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Original title: Starting from a piece of underwear, how "NEIWAI Inside and Outside" moves towards a lifestyle brand | Multidimensional Link March 5, 2021, Duowei Haituo No.1043 This article is 8460 words, recommended reading time: 14 ~ 15 minutes Since the founding of Neiwai, Liu Xiaolu has made it more clear that Neiwai should become a lifestyle brand of intimate clothing belonging to the new middle-class women, providing intimate clothing and peripheral products in line with their lifestyle and living conditions. She believes that "brand + channel" can help avoid pure traffic competition at home and abroad and achieve differentiated brand development. Such barriers require a lot of time and energy, and there is no way to form them quickly through the support of capital. Author | Yang Yiqi Editor | Shao Lele Source | New Business Intelligence NBT With the signing of global spokesperson Faye Wong in 2020 as the node, NEIWAI Inside and Outside (hereinafter referred to as "Inside and Outside") has entered a new stage: it has completed the construction of three core categories of underwear, home furnishing and sports; this year, it will accelerate the expansion of offline stores to 250 in the form of big stores and joint ventures; On this basis, consolidate the positioning of "intimate apparel lifestyle brand" serving contemporary women. In the past eight years, the underwear brand, which was founded in 2012, has been regarded as the initiator of the new era of underwear consumption through the innovation of design style and the innovation of categories such as underwire underwear, starting from "making a piece of underwear that makes people free physically and mentally". From 2015 to 2018, both inside and outside the country fully enjoyed the dividends of changes in women's consumption concepts, with an average annual growth rate of 400% online. At that stage, the competition for new underwear brands was not as fierce as it was in the past year. Both inside and outside the choice of the first brand, and then to maximize the expansion of the crowd, which is obviously different from many new brands later "first flow, then brand" short and smooth play. On the one hand, it has invested impressive energy and resources in brand building, its insight into women's needs, appropriate spokesperson selection (from Du Juan, Tan yuanyuan to Faye Wong in 2020), high-level content marketing capabilities, precipitated relatively stable brand values, and won the emotional recognition of some female consumers. It is no exaggeration to say that it is the new brand that attaches the most importance to brand building and has the highest investment cost in China. Founder Liu Xiaolu said that the reason why both inside and outside attach so much importance to the accumulation of brand equity is to form uniqueness and scarcity in the industry or in the minds of consumers, "only uniqueness and scarcity are long-term barriers to competition". On the other hand, it has been laying offline channels since 2017, and expanding its category in 2018 to strengthen the positioning of its intimate clothing lifestyle brand. Today, a total of 110 retail experience stores have been opened in the head business circles of 29 first-and second-tier cities across the country, covering four major product lines of underwear, household casual clothes, dance sports and household products. Liu Xiaolu told New Business Intelligence NBT (WeChat official ID: newbusinesstrend) that in 2020, home casual clothes accounted for 60% of offline sales, and ACTIVE, which accounted for 10% of the sports line in the same period, will be the next key development category. In 2021, the proportion of online and offline sales of sports line is expected to increase to 20%. A problem that has to be faced directly is that the competition in the underwear brand track is becoming extremely fierce. In 2020, Ubras and Jiaonei broke the online sales record created by Uniqlo underwear line and jumped to the top 2 of Tmall underwear category by virtue of their super single product strategy and the dividend of live broadcasting outlet, with sales exceeding 1 billion. Designer customized brand Livarymio, large cup bra brand toffee pie, sinking channel brand GOso Xiangxiu Bestie and many other new brands are also rising rapidly with the support of capital and platform level. Faced with the next competition, Liu Xiaolu said that the internal and external capabilities needed online have been completed, including the introduction of cloud size-free underwear more suitable for online sales, and the establishment of its own user growth team.
