Original : Zuizui
Source: Vista Hydrogen Business
UGG has taken ugly shoes to a new level.
Either the base is thick and thick, and the new version of Chaizi Le Champion does not have mini snow boots, which is difficult to convince; or it has a wool edge, and those who don’t know think they stole my grandma’s cotton slippers from the bottom of the box.
These two snow boots were launched in September. Somehow, they have become the favorites of fashionable people.
is represented by the sister group of Kendou, Hailey, and GiGi. They wear white socks and yoga pants . They want to wear them to the gym every day. Judging from the frequency of their appearance in street photos, really makes people worry about whether these two pairs of ugly shoes will cause sparks.
Insgream Many Internet celebrities cannot lag behind. It seems that anyone who does not own UGG’s new ugly shoes this autumn will be expelled from the trendy home.
Of course, competitive Chinese girls cannot lose. In fact, they worked even harder. In order to grow 5 centimeters taller, they even gave up the annual Taobao discount of 50 off 300, just to pick up the full price of this pair of thick-soled granny shoes that are only available in offline stores.
So What is the magic of ugly and expensive UGGs, and why can today's young people be so obsessed with them?
Even the name means ugly
How much effort does it take to make a pair of ugly shoes look beautiful?
Just look at UGG’s two new thick-soled granny shoes, and they can appear in any fashion trend that is popular today.
Sporty style. It doesn’t matter how beautiful the shoes are on your feet, but they must be niche and expensive. Paired with Lululemon yoga pants, you can not only get rid of a train of double 11 girls who are budget-conscious in terms of money, but also secretly flaunt your own aesthetics, which is a direct poke into the hearts of middle-class young people.
college style. wears a large heavy-duty baseball uniform on the upper body, floor-length white washed jeans on the lower body, complete with UGG thick-soled granny shoes and alien sunglasses. Looking across the sea from the American laziness and the trendy people in Dongdaemun, South Korea, they have reached an amazing tacit understanding. Walking on the street seems to say, "I am super cool, look at me."
Picture source Xiaohongshu account @CHI177
American retro style. Bare legs, put on white socks, and then match them with a short skirt and a short sweater with a leaky waist. This autumn version of Y2K hotties has a new combination.
Picture source Xiaohongshu account @CHI177
and the trend of not dressing well, and fashionable people do not go out in winter or are not afraid of freezing wind.
However, no matter how much fashionistas pursue it, they cannot deny that UGG is really ugly, or to put it bluntly, at least not elegant enough. Every time I see it, it always reminds me of Dobby in "Harry Potter". There are some subtle similarities between UGG and his shoes.
Even in the millennium when UGG just became popular, people did not hide their condemnation of UGG. In 2003, "The Independent" said, "UGG is not sexy, unless you are Mrs. Bigfoot, or Mr. Bigfoot who plans to cross Antarctica alone." (There is no discrimination against Bigfoot here)
In 2015, dress-conscious London, England, sounded the "first shot of resistance" in Brick Lane, East London. A coffee shop in China directly prohibits people wearing UGGs from entering. This coffee shop calls UGGs "dirty boots."
And back to the beginning, was at the beginning of the birth of UGG. The combination of these three letters originally meant ugly .
Around 1920, in order to keep their feet warm, Australian shearers took materials from around them and trimmed the lambskin into a pair of rough shoes.Because of its clumsy appearance, workers directly called it "Shearers' Ugly Boots", which translates to shearers' ugly boots, and was later shortened to "UGG Boots" .
The pronunciation of UGG at that time was not directly in the form of English letters, but pronounced as "Ah Ger"; in terms of brand, it was not even a brand. It was just a boot made of a whole piece of sheepskin. It was a general term for a snow boot, or just a type of boot.
A hundred years ago, people in the southern hemisphere would pay attention to this kind of shoe simply because of its outstanding warmth. Therefore, UGG has been used by the Australian Air Force to make special military boots since then.
The snow boots we are talking about now often refer to the American brand "UGG australia".
Brian Smith, the founder of the brand, pointed out in his book "The Birth of a Brand: Unleashing Your Entrepreneurial Passion and Soul" that when he was a teenager, such round-toed brown boots were already very common in Australia, and people could buy them at a gas station for only $12.
is the same as when it was born. The popularity of UGG at this time was still due to functionality. At Broulee Beach on the south coast of New South Wales, young men and women put them on after surfing and their feet became dry in just 10 minutes.
