The domestic epidemic continues to be anxious, and many cities have returned to isolation. Some friends cherish the freedom to work at home without commuting, while others miss the social happiness that can make jokes with colleagues every minute. No matter how the two types of p

Knix Wear

Knix was officially launched in 20213 through the crowdfunding platform Indiegogo. In 2015, it once again launched a crowdfunding for the new product 8-in-1 Evolution bra on Kickstarter, raising US$1.6 million in 40 days, setting a new record for crowdfunding for fashion projects.

In the early stage of the epidemic in 2020, Kinx crowdfunded essentials such as masks and medical equipment for medical staff in GoFundMe, and the final fundraising result exceeded the expected $220,000 target. Kinx's products now include underwear, bras, vests, T-shirts and home clothing, and also has the secondary teenager underwear brand KT by Knix. It was rated as the brand of the year by "Strategy Magazine" in 2020. One product is sold every second. It is one of the fastest growing DTC brands in North America, and plans to open 20 physical stores in Canada and the United States in the next three years.

, which expanded from underwear to a personal clothing brand, NEIWAI, internal and external , completed a US$100 million Series D financing led by The Carlyle Group in July last year. The old shareholders Xiangfeng Investment and Qiming Venture Capital followed the investment, and Duowei Haituo served as the exclusive financial consultant and followed the investment. Since women's underwear without steel rings entered the underwear market in 2012, the internal and external years can be said to be education and accompanied by the growth of female consumer concepts. The average online growth rate is as high as 400%. Now, the category has been expanded to the three core product lines of underwear, home casual clothing, and sports and casual clothing around the theme of "comfort", and the channels have been expanded to offline. In 2021, the sales of on all channels increased by ,260% year-on-year, with monthly sales exceeding RMB 200 million (RMB).

NEIWAI offline store

underwear business is so popular that even celebrities have begun to regard their underwear brands as important sidelines:

Kim Kardashian 's body shaping and beauty underwear brand Skims completed $240 million led by Lone Pine Capital in January this year, D1 Capital Partners, Thrive Capital, Imaginary Ventures and Alliance Consumer Growth has participated in the investment. After this round, Skims' valuation reached US$3.2 billion. Skims' large billboards can often be seen in cities such as New York and Los Angeles. Kardashian himself even appeared in person.

At the end of last year, Kardashian shared on her social media that SKims is about to enter China. She personally selected more than 100 products for Chinese consumers and will be the first to be released in Lane Crawford Department Stores in Shanghai and Hong Kong. This is just her first step in expanding the market in Asia.

NEIWAI offline store

Rihanna devoted most of her time to her beauty brand Fenty Beauty by Rihanna and underwear brand Savage X Fenty. The brand quickly became popular when it was launched in 2018. It is inseparable from Rihanna's own star effect. After all, she is the woman who saves the fate of Puma in adversity!

Rihanna has about 126 million followers on Instagram alone, and is one of the accounts with the most followers. This greatly reduces the cost of advertising and marketing. The Queen herself is the best endorsement with a push and a photo. A report from Insider in 2019 showed that fans have a 3.7 times chance of buying Rihanna products than other stars.

Just like Fenty Beauty has launched more than 40 color foundations in line with inclusion, Savage X Fenty also attaches importance to inclusion with different bodies. The size of underwear ranges from XS to XXXL. It uses models of various body shapes, ages and skin colors in the fashion show on Amazon Prime Video. In 2021, the brand revenue increased by 200%, and the number of active and loyal customer base increased by 150%. hip-hop cultural business media CultureBanx reported that by 2025, Savage X Fenty will become the leading brand in the underwear market. It opened its first physical store in Las Vegas in January this year, and immediately completed a US$125 million Series C financing led by Neuberger Berman Group. Previously, investors L Catterton, Avenir, Sunley House Capital, Advent International and Marcy Venture Partners also participated in the investment, with a total financing of US$310 million. It was revealed that Savage X Fenty is in talks with banks such as Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley to prepare to go public this year for $3 billion.

Christian Combs wearing Savage X Fenty-FashionBombDaily

The underwear brand EBY, co-founded by the American drama "Modern Family", completed a US$6 million Series A financing led by Colt Ventures in August last year. EBY's patented stitching technology allows underwear to achieve a great fit to increase comfort. Customers of

EBY can choose to subscribe or buy randomly. The idea of ​​subscription comes from the user survey conducted by CEO Renata Black in physical stores. It found that the convenience of timing is actually very important for female consumers to buy underwear. This model has doubled EBY's revenue in 2019. EBY is also a brand with a charity nature, donating 10% of its revenue to a nonprofit organization dedicated to helping poor women to lend to their entrepreneurial programs.What is the charm of

EBY

underwear track that attracts so many new brands to impact?