Expand the full text More importantly, the brand equity and offline channel layout precipitated in the past eight years are regarded by Liu Xiaolu as double barriers to internal and external competition. Especially when more and more new brands compete for traffic online, the price war may be inevitable. "Brand + channel" can help avoid pure traffic competition at home and abroad and achieve differentiated brand development. Moreover, such barriers require a lot of time and energy, and there is no way to form them quickly through the support of capital. What kind of lifestyle brand do you want to be in the longer term? Liu Xiaolu mentioned two Role Models, Lululemon and CHANEL. Sports brand Lululemon has led a healthy lifestyle through high-quality products and community marketing. In a relatively high positioning, through strong brand value and retail layout, it has precipitated a group of loyal fans, with global annual sales exceeding 30 billion yuan. CHANEL has become a classic female brand by liberating women's own dressing concept, which meets the needs of modern women from inside to outside. For Liu Xiaolu, Lululemon is the tactical benchmark and CHANEL is the spiritual goal. Next, we should not only leverage the whole channel operation through offline channels and brand building, but also continue to do a good job in product service and value resonance, so as to become a lifestyle brand that always stands with contemporary women. 01 Category coverage Subvert the life scenes of new middle-class women In 2020, when Faye Wong was officially announced as the global spokesperson of the brand, she chose a promotional photo of Faye Wong wearing casual clothes at home and abroad, in order to declare that she is a full-range intimate clothing brand. The process of internal and external growth into the whole category can be divided into two stages. The first stage is to expand from underwear category to household casual clothes; now it is in the second stage, from household casual clothes to sports series. Underwear is a very suitable category to enter the market, because the fabric, tailoring and quality of intimate clothing will bring more intense feelings to consumers, once consumers identify a brand, loyalty will be very high. In 2011, when Liu Xiaolu and her husband Li Jiang traveled to New York, they met Li Jiang's friend, a 70-year-old New York woman. When they talked about underwear, the old lady mentioned that because of her sensitive skin, she could only wear high-quality fine cotton underwear. After meeting Swiss brand HANRO in her twenties, she did not change other brands for the next 50 years. What touches Liu Xiaolu is that a good underwear brand can accompany a woman for a lifetime. In other words, a brand that is willing to insist on quality first has a very strong extensibility. This is an advantage origin that can become a full-category brand of lifestyle inside and outside. Underwear has also contributed to the expansion of internal and external categories to some extent. Because of the low purchase frequency and unit price of underwear, and the loyal users at home and abroad are beginning to look forward to more products with "internal and external" style, so with the shift of channel focus from internal and external to offline in 2017, the product side began to develop household casual wear and sportswear series to enrich the product line and price band, which has become a trend. The latter two prices were later fixed between 300 and 1000 yuan. From another point of view, it can also be said that more than 100 offline stores have boosted the category expansion both inside and outside. In 2018, the series of casual clothes at home and abroad was officially launched. From bras to casual clothes at home, the correlation itself is very high, and in order to meet the needs of women for the subdivision of casual clothes at home, the products are endowed with multi-scene adaptive design,mini tape measure, which is very consistent with the lifestyle of contemporary women. Now this series has included home clothes with chest pads, water-soluble wool sweaters, "Simple Ning" denim style casual pants, down jackets and other products, and what is more rare is that these products are very "inside and outside" at the same time. Serious Sleep Home Series Category expansion allows offline physical stores to continue to grow in terms of customer orders and connections: the national average unit price of customers is 1,200 yuan, four times that of online stores. Liu Xiaolu believes that the new middle-class women attracted by product positioning and brand building at home and abroad provide a good user base for the subsequent category expansion.