UGG that is popular among surfers
In 1979, this young man from Australia brought UGG to the United States and created the UGG australia brand. At first, he tried to sell these shoes to shoe stores, but he kept running into obstacles, "Selling sheepskin in California ? Are you crazy?"
Therefore, even at the beginning of the brand's establishment, UGG's target users were still young people who love sports. Until the mid-1980s, UGG was still a niche enterprise, largely regarded as a California quirk.
UGG's first breakthrough came in 1994, when America's national newspaper "USA Today" published a photo of Pamela Anderson on the set of Baywatch, wearing a standard red swimsuit and a pair of UGG boots.
Pamela Anderson
Because of this photo, people began to know that there is such an ugly shoe.
In October of the same year, the " New York Times " published a short article introducing UGGs, calling them " the most popular footwear on the West Coast of the United States" at that time. At this point, UGG started the era of unifying the world of ugly shoes.
Because in 1995, Smith sold the company's shares to Deckers, an outdoor sports company. Deckers has registered the UGG trademark in more than 100 countries, and other brands containing the word "UGG" are not allowed to enter the market of the country where Deckers is registered.
This approach is both domineering and smart. Deckers has seized the market opportunity and angered Australian manufacturers. After all, why should an American take away the rights of the country of origin?
Therefore, this group of manufacturers living in Australia jointly established the UGG Snow Boot Association, claiming that Australia is the country of origin of UGG, and UGG should be turned into a common name, and they took Deckers to court.
Although only the Australian court ruled that UGG is a common name, this farce across the ocean spread quickly. People in other parts of the world suddenly knew , "Oh, so winter boots can still look like this. " and were curious, Is it worth it to have such a quarrel over a pair of ugly shoes?
However, so far, UGG has not been popular enough to be noticed by fashion circles and trendsetters..
Breaking the "American Service"
Canadian journalist Malcolm T. Gladwell (Malcolm T. Gladwell) introduced three methods on how to make a product become a trend in his book "Tipping Point": The law of individual characters, adhesion factors and the law of environmental power .
I don’t know if the executives of Deckers have read this book, but coincidentally, following the path proposed by Gladwell, UGG achieved an astonishing reversal from "the ugliest in history" to "the trendiest in history" .
After entering the millennium, perhaps because of the sweetness of Pamela Anderson's photos, Deckers began to realize the extraordinary influence of Hollywood stars. Therefore, from then on, UGG launched a star strategy and began to give snow boots to stars, allowing UGG to frequently appear in the public eye, which is the "law of individual characters", giving full play to the cultural effect of Hollywood celebrities.
Although this approach is not trendy now, after all, brands willing to send shoes to the GIGI supermodel sisters may really queue up to Paris, France, and the thick-soled granny shoes they show in street photos every day must be gifts from the brands.
But 20 years ago, Deckers still received good feedback.
At that time, after receiving the shoes, Oprah Winfrey, the Queen of American talk shows, not only put them on her feet directly, but also introduced UGG in the "Favorite Things" unit of the most-watched talk show in the history of the United States, "Oprah Winfrey".
Oprah’s talk show recommended UGG
Under Winfrey’s enthusiastic sales, UGG quickly became popular. Soon, this trend from Hollywood swept the world. Celebrities such as Paris Hilton, Kate Moss, and Oprah Winfrey stepped on the classic style Classic Boot. UGG not only became a "new star" in the entertainment industry, but also directly entered the shoe cabinets of millions of ordinary girls. Girls who initially thought it was ugly also began to buy it.
In 2003, this pair of ordinary-looking fur boots began to appear at Milan and New York Fashion Week , successfully opening the door to the fashion circle. UGG was directly named the Brand of the Year in 2003 by the industry's authoritative magazine Footwear News for its two new color snow boots, baby blue and baby pink. Leah Larson, vice president and creative director of
UGG, believes that UGG's sudden popularity in 2003 is also related to the development of women's liberal dress at that time. "It seems that all of a sudden, girls were allowed to wear pajamas and slippers.
That year, UGG sales rose directly to 25 million US dollars (Larson believes that it was actually close to 40 million) million), “That’s when we started getting phone calls from celebrities. Sarah Jessica Parker (Sarah Jessica Parker) asked us to make her a pair of ruby-colored snow boots, then she wore them in Sex and the City, fighting with Big. ”
Since then, Hollywood stars’ love for UGGs has become even more fanatical. Just like today’s Insgream will be expelled if they don’t wear thick-soled granny shoes. At that time, stars who didn’t have a pair of UGGs would probably be considered not popular enough.
