Competing for international fashion discourse rights Jingdong Fashion "takes down" London Fashion Week

The situation of the competition for international fashion discourse rights has gradually become clear. In two years, Jingdong, the ambition of fashion e-commerce, "taken" London.

Domestic e-commerce giant JD.com has signed a three-year strategic agreement with the British Fashion Council (BFC) to announce that it will become the only retail (including e-commerce) partner in London Fashion Week.

According to the strategic agreement between the two parties, in the next three years, JD will jointly open the fashion industry chain with BFC, and establish a platform of “mutual benefit and symbiosis” for high-quality designers, global brands and domestic and foreign fashion resources. While helping Chinese brands to go global, It provides an international online designer with an online convenient channel to reach Chinese consumers, and empowers fashion industry chains, brands and designers from multiple levels.

BFC CEO Caroline Rush said that JD is the most trusted partner of BFC. This BFC and Jingdong signed a three-year strategic cooperation agreement, which will better enable the world's top independent designers to join hands with more fashion brands. This will have far-reaching advantages in industrial upgrading, cultural exchange, talent integration and intellectual property protection. Impact.

According to Ai Media Consulting's 2018 China Retail Report, China Mobile's e-commerce users reached 510 million in 2018, and is expected to grow to 550 million in 2019, with huge consumption potential. According to Ai Media Polaris monitoring data, Jingdong high-income group has more revenues than other B2C e-commerce platforms, with the largest monthly income of 5,000 yuan to 10,000 yuan, accounting for 30.15%, and Tmall 3,000 yuan monthly users. , accounting for 30.30%, Vipshop will be the largest number of users from 3,000 yuan to 5,000 yuan, accounting for 33.18%. This means that the Jingdong consumer group has a strong ability to consume luxury fashion products, and its potential in the fashion field still needs to be tapped.

Starting from the initial lack of fashion genes, Jingdong constantly breaks stereotypes and realizes its fashion ambitions in a unique way, from vying for luxury brands to the four major fashion weeks that represent the right to speak in fashion, and then to the designer, Jingdong Fashion The paths are attacked at the same time.

Grab the London base camp

The achievement of the three-year strategic agreement is undoubtedly the staged victory of Jingdong in the four international fashion capitals of London.

From 2015, Jingdong began to try to enter the fashion market through the four major fashion weeks. From the beginning of the 3C thinking fashion show, to the current change in thinking, Jingdong Fashion is gradually exploring the way to communicate with women consumers and fashion discourse systems.

In 2017, JD.com and the British BFC and the US CFDA respectively reached a strategic cooperation, and at the same time, they fought in London and New York, and captured a key city on the road of competing for international fashion discourse. In September of the same year, Jingdong and British designer Mary Katrantzou, as well as Chinese travel designer Zhang Huishan Huishan Zhang, launched a 2018 spring and summer series fashion show, and jointly held a cocktail party with BFC/Vogue Designer Fashion Fund.

Taking this as a starting point, JD.com has made London an important base and gradually deepened its cooperation with BFC and designer brands to expand its global industry reputation.

In March of last year, Jingdong held the 2018 autumn and winter fashion new product release show in Shanghai for the 2018 BFC/Vogue Designer Fashion Fund's shortlisted designer brands Huishan Zhang, Le Kilt and Rejina Pyo. Together with Chinese fashion designers Chen Xuzhi, Wang Haizhen and Lucien Wang Create a static exhibition of “design quality”.

In May, the BFC/Vogue Designer Fashion Fund announced that 2018 will eventually win the designer Molly Goddard. As the only Chinese representative of the BFC/Vogue Designer Fashion Fund Jury, Jingdong will introduce it to Chinese consumers through platform resources, and will launch more cooperation projects with original designers in the future.

During the London Fashion Week of Spring and Summer of 2019 in September, Jingdong Fashion held the 2019 Spring and Summer Fashion Show and Static Show for Huishan Zhang, designer Li Li's Xiao Li and designer Chen Xuzhi's XU ZHI, respectively, and passed JDesigner Boutique. The platform is available in the latest series.

While supporting Chinese designers to land in the International Fashion Week, Jingdong and BFC also set about accelerating the entry of international designer brands into the Chinese market. Also in September, JD.com announced that it will sponsor the BFC/GQ Designer Fashion Fund to explore and cultivate new talented menswear designers and help BFC/GQ Designer Fashion Fund designers enter the Chinese market.

Dylan Jones, Chairman of the British Fashion Association Men's Wear and Editor of the British GQ Magazine, Caroline Rush, CEO of the British Fashion Council, and Ding Xia, Vice President of Jingdong Group and President of the International Business Development Department of the Jingdong Mall Fashion Home Platform Group signed a memorandum of understanding confirming Provide funding, guidance and other cooperation opportunities to bring the finalists to China smoothly.