01 The previous wave is obsessed with: a sharply shrinking market share

Before the epidemic, people traveled through various life scenes, thinking carefully every day to change their clothes. During the epidemic, work, life and social scenes all happened at home. People wearing pajamas and pajamas find that they cannot discard this comfort, bringing this fashion to the post-epidemic era, and also attracting capital attention to comfortable clothing companies. For example, Silicon Valley Big bosses' feet are a pair of comfortable sports shoes that are called "walking on the clouds". Allbirds was launched in November last year and closed up more than 92% on the same day, with a market value of US$4.1 billion; FIGS, a brand that focuses on comfort, redefining medical clothing, using anti-wrinkle, antibacterial, moisture-wicking materials, allowing medical staff to feel comfortable all day long. FIGS was launched in May last year, with a valuation of US$5.5 billion; Crocs, which is often despised by fashion people but is comfortable and full of comfort, has reached US$10 billion.

FIGS

The underwear products that we have the closest contact with each other every day need to put comfort first, but the top brands in the underwear industry cannot meet this demand because they are all established in an era when equating underwear with sexy, especially the standards for women's beauty are determined by the male perspective.

is now very different. Female consciousness is awakening around the world. Tolerating women for those who please themselves is no longer a golden rule. Tolerating for oneself has become a more fashionable concept. The change in the orientation of underwear represents the becoming diverse and inclusive aesthetic value. This is also an important reason why the earliest batch of DTC underwear brands can break the barriers and successfully enter this track.

, such as ThirdLove and CUUP, are all working hard on size. Underwear, a category that urgently needs fit, should be mainly customized, but traditional underwear brands are trying to squeeze customers into the body standard of underwear model . But they don't have to. ThirdLove has more than 80 underwear sizes, which is in sharp contrast to the traditional dozens. No matter what body shape, age, gender proposition and sexual orientation, you can find your own compliment and comfort.

ThirdLove 80 sizes

A few years ago, " Victoria's Secret " is a mysterious and sexy word. It not only represents this world's top underwear brand that is popular all over the world, but also represents the latest fashion trend of women's underwear. It is a fashion ceremony that fashion people want to participate in. Nowadays, the aesthetic trend of female consumers is changing, but Victoria's Secret has not made timely changes. The way of focusing on offline physical stores ignores e-commerce channels is also inconsistent with the shopping habits of contemporary consumers. Sales have begun to decline in 2015. From 2016 to 2018, Victoria's Secret's market share in the United States has dropped from 33% to 24%. The main product line Pink has to pay a significant discount to retain customers.

Although Victoria's Secret began to absorb non-slim, gender-changing models and models with Down syndrome to participate in the Victoria's Secret show, the main marketing angle is still sexy and dreamy that runs contrary to consumers. Therefore, the ratings of the Victoria's Secret show have also continued to decline. In 2019, the decision to stop broadcasting was finally made. Victoria's Secret's sales in 2020 were US$5.4 billion, a decrease of about 42% compared with five years ago, and its market share was only saved by 19%. Of course, this means that there are more opportunities for other underwear brands to compete.

Virtual Secret Show

02 Underwear goes overseas, how to break through?

not only foreign brands are snatching the market share of European and American underwear, but domestic brands have always had advantages in supply chains and other links, and are also powerful players in the international market. For example, SHEIN, whose valuation has reached US$100 billion, is a good example.

Currently, domestic underwear brands have also performed very well in cross-border operations. In 2021, Tmall and Taobao Overseas Double 11 data shows that among the top ten domestic clothing brands with the fastest growth rate in overseas markets, underwear brands account for the majority. The sales of multiple brands such as NEI WAI, Milk Candy Pai , Ubras and other brands achieved 100% growth compared with the same period last year.

Industry Research data shows that the global underwear market will be approximately US$81.25 billion in 2020, and will grow rapidly with an 8% CAGR in the next six years, and will reach a scale of US$139.29 billion in 2027. Especially the CAGR of the North American underwear market will reach 9.9%, and the market size in 2027 will exceed US$22 billion. Domestic brands can share a big cake. How should we fight the next battle?

• The banner of self-pleasing is not overturned

"Windless steel ring" is the basic model of the new generation of underwear brands, which represents the transformation from sexy to comfort first. If comfort is the first layer of self-consciousness and liberation for female consumers, then self-pleasing is a deeper expression. The subsequent competition for underwear brands will be carried out simultaneously with the cultivation of consumer minds.

has been focusing on using brand values ​​to gain emotional recognition from female consumers since its establishment. Whether it is the choice of spokespersons such as Dujuan , Tan Yuanyuan and Faye Wong , or the brand project "No Body is Nobody (no body is insignificant)" that records the real body and story of women, advocating diverse aesthetics and guiding women to explore their own body and mind has now become an important competitive barrier.

NEIWAI: No Body Is Nobody

Milk Candy Pie is a C-K cup underwear product that specializes in developing underwear products for large-breasted women. By helping large-breasted girls abandon their anxiety, they have gained a loyal user group and created a circle of moats.