So, in 2004, Kate Hudson was filming 2004 In the same year, she wore her own customized UGG in the movie "Raising Helen"; in the same year, Sienna Miller (Sienna Miller) Also debuted with a pair of UGGs at Glastonbury Festival .
At the same time, UGG also engaged in hunger marketing and joined forces with Nordstrom, a large American department store chain, to announce that each American household is only allowed to buy 4 pairs of UGGs at Nordstrom. Do you want to buy one? If you want to come, hurry up and line up.
and lead topics , "Who is wearing UGG", "How to wear UGG", etc., using tabloids and magazines to spread wildly photos of celebrities wearing UGG, and continue to brainwash the public. UGG is beautiful and fashionable. Don't you believe it? Look at those Hollywood stars.
Under such marketing operations, UGG's compound growth rate during 2002-2005 was as high as 65.5%, completing the brand's first counterattack. At the same time, UGG began to continuously develop new styles and wearing scenarios, striving to expand brand diversification. In 2002, there were only 50 UGG product categories, which increased to 125 in 2007. In the following years, it also maintained an annual growth rate of 20%.
Soon, the trend of from the West spread to Asia, setting off a unique trend in the Chinese fashion circle. Nick Ericsson, the global marketing director of the UGG women's clothing series, believes that UGG at that time represented a Western lifestyle in Asia. "Wearing UGG means you have status and money. This is to a large extent a status symbol."
Therefore, consumers from China and Japan flocked to the UGG store in Honolulu, USA, helping the store become the UGG store with the highest sales in the world.
However, UGG’s relationship with China is not just about the bustling hipsters.
As a world-renowned manufacturing country, it is not surprising that China can win the OEM of UGG. Although UGG australia is an American brand and its material is Australian sheepskin, most of its finished products are Made in China and come from 's foundry in Mengzhou, Henan.
And Chinese small and medium-sized factories represented by Yiwu quickly brought down the price of UGG, making UGG-like snow boots with 99.999% similarity in appearance instantly spread across China at a low price. Leggings with snow boots and suits with snow boots became the trend memory of a generation .
In China, UGG has many highly similar affordable alternatives
But in Around 2012, the proliferation of fakes and overexposure caused UGG's brand power to decline significantly. Snow boots were once kicked out of the design and development product list by Zara, H&M and other trend-focused fast fashion brands. Consumer preferences also shifted to products such as Martin boots and knight boots .
Consumers don’t like this ugly shoe..
Until 2021, UGG revived the world and launched a new 2021 spring and summer plush sandal series. The plush material also added bright colors, spots, tie-dye and other trendy elements, which instantly won the feet of many stars at home and abroad. This seemed to reproduce the star effect of that year.
Wear fur slippers in the summer and Crocs in the winter. UGG pulls Cross to create a way out of the off-season wear. Of course, both are quite ugly.
" The Guardian " believes that UGG, like jeans, violates the normal law of gravity in the fashion industry.
Then why can UGG break the laws of fashion and become a long-lasting trendy product in the hearts of consumers?
Anders Bergstrom, Director of Insights Strategy Development at Deckers Bergstrom's explanation for this is that Deckers is trying to break the single impression of boots and hopes that UGG will become a way of life. "When people talk about UGG, they can think of luxurious warmth and comfort. UGG is not just a pair of shoes, but can also bring a sense of security to consumers."
This may be why UGG fans are so obsessed with it: UGG breaks the harsh rules of the fashion world.
Women in the workplace do not have to wear high heels that are so crowded that their toes are deformed, nor do they have to wear full makeup as the most appropriate workplace etiquette.
Perhaps starting from the beginning of accepting the comfort of UGG, white-collar women sitting in cubicles can be upright and frank and no longer "serve in beauty".
Of course, aesthetics are always free and independent.
Whether it is the "Shearers' Ugly Boots" worn by wool workers at the beginning, or the thick-soled granny shoes that are highly sought after by fashionable people, everyone likes to discuss them.
After all, to this day, UGG products are still at two extremes in the eyes of most consumers. There are many consumers who like them, and some consumers have vowed never to wear them.
