After ten years of hibercountry, in 2017, UR relied on about 200 stores to achieve sales of nearly 3 billion yuan, achieving profit for the first time. You know, clothing is a high-margin business, and it's not hard to make fast money.
Li Mingguang sees clothes as spiritual products, and he says that the essence of the fast fashion clothing industry is "fashion", not "fast". "China's clothing enterprises generally have only about 20 years of glory. It sells well, but it's not fashionable, and that's why a lot of brands fall."
"Fashion" in Li Mingguang's eyes is perceptual and individualized. Just as he plays his favorite alternative music in UR stores, he advocates that designers and buyers should often go to art exhibitions,
concerts, operas, travel, and stay in good hotels, "all of which are improving the aesthetic." Today, UR has about 400 stores around the world, and the designer development team has more than 500 members, while ZARA, which has more than 1900 stores around the world, has only 600 designers.
He Yu, the founding partner of Black Ant Capital, still remembers the first time he and Li Mingguang met. "The first feeling is that people are glowing, dressed in white, clean and fresh,
which is very consistent with their store temperament." Mr. He called Mr. Li a "meaning-oriented" founder who pursued higher goals than making a big company and earning profits.
How to stay "fashionable" all the time? How to lead the company from a billion scale to a billion scale? The following is a conversation between 36kR Future Consumption and UR founder Lee Ming-kwang:
The breakout of "big store"
36 Krypton Future consumption: How did the brand name "UR" come about?
Li Mingguang: I will buy a lot of foreign music discs, some of the disc cover design is really feel. Seeing the beautiful Logo, I was thinking about how to make use of it when I was a brand in the future.
UR's name is inspired by a music disc released at the beginning of the new century, hoping to convey a creative aesthetic concept that can transcend the era, and an international vision.
36 KR Future consumption: UR is actually your fifth entrepreneurial practice, from the beginning, you clearly know how to do "branding"?
Li Mingguang: It should be said that I have always liked "beauty" and pursued "beauty" since middle school, but I did not understand "doing brand" at the beginning.
In 1998, I started my first business, prepared 50,000 yuan, and opened a foreign trade clothing store in an alley in Baiyun District, Guangzhou, with a shop surface of 30 square meters and a monthly rent of 2,000 yuan.
A year later, I went to Guangzhou high-end business district - Good World Square to open a shop, the monthly rent of 40,000 yuan, business is indeed better. But it's hard to grow quickly, or to replicate, because I'm in off-brand retail, not branding.
36 Kr future consumption: Your brand road, it seems to be from the agent of men's clothing brand VJC in 2000, but also opened this store in the most fashionable Shanghai, which is a big step, you are very brave.
Li Mingguang: But the performance is not satisfactory. This store is losing money almost every month. In just one year, I have spent almost all the money I have saved in the past two years.
Closing it is a certainty. If I have any experience this year, it is that I have a deeper understanding of how to do price positioning and consumer communication. The most important thing is to strengthen the determination to create their own brand.36kr Future Consumption: How did you decide to be a "fast fashion" brand?
Li Mingguang: In 2003, I saw the domestic media reports about ZARA, and then I went to Japan to see ZARA's physical stores, and soon realized that "fast fashion" was the blue ocean inside the red Sea of Chinese clothing at that time. I called ZARA to ask if they could join, and they said they didn't. I don't think it's high-tech (laughs), it's not that hard to do, is it?
In 2006, we officially established UR brand, and ZARA entered the Chinese market in the same year. UR's first store opened in Guangzhou Zhengjia Square, when a shop more than 100 square meters,
I told the mall that you open all 8 shops, I want to create a brand with a new business model. In fact, at that time, the development of Zhengjia Square was not so good, and it was able to be removed by self-employed people like me, and they felt very happy.
Three months after opening, UR's sales are doing well. And I also have a jeans brand BC jeans, also opened a store in Zhengjia Square, the store area of 100 square meters, the monthly rent of hundreds of thousands, but the sales are also hundreds of thousands, so the sales have not been growing. In the end, I decided to close the jeans brand, which had opened seven or eight stores.
