36 Krypton Future consumption: The year after UR opened its first store in the country, another fast fashion giant H&M came. ZARA's first store opened in Shanghai West Nanjing Road,

H&M's first store is located in Shanghai Huaihai Road, you are also targeting the first and second tier cities. In the point selection, these overseas giants have the priority to choose, how does UR compete with them head-on?

Li Mingguang: At that time, in Guangzhou Zhengjia Square, in addition to the department store giant Friendship store, UR was the largest single clothing store brand.

After opening it, I clearly felt that consumers felt that we were a "big brand" and would create a sense of trust. Through the size of the store, decoration materials, lighting, playing music and other dimensions, consumers can determine what kind of stall brand it is.

For a long time, few local clothing brands dared to open more than 200 square meters of stores. Studying this business model at that time, we knew that the store had to be big enough,

and the store style was "luxury." Before UR did not do much marketing investment, the store itself is advertising. Brand is a kind of faith, our store wants to build like a "church", the store also adds a lot of art installations, in this atmosphere, consumers will have a feeling of admiration for the brand.

36 KR future consumption: I heard you like listening to music. Do you play your favorite music in the store?

Li Mingguang: Yes, I want consumers to hear different songs or songs they have never heard before. I like the style of House and Lounge music, which combines modern instruments with ethnic elements,

and I like Buddha-bar music the most. Buddha-bar is a bistro and restaurant in Paris. There is a huge Buddha statue in the store, and the music played includes Middle Eastern elements,

Japanese three-string and traditional Chinese music, etc. The musical styles are diverse and very special. Like listening to music, is also the pursuit of "beauty" performance.

Sell well and be fashionable
36 Kr future consumption: What did UR learn from ZARA?

Li Mingguang: In the past, clothing companies often participated in some training courses, I also participated, but found that I did not learn what I wanted to learn, and later did not participate. To learn it, our channel is more media coverage.

You will find that "fast fashion", in China there is no conclusive things for you to learn, can only rely on their own to explore, after learning wrong and then turn back. In the past, we saw those reports that wrote that ZARA stores changed goods once a month,

we followed it once, and later found that it was wrong, people changed once, not all of them, but part of them, and the trend may be new once a week. Simply put, traditional clothing brands are "a small amount of more", and ZARA has achieved a breakthrough of "a large amount of less".

In 2006 and 2007, when ZARA was mentioned, many people did not know what brand it was, and UR was equivalent to the validator and beneficiary of this business model in China. We have now settled on our own "fast fashion business model."

36kr Future Consumption: What do you think is the essence of the "fast fashion business model"?As the name suggests, it is fast and stylish, of which "fashion" is the core element.

Li Mingguang: The supply chain of China's garment industry is already very mature, and so are some other industries. If you only compete for "fast" in this aspect, UR is ahead.

But this is not enough,we want to be a "fashion brand". The essence of the garment industry is fashion, and the ability of creative aesthetics is not only the core competitiveness of UR, but also the core competitiveness of the garment industry.

In the fashion industry, especially luxury brands, there are generally two parallel positions, one is the CEO and the other is the creative director. And in many cases, the creative director is the more decisive role.

When luxury brands fail to grow, they often change creative directors, and ceos rarely change, because after all, the brand itself has experienced a long period of time, which indicates that there is usually no problem in organizational construction,

and more is the failure of creativity. Chinese clothing companies generally only have a glorious period of about 20 years, and then they go down because they are no longer fashionable.