time. I thought I had nothing at all. There was nothing to be afraid of. The mall gave me this opportunity, and I must catch it."

Although many people advised her not to waste money in decorating the temporary berth, she was leaving in a month, but Li Shan said frankly that she was not prepared to spend only a month in Beijing SKP. When SHINELI's beautiful shop was carefully designed and built, it attracted various crowds and cheers. With the tacit agreement between Li Shan and Suwen, SHINELI not only carried the probation period, but also maintained the top three sales in the accessories area since its entry to Beijing SKP.

Li Shan personally handled every store's image design, each style has its own characteristics, and it will be redesigned every few months. "We only have this sales channel to talk with our guests, so we need to pass the store image to convey the brand idea of SHINELI, to tell the guests what kind of brand we are and what we are doing. "

At present, SHINELI has opened 6 stores in Beijing's SKP, Beijing, Sanlitun, Shanghai, Jingan Kerry Center, Xi'an SKP and other top shopping malls in China. Every store has made a profit.

A good product is not a good brand, but a brand must go beyond the product itself.

China's clothing production is very large, many factories are also doing their own brands, but most of them are in a "marginalized" state, brand awareness is very weak.

For this phenomenon, Su Wen believes that the problem lies in the dimension of thinking: "when factories are making caps, they think more about what technology and materials they want to use, but when we are making caps, we will think more about consumers, such as whether the appearance of this hat can make consumers more beautiful and cool, and how to create more added value to consumers."

When the brand has the user stickiness, many brands will choose to expand the category, but Li Shan does not intend to do so: "I want to do other products, but I will not use the SHINELI brand to do, I want to let you know that SHINELI is a professional hat brand. Some SHINELI can do it, some SHINELI can't do it, even if it's money making. "

Over the past few years, SHINELI has rejected investment from large garment groups and rejected agents with high quality resources. Three years ago, based on deep thinking about the precise distribution of brands, Li Shan and Suwen reached a consensus that SHINELI would only open 10 stores in several cities in China. If the development is successful, shop in overseas countries such as Japan and London with high fashion awareness.

Finally, when we asked Li Shan, which thing let you feel the brand strength of SHINELI is gradually stronger, she told "gorgeous": "when I first started designing SHINELI hat, I did not put LOGO, I put a small S, because then I would think that consumers have not yet recognized my brand, do not want to wear my brand LOGO hat, and some of the guests also tried hat when they said," the hat is pretty, no LOGO is better, actually I was very sad at that time. " With more and more people enjoying and recognizing my brand, my S is getting bigger and bigger. Now, I simply design the letters of SHINELI directly in front of the hat. Even with such a large LOGO, customers are very willing to wear it. This makes me feel that we really recognize the brand of SHINELI.