This group of users is the most difficult to impress, because they are very picky about products and brands. But they have higher brand awareness and loyalty, and stronger consumption ability. This group of people is also the market base for both inside and outside the sports line, especially sports has become a lifestyle that new middle-class women are keen on in recent years. In 2019, an independent sports brand "NEIWAI ACTIVE" "was set up at home and abroad, and a ballet dancer Tan yuanyuan jointly launched the NEIWAI ACTIVE ballet sports series, opening up the development of pan-dance sports category with ballet as the starting point. Choose to cooperate with Tan yuanyuan, so that the sports series continues the brand temperament of "soft and powerful". This has always been the strength of both inside and outside, promoting brand building through highly compatible spokespersons (or brand ambassadors). The sense of surprise caused by Faye Wong's endorsement last year is also a typical example. Tan yuanyuan Wears Ballet Sports Series If the expansion of underwear to home is logical, then NEIWAI ACTIVE is another important layout of lifestyle brands both inside and outside. The opportunity is that in the domestic women's sports brand market, in addition to high-end brands such as Lululemon and mass sports brands with practical performance orientation, there are not many high-quality light sports brands for new middle-class women. At present, women's sports brands on the market are at the price of 100-200 yuan, which belongs to the fast fashion type. What we want to enter is the market where the price is more cost-effective than Lululemon, but the positioning is higher than other sportswear brands. Compared with other brands on the market, Liu Xiaolu believes that the core competitiveness of ACTIVE has two points. On the one hand, because she started making underwear, she knows Chinese women's breasts very well both inside and outside, and has more advantages in the research and development of sports bras. On the other hand, the sports series continues the aesthetic style inside and outside, and will do better in sports color and fashion. NEIWAI ACTIVE Products After the past two years of polishing, NEIWAI ACTIVE's supply chain system has been relatively mature, product functions and professionalism are ready,bespoken tape measure, the next focus is on design and brand, as well as product richness. Liu Xiaolu predicts that this autumn and winter, you will be able to see "NEIWAI ACTIVE" clearer positioning and rich categories, "a style of women's sports brand that is different from what you see on the market.". Liu Xiaolu's expectation for NEIWAI ACTIVE is to double the proportion of sales in 2021 and achieve 3-4 times the scale growth. Its time window is that, in addition to mature brands such as Nike, Adidas and Lululemon, many emerging sports brands have not yet established large-scale offline channels. Sportswear, especially bras, is a consumer product category that relies heavily on offline experience, and online use has only eaten up five points of business in a few years. Underwear, casual clothes at home and sportswear can basically cover most of the life scenes of new middle-class women. Moreover, the use scenarios of these three categories are becoming more and more blurred in contemporary women's lives, and they can be matched with each other to form a new style of dress, which is also applicable to more diverse scenarios. What we want to do is to explore these styles and scenes and meet the needs of contemporary women from inside to outside. Liu Xiaolu said, "In the future, there is still a lot of room for extensibility and imagination in the expansion of internal and external categories, because the name" internal and external "itself has a great extension and is not restricted by a certain category, which is still very important for a brand." She told New Business Intelligence NBT that internal and external product planning for the next five years has been completed, especially for the 10th anniversary of the brand next year, there will be a new presentation in terms of category, product design and cross-border co-branding. In addition to category expansion, there are also some new concepts inside and outside to give users a sense of freshness every year, " (brand) core is maintained, but there must be continuous innovation". For example, while the category is expanding, the internal and external product styles are also evolving.
In the past, it was considered to be a brand with cold colors inside and outside, but now the design styles inside and outside are more diverse, and there are many products with bright colors but in line with the overall style of the brand. 02 Accelerate offline expansion Form a brand moat From 2015 to 2018, the internal and external online growth was very fast, with an annual growth rate of 400%, ranking the top five in the Tmall underwear category. But at the time of the fastest development of domestic and foreign e-commerce, the company decided to open offline retail stores. Because Liu Xiaolu knows the characteristics of intimate clothing very well, new users need to try it on, and good material customers need to touch it by hand. Facts have also proved that 90% of the sales of global and domestic intimate clothing brands come from offline. On the other hand, the ownership of online traffic is in the hands of the platform, if the new brand does not have enough brand influence, once the revenue growth slows down, the traffic resources may be reduced. Moreover, because the channel is not controlled by itself, the communication between the brand and consumers is limited. Under such circumstances, offline expansion is imperative. In 2017, domestic and foreign enterprises began to