Capital is becoming increasingly interested in emerging niche sports brands, especially those for women. In April, light sports lifestyle brand Jiaoma and ski equipment sports brand Moodlab (60% of female users) both received angel round financing.

Capital is becoming increasingly interested in emerging niche sports brands, especially for women.

In April, light sports lifestyle brand Jiaoma and ski equipment sports brand Moodlab (60% of female users) both received angel round financing. If the timeline is long, at least 16 financings have occurred in the sports brand field from March last year to the present. In addition to Jiaoma and Moodlab, sports brands targeting women such as MOLY VIVI, SAVASANA, RAW. J and MAIA ACTIVE have also received financing.

RAW.J, founded at the end of 2020, was also in this queue. The product was officially launched in August last year. Two months later, it received two rounds of financing of tens of millions of yuan in one go. The investors were Jinpu Disu and Deju Brothers Venture Capital, and the funds were mainly used for product research and development and brand operations.

Recently, Angelababy, the founder of RAW.J, told Lazy Bear Sports that she is already communicating with capital for the next stage of financing.

Angelababy had five years of investment management experience before founding RAW.J. She worked at Yuanxing Capital. Her investor background gave her natural advantages in financing. This rule is also reflected in other sports brands. For example, Moodlab’s founder Ye Xiao once worked at Zhulu Capital, while ski equipment company Snow Owl Technology has received twice in 8 months, and both co-founders also have investor backgrounds.

, like other emerging brands on the market for women, RAW.J started with functional clothing such as yoga pants, but Angelababy did not consider herself a follower of lululemon. "We want to benchmark MUJI in terms of category. Clothing is just an entry point for us. After we take a steady step, we will have strategic adjustments." Although

does not benchmark lululemon, RAW.J is enjoying the dividends brought by the lululemon education market.

When the brand was first established, RAW.J positioned itself as "cross-scene sports fashion", hoping that clothing can accompany users to switch to office, road storm, sports and other scenarios.

To achieve this switching, it requires people's understanding and acceptance of fashion to change simultaneously, and the brand also needs to meet people's diverse needs in product design. The former is due to the development of lululemon in China, making "wearing leggings on the street" a way for people to get used to matching.

In terms of product design, RAW.J did not launch only one category like Jiaoma. When it was launched in August last year, RAW.J launched 30 SKUs, covering basic sports lines, fashion jackets with sports functions, and sports suits that can be worn in formal office spaces. In addition, some elements with a sense of fashion design are also incorporated into the product, such as removable sleeves and removable hem, realizing the practicality of wearing multiple clothes for one piece of clothing.

"What we call sports fashion is a concept of 'life+' or 'sport+'. In addition to life, we can control scenes such as walking, jogging, doing planks at home, walking dogs, and taking care of children, and set off and end anytime, anywhere, without having to go to the gym to lift iron. We are targeting people who are light exercise, and most of the scenes are still lifelike." Angelababy explained.

From the perspective of product pricing, RAW.J is not affordable. Searching on Taobao, there are three or four hundred sports underwear, four or five hundred leggings, and sports suits that cost 2,000 yuan. This pricing has design and craftsmanship reasons, and Angelababy's thinking on the brand's high-end positioning.

"If RAW.J's clothing requires ultrasonic cutting technology and dispensing technology, there are not many factories in the country that can be used. If you want to find a factory that can do all the technology, it may be rare."

Angelababy also said that most of the seed users are overseas returnees and white-collar workers. They have certain consumption capacity and advocate the power of China's original brand. RAW.J uses private domain operations to shape brand value, go deep into the circle center, and grow together with seed users. For example, the cross-border cooperation with the light food chain brand "gaga Xianyu" is also intended to convey a young and healthy brand attitude.

RAW.J's sales channels mainly choose online platforms such as Tmall, WeChat mini-programs and Douyin. As for offline, RAW.J hopes to open up more integrated offline space. It just so happens that Angelababy has invested in SNOW51, a new urban skiing lifestyle platform, so the first offline store is open in the SNOW51 store-in-store store in Xingye Taikoo Hui.

In terms of the target audience, 80% of RAW.J's products are for women, and another 20% of them are neutral. Angelababy explained, "Now there are many women who like to wear boyfriend style, neutral clothing, or want to wear couple clothing with their boyfriends. We provide some choices to meet their needs, but in the early stages of brand development, they will still focus on one place and grind the products carefully."

For Angelababy, after 5 years of investment, the reason why she chose to start a business and build a new brand instead of investing in an existing brand is because she believes that the ceiling of the brands in the market can be seen whether they have received financing or not. "If you just want to be an affordable alternative to a mature brand, it may only become a business in the end, and it is difficult to become a brand."

But just like other functional clothing brands for women, there is a user crossover between RAW.J and lululemon in various aspects such as pricing and categories. How to get consumers to answer the question "Why don't I spend the same price to buy lululemon" when purchasing, RAW.J also needs to find a good answer.

Putting aside lululemon, there are more and more functional clothing on the market that focuses on wearing multiple scenarios, including:

· Jiaoma, a sports and casual clothing brand, received a 10 million-level financing led by Xieli Investment and followed by Qianfan Mingyue Capital in April. The first batch of products are yoga pants. The brand takes "somatosensory science" as its design concept and hopes to provide users with high functional and suitable sports and casual clothing for multiple scenarios through innovative research on technological fabrics. The target users are new middle-class women aged 25-35 in first- and second-tier cities.

· Functional fashion brand SAVASANA received a Pre-A round of financing of over 10,000 yuan in September last year, led by Jinshajiang Venture Capital and followed by Sanqi Interactive Entertainment. The brand advocates that fashion has both functionality, allowing consumers to deal with it calmly in different scenarios.

· Clothing brand YOYUU Lab, founded by the late model Gao Yixiang and his friend Lu Yi, is positioned as "athformal" and uses high-performance fabrics combined with new garment making technology to transform traditional suits, making it more elastic and a more comfortable wearing experience.

SAVASANA, right is YOYUU Lab

However, the epidemic has not been effectively controlled yet, and the overall environment is probably the biggest difficulty facing RAW.J.

, especially this wave of epidemic is concentrated in Shanghai, where luxury consumption and high-end brands gather. Such brands rely on offline experience, and it will be of no help even if they switch to online.

Vogue Business mentioned in the report: "Fashion Week is forced to be suspended, and the brand's offline show has to be urgently braked, and autumn and winter orders will be transferred from offline to online; the developed logistics supply system in the Yangtze River Delta region has also collapsed with the 'static management' policy, resulting in the product plate making, production and delivery links being blocked, and the brand's new series of promotions was delayed, missing the golden time of sales; and on a more macro level, consumers' purchasing intentions and emotions are also undergoing subtle changes - all of this cast a shadow on the development prospects of the local fashion industry."

Lazy Bear Sports Observation, RAW.J, SAVASANA, YOYUU Lab, MAIA The headquarters of emerging sports brands such as ACTIVE and Moodlab are in Shanghai. In the short term, sports brands must at least survive this epidemic first and then talk about their future development.

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