During the London Fashion Week of Fall/Winter 2019, JD.com continued to work with XU ZHI to help the latter launch a static exhibition on London Fashion Week, launch the XU ZHI 2019 Fall/Winter collection, and launch the men's collection for the first time. This series of works is also the third time that XU ZHI has teamed up with Jingdong Fashion. After that, XU ZHI will launch the special brand capsule series through Jingdong Mall in the summer of 2019.

In 2018, JD.com has laid a more solid foundation in London than in the more competitive New York. In a sense, London has become a base for JD's radiant European fashion market and paves the way for its future expansion in Europe.

On January 17th, Jingdong partnered with the trend brand CLOT as the only official partner to visit Paris Fashion Week, and held the 2019 autumn and winter series “Out of This World” static exhibition at Saint Fiacre Gallery. At the same time, the official flagship store of CLOT also officially entered the Jingdong platform on January 18. For the first time to test the Paris Fashion Week, Jingdong Fashion's next ambition seems to have been revealed.

The strategic significance of uninterrupted cooperation with international fashion resources is almost obvious. In an interview with Hu Shengli, senior vice president of Jingdong Group and president of Jingdong Mall's fashion home platform business group, he thought that the logic of Jingdong fashion from popular clothing to international fashion and even luxury goods is actually very simple. "The ability to compete for the right to speak is determined by strength. We want to grasp and lead the trend of fashion. Only in this way can we grasp the future of the business. In the past, Jingdong was doing this. Now it is more magnified. First insight Trends, grasping trends, and then leading the trend. To meet young, fashionable, trend-oriented consumers, this is what fashion retail platforms should do."

Create a two-way channel for transporting resources

It is worth emphasizing that the establishment of long-term strategic cooperation between JD and BFC is not only an important manifestation of gaining international fashion discourse rights and enhancing international influence. On a more practical level, it is to further remove roadblocks for its goal of re-laying the industrial chain. .

This strategic cooperation is part of Jingdong’s strategy of “going out” and “bringing in”.

Based on this strategic cooperation with BFC, Jingdong Fashion will lead Chinese brands to “go global” to shine in London Fashion Week, give full play to the quality of designer resources, and transform and upgrade brand owners from the source of supply chain to create more trend, young and international. The trend of fashion provides opportunities for Chinese and Western designers to showcase themselves and exchange learning. In addition, Jingdong will also invite BFC-recommended quality designers, domestic quality designers and global brands to cooperate to create designer joint-name models, which will shine during the fashion week.

In terms of “bringing in”, Jingdong will provide the international emerging designers with online convenience channels to reach Chinese consumers, and provide intellectual property protection, marketing, distribution and after-sales for the expansion of their apparel brands in the Chinese market. With all-round business support, more personalized and diversified fashion will be brought to Chinese consumers.

Therefore, Jingdong ultimately hopes to create a “two-way channel” to promote the circulation of fashion resources, which is to change the traditional fashion industry chain from the structure. Starting from the design of the upstream of the industrial chain, we will open up three layers of outstanding designers, brands and Chinese markets at home and abroad, implement a set of support plans from design to production to market launch, and re-lay the fashion industry from the source of the supply chain. Business.

Hu Shengli said that “the United States and the United States, the fashion without borders” is the cooperation concept of Jingdong Fashion. By cooperating with BFC to build a domestic and international fashion culture exchange platform, Jingdong is opening up the two-way channel of the international fashion industry and the Chinese fashion industry, making fashion a global commonality. language.

This means that the international fashion competition is not a one-dimensional expression of Jingdong fashion ambition. Parallel to it is to further strengthen the infrastructure construction of Jingdong's domestic e-commerce platform.

Earlier known as "3C Iron Legs" and "Confucianism dedicated to hard bones", Hu Shengli, the president of Jingdong 3C Business Unit, appeared frequently in the major mobile phone conferences. He was appointed as the principal of Jingdong Fashion in January last year. President of Jingdong Mall Fashion Life Group.

Over the past year or so, Hu Shengli spent more time on improving the infrastructure of Jingdong Fashion Platform. Hu Shengli revealed to the fashion headline network earlier that he saw an average of 1.5 merchants a day, from luxury brands, domestic first-line clothing brands, waist brands, big goods to the tail brand, so far has contacted hundreds of businesses. He believes that only in this way can there be 360-degree understanding so that the right decisions can be made.

It is the key to Jingdong's start-up and breakout from the 3C field, and the construction of the fashion e-commerce ecology naturally continues this style. What's more, Hu Shengli knows that the complexity and scale of fashion e-commerce is not the same as that of the evening. The number of fashion merchants is unprecedented, the number of SKUs is huge, and the content marketing ecology is even more uncontrollable.

