Clothing Retailers Teach Consumers A Beautiful Thing But Destroy Themselves.

Traditional retail is struggling.

Last month, the US retail giants including Gap, Macy (Messi store) and Nordstrom (Nodes Tron) announced the decline in revenue.

The main reason for this is that businesses have cultivated users' habit of "discount only then".

Macy has found many reasons for its sharp drop in sales, such as weather anomalies and unfavorable travel traffic.

This is true, but when you walk to its flagship store in Pioneer Plaza, New York, you will find that the company is in a more vicious cycle.

The store looks chaotic, not at all like its original.

Shopping experience will make customers who want to spend money on Gucci bags at a loss.

You will find that everything is on sale, so that customers can converge their eyes in a conditioned way. The most obvious thing is "Last Act".

The company has disorderly discounts due to the loss of customers, but it will only cost more customers.

J.Crew is still trying to maintain its image in the minds of customers, and has been trying to figure out how to make consumers willing to pay for the premium.

But the quality problem and design sorry consumers have hurt the company badly.

After clearing those redundant inventories, it may make room for new space. J.Crew intends to launch new models by the former Madewell designers this autumn.

But in the process of cleaning up inventory, J.Crew has left the impression that consumers are attracted by discount. Can redesign return to the high premium?

Banana Republic (Gap's high-end brand) has more experience in this area.

CEO Art Peck Peck of Gap group explained that

How difficult it is to cut off the discount:

When you start to tighten sales promotion, you are playing chicken fight with consumers.

After this season, we really can't afford to play. Frankly speaking, we have seen more negative effects.

In other words, it is difficult for Banana to come up with any more effective means than promotion.

Sales promotion has gradually increased the habit of consumers who expect to get 6-7 discount, and the best way to reduce this expectation is to create a huge trend to make them pay the bills, and constantly cultivate them to spend money like fast fashion consumption.

Betty Chen, managing director of Rui Hui securities, is such a weapon.

But the root of the problem is that the way these companies operate is quite different from the fast fashion brand led by Zara. The latter's supply chain allows them to make quick judgments of consumer preferences and flexible production.

There are 200 designers at the bottom of ZARA. These designers fly and copy designs all over the world every year.

After the completion of the design, it will be handed over to the process manufacturer for small batch production.

Look at the market reaction again.

There are PAD sales statistics in ZARA terminal stores. The store manager will make preliminary prediction according to the local sales market, then collect the data to headquarters, then adjust the goods two times a week.

Use small batch and quick reaction chain to achieve the speed from design to shipment within 15 days.

It's hard for traditional retailers to do this.

Discount addiction has become the most difficult thing for Nordstrom. It has been promoted for some time, but even so, it has not been able to stimulate sales and get rid of inventory problems.

The advantage of advanced customization, traditional retail and fast fashion lies in experience and quality.

But once the big promotion started, the brand value began to weaken, and the messy environment also lost the good experience. Erik Nordstrom, Nordstrom's chief executive, agreed with the problem.

In fact, the early rise of Taobao has much to do with redundant inventory in the market, which is very suitable for digesting the sharp cut in the electricity supplier channel.

Retailers should maintain their inherent advantages rather than price them with e-commerce providers.

There are a lot of start-ups in the B2B fabric business in China, including "chain Shang net", "search cloth", "excellent material treasure", "hundred cloth", "search bud" and so on. They try to solve the inventory problem of clothing enterprises by improving the efficiency of garment supply chain, so as to make production response faster.

To sum up, the traditional clothing retailers may have to learn from Zara as a teacher.