The word "mysterious" contains at least two meanings.
First, little is known.
Second, unpredictable.
And there are actually many companies in China that can be described as "mysterious". For example, the US "Entity List" has helped us select a lot.
Of course, and some companies that have not been "named" by the United States are also mysterious. Although they are unknown in China, they are flourishing overseas, making foreigners look at .
Recently, a fundraising in the Chinese venture capital market brought an unknown and mysterious "champion" to the surface.
According to Yibang Power.com, a company called "Nanjing Lingtian Information Technology Co., Ltd." has just completed the E round of financing, with a post-investment valuation of US$15 billion (about 105 billion yuan).
The valuation of over 100 billion yuan does not seem to match the popularity of this company. There is no name for this company on all the lists of Chinese unicorn companies.
But in fact, just a little dissection of "Nanjing Leading Information" will reveal that this , an anonymous company on the surface, is the real "king" in the Chinese apparel industry.
British WPP is the world's largest communication group. The "Report on China's Top 50 Brands Going Overseas in 2019" released by it and Google shows that only two apparel brands are on the list.
One is called "SHEIN", ranking 14th, and the other is called ZAFUL, ranking 23rd. The common feature of the two is that they have almost never heard of it in China, and "SHEIN" is the leader of Nanjing. The main brand under Tim Information.
The brand power calculation on this list mainly comes from Google’s questionnaire survey and Google and YouTube’s search index. It should be said that represents the true perception of global consumers and directly reflects the brand’s global popularity. .
Judging from the list, SHEIN's overseas brand power surpasses the familiar consumer electronics giants such as TCL and OPPO, and it is comparable to the global drone "first brother" DJI, which shows its extraordinary strength.
and a set of public figures from the official website of SHEIN perfectly demonstrate his "king" attitude.
The average daily sales volume is 800,000 pieces of clothes, which is equivalent to nearly 300 million pieces a year. In contrast, the total sales of all kinds of clothing in 2019 by the domestic clothing "one brother" Hailan Home is only 160 million Pieces.
Who are these clothes sold to?
SHEIN's official data is that consumers in more than 200 countries and regions around the world, and apparel companies with such a wide range of businesses, may not have a second in China.
How about the sales?
According to the report of "LatePost", SHEIN has announced sales of more than 40 billion yuan at the internal meeting in June, and it is hopeful that it will hit 100 billion in 2020.
If it breaks through 100 billion, what kind of concept will it be? Let's look at the revenue of the world's four largest clothing giants in 2019.
The difference in numbers is not that big, but it is worth mentioning that the growth rate of SHEIN is quite amazing.
From 1 billion in 2016 to 100 billion in 2020 (Expected), it only took 4 years. Based on this bold vision, perhaps 2021 will challenge ZARA's position.
In the global epidemic, the days of selling clothes are not easy. ZARA even announced that it will close 1,000-1200 stores from this year to next year. Why can SHEIN surge against the trend?
Public information shows that SHEIN hardly has an offline store, and sales of clothes rely on a computer-side website, a mobile-side APP, and pure online channels.
This may be the reason why SHEIN is not affected by the epidemic, but it is certainly not the key to victory. In fact, SHEIN's operation method is the root of its success.
Strictly speaking, SHEIN is also an imitator of ZARA and H&M, and they are both taking the path of fast fashion brands. In China, many people shouting slogans to become "Chinese version of ZARA", but 只 SHEIN Blue is better than blue, and its goal is even to "kill" ZARA.
The core of fast fashion is fast. ZARA only takes two weeks from design to finished product to appear in the store counters, while SHEIN can do it in 7 days at the fastest, because it does not have a store and only needs to go to the online store.
This means that after the new styles are released in Global Fashion Week, you only need to wait for a week before you can see the slightly modified finished products in SHEIN's online store.
Of course, is just not fast enough, and the style has to be able to catch customers, and our usual so-called explosive clothing is not designed, but the tested .
For each style, first make a small amount of finished products, and then decide to add orders to those styles based on the feedback of the customer's purchase data. Finally, the most additional production is naturally the hot style.
But the cost of minimizing production is very high. This requires a balance. Taking ZARA as an example, the minimum production volume of a piece of clothing is 500 pieces, while SHEIN can only produce 100 pieces.
That is to say, for the same production of 500 pieces of clothes, ZARA can only give one style and one color, while SHEIN can try different styles, fabrics and colors, which gives customers more choices, of course. The chances of hitting the money are even higher.
Therefore, although the cost of the early-stage small batch production of SHEIN is high, it can basically be amortized by subsequent additional orders. .
In addition to fast new products and diverse styles, consumers will also consider an important factor when buying clothes, which is the price. No matter how good clothes are, if they exceed most buyers’ Consumption power is also difficult to become a hot style .
and the price of SHEIN is close to the people, ZARA is not expensive at first, and SHEIN is only half of it on average, the main fashion women's clothing under 20 dollars, the cheapest is not yet At $5, the price of
is low, but the quality requirements are not low at all. The factories that produce clothes for SHEIN and the suppliers of fabrics are carefully selected. The threshold is quite high. It is not easy to enter. It also guarantees the quality of the clothes.
The product is high quality and cheap. In the innate gene SHEIN has already won half, and in the marketing and promotion, SHEIN has taken a low-cost but efficient unique road .
As early as 2012, SHEIN cultivated some potential "Internet celebrities" on well-known foreign websites, and then provided these celebrities with free clothes every week, and used the traffic of the celebrities to form dissemination and sales.
At the same time, SHEIN has also established its own publicity window on major social media platforms around the world. Today, SHEIN’s main account has 15 million fans on Facebook and 11 million fans on Instagram.
Of course, SHEIN can surpass ZARA's efficiency and confidence. The important thing about is that there is a complete clothing industry chain in China behind it. This is Spain's ZARA, Sweden's H&M , Japan's Uniqlo, beautyChina’s GAP is incomparable with .
Back then, Xu Yangtian, the founder of SHEIN, said when he moved cross-border women's clothing online:
"SHEIN sells China's apparel industry chain."
Of course, SHEIN The output is not only products, but more importantly brands. On SHEIN's official website, the most eye-catching slogan is:
"Support China's quality suppliers to open up the global market."
The subtext behind this sentence seems It can be understood as:
"As long as it is good clothes and labeled as SHEIN, you can conquer the world".
may be a bit "crazy", but "crazy" is very comfortable.