Therefore, in addition to last year's mobile phone Jingdong homepage access to Vipshop will create a super-flow port, Hu Shengli focused on the business conference in May and the fashionista conference in August.

On May 9th, Hu Shengli led the strategic release and partner conference of Jingdong Fashion Business Unit. For the first time, he explained the strategic direction of Jingdong Fashion Department to the industry system, and announced the official launch of platform ecology, platform operation empowerment, technology empowerment, WeChat operational empowerment and the five core strategies of the entire network traffic ecology. Also at this business conference, Jingdong Fashion emphasized the role of technology and announced that it will set up the world's first fashion technology research institute led by e-commerce, aiming to systematically plan AI, AR/VR, big data, and smart supply chain. And the new retail black technology to reconstruct the future of fashion retail.

On August 8th, the Jingdong Fashion Masters Conference focused on content marketing, officially launched the fashion-oriented exclusive support program Jingxing Project, and supported all-round empowerment through the full-scale commission doubling policy and Jingdong Qiushang new exclusive section. In the words of Hu Shengli, it is a "fine creation gene" that inspires people.

The platform is the infrastructure, that is, the service capability. Hu Shengli believes that internal strength is the most important, and internal strength is well trained, which will be reflected from the inside out. From a larger perspective, the enhancement of platform strength provides another fulcrum for JD.com's domestic and international fashion resources, and helps to create a more balanced two-way channel, which also enhances JD's bargaining power in the international fashion arena. .

From a macro perspective, JD.com's line of fashion is becoming more and more clear. On the one hand, it has won the international fashion discourse by increasing the activity of international fashion activities such as Fashion Week, and on the other hand, from the commercial point of view, through investment international Fashion e-commerce Farfetch, combined with Tencent's shareholding in Vipshop, established a 360-degree stereo matrix in the fashion industry.

The battle is still going on

Although Jingdong has captured an important city, it is clear that the battle is still going on and it is becoming more and more challenging.

Since the second half of last year, analysts have repeatedly signaled that the fashion industry may have downside risks. Some analysts believe that the luxury goods market is characterized by rapid changes and is closely related to the global economic situation. Any economic problems and geopolitical instability are the swords of Damocles hanging over the head.

In addition to the negative effects of economic problems such as currency and Brexit, social and political factors have also increased instability. The “Yellow vest” protests triggered by the fuel tax in France directly led to the heavy losses of the major luxury brands on the Champs Elysées in Paris. The unstable political environment also directly led to a sharp drop in the number of tourists in Paris, and other major luxury goods such as LVMH. The group's share price once showed a downward trend.

The Chinese market, which is regarded as the main growth engine by luxury brands, is also beginning to be full of uncertainty. According to a McKinsey report, Chinese luxury consumers consume more than 500 billion yuan a year, accounting for nearly one-third of the global luxury market. It is expected that by 2025 Chinese consumers will contribute nearly half of the global luxury goods industry. Sales, including the younger generation after China's 90s, have become an incremental consumer of luxury goods.

The Wall Street Journal pointed out that compared with European and American consumers, Chinese consumers use a larger proportion of their income for luxury goods. This consumption habit increases the uncertainty of luxury goods growth in China. Because once the economic situation slows down and consumer disposable income decreases, luxury brands will become their first choice for “burden reduction”. Today, trade frictions, real estate regulation and other factors have made the development prospects of luxury brands in China ambiguous. Hermes CEO Axel Dumas said earlier that the group is closely watching China's stock market and real estate market, as any changes in high-end customer assets may affect the group's performance.

The market for luxury fashion brands is also undergoing great changes. Brands and e-commerce are closely watching market trends and actively learning and adjusting strategies. Consumers have forced fashion brands to break the previous situation of selling only to elite consumers. More and more luxury giants are tempted to seize the market and to lean toward street brands, youth and e-commerce. Hermes CEO expressed interest in entering Jingdong earlier, but at the same time, luxury brands such as Gucci are still suspicious of e-commerce due to fake goods.

The role of the e-commerce platform as a linker in a more rapidly changing global industry landscape will be an important issue for domestic e-commerce giants including JD. It will also be among the e-commerce giants. In addition to the competitive factors of Huashan's sword, there are variables that are challenging and uncertain in domestic e-commerce competition in the future but are not negligible.

It can be confirmed that flexibility will be the key to the survival of e-commerce in a rapidly changing market environment, which is related to the ability of the platform to mobilize resources, the responsiveness of the supply chain, and the solidity of the platform infrastructure. From this perspective, JD's opening of the "two-way channel" is also more conducive to its flexible response to changes in the global market environment.

"Getting down" London is a leap forward for Jingdong Fashion.