号生卡权

Savage X Fenty and Parade use models of various body shapes, ages, sexual orientations and skin tones. Savage X Fenty has also used models with disabled and pregnant women.

Parade not only puts promotional pictures of girls with various figures on the homepage of the official website, and puts self and tolerance on the public screen, but also promotes social attention to sexual issues through brands. 1% of each order of customers will be used to donate money to the family planning organization in New York, and has accumulated more than 12,000 US dollars.

Parade Planned parenthood-Milled

Z generation has a consumption capacity of more than US$140 billion. They care about the inclusiveness and self-expression of the brand, pay attention to sustainability and public welfare value. What they want to wear on is not only the product, but also a sense of pride for the brand. In the future, self-pleasing celebration of the body and expressing the value proposition with the body will become the key points for the victory or defeat of underwear brand marketing.

• Multi-category Multi-scene

Looking at the important strategies that underwear brands at home and abroad are to expand their categories, which is also a common way for other clothing brands to use, but the effect is excellent in underwear brands. This is because underwear is a necessary clothing that everyone needs to wear. Due to its privacy, if a brand can meet the unique needs of consumers in terms of fabrics and tailoring, it can often achieve very high user loyalty.

has expanded from underwear to home and casual clothes to sports series. Underwear, home and sportswear also support the main life scenes of new middle-class women. Unconsciously, the brand runs through various moments of user life. Multiple categories can inspire more lifestyles and scenarios, and even cross-category matching to create a new style of wear. The expansion of internal and external categories has driven the rapid growth of customer orders in offline physical stores. The average average customer unit price in the country reached 1,200 yuan (RMB), 4 times the online one.

Rihanna's Savage X Fenty not only captured the hearts of female consumers, but also launched a series of male underwear to grab a wave of male consumers' wool. This is not only because Rihanna herself has a large number of male fans, but also because women are often decision makers of clothing purchases at home. The behavior of buying underwear for male partners is often done by women at home, and their loyalty to the brand will also extend to the field of male products.

Christian Combs wearing Savage X Fenty-FashionBombDaily

• Copy channel, adjusting the strategy

Domestic environment has trained underwear brands to have rich experience in e-commerce operation, and copying domestic marketing channel experience overseas is one of the first. The cost of digital advertising acquisition in the overseas DTC market has increased, and many channels have become very crowded. Secondly, there must be some adjustments for the overseas environment.

Milk Candy Pie initially found traffic dividends from community operations, had in-depth conversations with female users with big breasts, and absorbed core users into every step of product development and marketing. A similar strategy was adopted when going overseas, positioning the target group as Asian big breasts girls overseas, and surveying the underwear needs and underwear purchasing habits of overseas users, so as to enter the overseas market segmentation track.

Milk Candy Send Overseas User Questionnaire

For both inside and outside, going overseas has always been one of the core strategies. It cooperated with overseas buyers to sell products a few years ago. In the user community, it started from the Asian group in the United States, accumulated the brand awareness, and quickly gained popularity with the endorsement of overseas KOLs. In 2020, it established a local operation team in the United States and built an international independent official website. It is also ready to promote the offline physical store strategy that shoulders half of its sales overseas. Although the current plan to open a store in San Francisco has been slightly shelved, it does not affect the rapid user growth in overseas regions. Sales grew by more than 260% in the same period in the first half of 2021.

, considered a pioneer brand of "wireless" and "sizeless" underwear, Ubras, also targets its overseas strategy to the demand of the Chinese market, and uses , Tmall, , Taobao overseas platform brand day activities and other occasions to enhance exposure, use overseas new media and advertising to attract traffic, cultivate overseas Chinese's awareness of the new generation of domestic brands, and accelerate their overseas pace.

Ubras Taobao Global Brand Day

In addition to marketing and categories, another major test of DTC brands is the liquidity in supply chain and logistics. Since the beginning of the epidemic, many DTC brands in Europe and the United States have to continue to be out of stock due to the closure of Asian factories. The main competitors of domestic brands such as Savage X Fenty and Victoria's Secret have also relied on domestic manufacturing strength. For example, Shantou has shouldered 70% of the world's underwear brand production needs. Domestic brands have the advantages of being close to the water in this regard. The development of domestic cross-border e-commerce platforms has also driven the improvement of infrastructure such as payment, warehousing and logistics. Maintaining the efficiency of supply chain and logistics will continue to become a unique "hard power" competitive advantage for domestic brands to go overseas.

Reference source:

• Why Are Underwear Startups Suddenly A Hot VC Investment? （Crunchbase News）

• This 24-year-old dropped out of Columbia to build a $140 million underwear brand（CNBC）

• From a piece of underwear, how "NEIWAI inside and outside" moves to a lifestyle brand｜Feature (New Business Intelligence NBT)