invest heavily in expanding offline channels. Liu Xiaolu's first shopping mall is Shanghai Jing'an Kerry Center, "the first store inside and outside must be opened in the core area of Shanghai". But for new brands at that time, it was very difficult to enter the best offline shopping malls. For this position, Liu Xiaolu waited for a year, but during this period, she made a lot of preparations, including training the team, opening Showroom and collecting user feedback. Because the first store site is well chosen, the subsequent process of expanding the store inside and outside is also very smooth. As of February this year, it has 110 retail experience stores in 29 first-and second-tier cities across the country, and has strategic cooperation with first-tier owners such as Kerry, Sun Hung Kai, Swire, Henglong and Huarun. In these shopping centers, the stores inside and outside are basically around women's wear and lifestyle brands, rather than underwear areas. If online needs to plant brand mentality through spokesperson selection and content marketing, bra measuring tape ,tailor measure tape, then the most intuitive manifestation of offline brand moat is "where to open, who is your neighbor". This is what Liu Xiaolu values most in site selection. NEIWAI Offline Stores Over the past three years, the single store model has been established both inside and outside, and the profit of offline stores has been realized, with the national average floor efficiency exceeding 4500 yuan per square meter. The front-end improves the output of a single store through category expansion; the back-end reduces the in-store inventory by 30% through the digital system of distribution. In September last year, the company began to fully connect small programs and offline stores to raise the ceiling of single store sales. This year, the internal and external offline channels officially opened a new stage: one is to expand the area and explore the big store model, and the other is to accelerate the expansion of standard stores through the joint venture model. In the past, physical stores were mainly underwear and home clothes, and the area of standard stores was about 70-80 square meters. Opening large stores inside and outside is not only to meet the needs of sports category expansion, but also to deepen the positioning of lifestyle brands. This can refer to Lululemon, which has more than 500 stores in the world, but each store is more than 300 square meters, and the total sales scale has reached nearly 30 billion yuan. The important reason for the considerable sales scale is that the output of a single store is high enough, and the output of a single store depends on the quality, richness and frequency of new goods. In order to achieve a larger sales scale, firstly, it is necessary to increase the proportion of sports category, because the purchase frequency of sports category is higher than that of underwear; secondly, it is necessary to expand the store to carry more abundant product lines. In April this year, a new flagship store of 220 square meters will be opened in Jing'an Kerry Center to explore a new generation of store models. Liu Xiaolu revealed that in addition to underwear and casual clothes at home, the flagship store will also present a more complete sports series in the form of a store-in-store. In the new flagship store, the core is "body free experience" inside and outside. Through the decoration and layout of the store, the aesthetic language of the body is transformed into an offline space with "all-round sensory experience", such as the touch of wall texture and clothing fabrics, and the feeling of fragrance blending with air. If this model of stores can run through, we will plan to open such stores in the first-line business circles of each city to strengthen the recognition of lifestyle brands.
On the other hand, it will speed up the laying of standard stores in second-tier and even second-tier cities, mainly using the joint venture model, and is expected to open 100 stores this year. With direct stores, it is expected that there will be more than 250 stores nationwide by the end of the year. Different from the conventional franchise, the joint venture enables the brand to strengthen the management and control of the stores, and to maintain unity with the brand image in the decoration and layout of the stores; it can also reduce the financial pressure of the brand and accelerate the expansion of offline channels. Because offline stores have run through the single-store model and accumulated brand influence in the past, they have signed contracts with top joint venture partners in many provinces and cities across the country. For inside and outside, the standard store has two functions. One is brand building and endorsement, so that women outside the first-tier cities can see inside and outside; the other is to ensure that women in every city can easily experience and buy inside and outside in the business circles around their lives. She believes that offline channels are limited resources, there may be only 1-2 underwear brands in each shopping mall, who occupies the most positions first, whose brand awareness is higher. Therefore, offline is a moat more worthy of long-term investment. Of course, both inside and outside have not abandoned the highly competitive online channels. The breakthrough of banana and Ubras last year has made many brands see the potential of online channels. Liu Xiaolu believes that the rise of new brands has brought inspiration to both inside and outside the product and delivery level, especially live broadcasting has played a great role in the outbreak of underwear brands, if there is no live broadcasting, the online intimate clothing market is difficult to achieve a larger volume. In terms of products, in June last year, the company launched the cloud size-free underwear as a super single product on the main attack line, because it has high online conversion, is suitable for live broadcasting, and the single product starts faster. Inside and outside this series of single products are priced at 169 yuan, although there is no obvious price advantage, but in the product texture, color, packaging creativity have continued the consistent quality and tonality inside and outside. Cloud No Size Underwear In terms of delivery, user growth departments have been set up both inside and outside, and the delivery of platforms such as Xiaohongshu and tremolo has been strengthened. Compared with the period of internal and external establishment, the grass planting platform in the past two years has played a very important role in the growth of new brands, which is also an opportunity to complement the team's ability both inside and outside. The future internal and external strategy is to synchronize offline and online, but from a higher strategic level, offline stores are still the focus. At present, half of the internal and external sales come from offline. With the expansion of offline channels, Liu Xiaolu has found a balance between brand building and scale growth. On the one hand, the location of offline stores can reflect the brand image and form brand endorsement. On the other hand, with online traffic becoming more and more expensive, offline channels can bring brands more space for category expansion and more opportunities for development. In the next fierce underwear war, offline channels are also one of the important weapons inside and outside. As the underwear track gets hotter and hotter, Liu Xiaolu believes that more new brands will pour in this year. When more and more new brands compete for traffic online, there may eventually be a price war. Offline channels can help people escape from simple traffic competition and achieve differentiated development. This is a barrier built by internal and external forces in the past period of competition. From the perspective of internal and external long-term development, offline channels and corresponding brand building are important ways to form brand influence. When the brand has a unique positioning and strong enough influence, it will have a higher voice in the game with the e-commerce platform, and can also get more free traffic. 03 Brand upgrade From lingerie brands to lifestyle brands Since the founding of Neiwai, Liu Xiaolu has made it more clear that Neiwai should be a lifestyle brand belonging to the new middle-class women, providing intimate clothing and peripheral products in line with their lifestyle and living conditions. In Liu Xiaolu's words, the long-term vision is not only to become a large-scale commercial brand, but also to become a brand that can truly convey the value of women and have a certain social influence. The so-called lifestyle brand represents a choice of values. When consumers choose a brand, it must be because they believe in and pursue the lifestyle and values behind it. From the first day of its establishment, it has established a very distinct female value concept and product aesthetic style.
Liu Xiaolu emphasized that everything done inside and outside comes from the resonance of women and the insight into women's values, such as advocating the brand concept of warmth, intimacy, comfort and freedom, and naturally integrating into product design and development and the overall brand culture. Lifestyle is a product system and a complete brand output, which gives you a mental feeling. Liu Xiaolu said. For the control of fabrics and tailoring, while focusing on simple and comfortable design, these principles lay the tone of internal and external products. In addition to the stable product tone, both inside and outside have spent a lot of money and energy on the precipitation of brand equity in the past eight years, including product, channel and brand building, which has helped attract a group of loyal female users. Over the past three years, the repurchase rate has exceeded 50%, which Liu Xiaolu believes is the core of the brand's future. In her view, every female user accumulated inside and outside is a high-value user, and they will bring greater inspiration to the brand in the process of following the brand in the future. In Liu Xiaolu's words, we have chosen a road that is more difficult to walk, but will go a longer way. Early internal and external, focusing on women's physical feelings, with a unique design language and aesthetic system, established the brand mind of "comfortable underwear", product focus is to bring women the experience of "physical and mental freedom". In 2013, the first "Zero Sense" underwear series was born. Different from the common thick mold cups and complicated underwear at that time, the "zero sense" underwear inside and outside adopted a one-piece design without underwire, light and thin fabrics, simple and elegant appearance, which set the tone for the design aesthetics and product direction. It is also a product that represents "who is inside and outside", and the product positioning of "making a piece of underwear that makes people physically and mentally free" is also established at this time. In the follow-up products, the interior and exterior always pay attention to the skin-friendly and comfortable feeling brought by fabrics, and always keep light and concise in design. Last year, the company launched a "very pants" that women can wear during their menstrual period. With the help of technology fabrics, it can replace sanitary napkins to a certain extent, so that women can get through the anxiety period before and after menstruation, and effectively avoid the problems of side leakage and back leakage of menstruation. It is also suitable for women with a small amount of urine leakage. This is a physiological need observed by internal and external teams, which is difficult for some women to talk about, but easily ignored by the consumer market. Liu Xiaolu emphasized that "very pants" is a product that is highly consistent with the brand value and concept inside and outside. "Inside and outside, after liberating the upper half of women, we should liberate the lower half of women." In addition to reflecting the menstrual liberation of women, "extraordinary pants" is also a transmission of environmental values, through a physiological pants that can be worn repeatedly, to reduce the use of disposable sanitary products. Liu Xiaolu said that when promoting products, this has also aroused the attention and resonance of many users. At the end of last year, the company also launched a "simple Ning" denim style casual pants made of non-traditional denim fabrics as a fixed product line of home casual clothes. Liu Xiaolu said that jeans are the most serious category of water pollution, and both inside and outside hope to launch similar products in the next two or three seasons to express the brand's value proposition in environmental protection. The starting point of these product innovations is to convey more and more abundant and iterative brand connotations through more diversified product research and development. Starting from "making a piece of underwear with physical and mental freedom", it liberates women who used to be bound by "gathering, thick mold cup underwear" under the gaze of men through light and comfortable underwire underwear. In the past few years, underwear products suitable for women with big breasts and plump women have also been developed both inside and outside. Because it is not a "brand only for small breasts and thin people", but believes in and pursues the diversification of the body. Over the past few years, Liu Xiaolu found that more and more brands have paid attention to the value of women inside and outside, and began to talk about the value of women and the beauty of diversity. "This shows that many brand values are growing up with the new generation of women, and we are proud to lead this matter inside and outside.". But Liu Xiaolu also stressed that modern women's values are changing rapidly, and brands need to be very keen to know what stage women's collective growth has reached, and whether what the brand now conveys can resonate with women.
This is a difficult point for many brands to grasp when doing brand marketing. Her method is that the brand itself should identify with the values it exports, and make progress with female users to enrich the connotation of values. Keeping the same observation and feeling with consumers is the highest rule in brand building both inside and outside. For example, insight into the "body anxiety" has become the focus of women's attention, both inside and outside in 2020 launched the "NO BODY IS NOBODY" "brand planning. Through the stories of six women with different figures, it puts forward the idea that "no figure is insignificant", whether it is big or small, thin or plump, it belongs to the uniqueness of women's figure. Through this brand planning, we want to encourage women to face up to their bodies and not have body anxiety, which has also aroused extensive discussion and resonance among women. Liu Xiaolu believes that the reason why the concept of "NO BODY IS NOBODY" "can be deeply rooted in the hearts of the people is that on the one hand, the team can sensitively capture the psychological needs of modern women. On the other hand, she also stressed that this is something the team believes in. "We think you should be free and not be troubled by body anxiety." The importance of "no doubt" is that "today's users are very discerning and can see whether the brand really believes in the values it conveys, or whether it is just a gimmick for marketing." Every time we do brand marketing, we will invest a lot of time and energy inside and outside. In this brand planning, the team inside and outside conducted in-depth interviews with every woman who participated in the shooting, digging deeply into the stories of these women, and condensed the interview manuscripts of 120000 words into a slogan, such as "I didn't lose myself after becoming a mother" from a Japanese mother, and "I'm 58 years old" from a 58-year-old Ma Jie. I still love my body and so on. These slogans are not a slogan, but a true expression of their hearts, and because of this, it is enough to move people. Liu Xiaolu told New Business Intelligence NBT, "NO BODY IS NOBODY" will become the core of the brand in the new stage, and will change with the growth of users every year. ". This year, we upgraded the connotation of "NO BODY IS NOBODY" "inside and outside, proposed the concept of" unique body, small and sufficient; women's strength, no distinction between you and me ", and invited eight vegetarian women of different stature, skin color, age and region to participate in the shooting. Natural freckles and skin color, tall and straight breasts and buttocks, buzz cut and short hair, gender-neutral love.. They are all unique And have the same female identity. From the discussion of women's body anxiety to the diversification of women's body, it calls on women to identify themselves, encourage each other, and jointly transmit strength in the female collective. In line with the diversified value expression of women's body and beliefs, not only through a series of in-depth documentaries, but also through the first entry into the field of podcasting, in the form of joint production, three professional women in different fields, such as Zhan Qingyun, were invited to tell their body stories and life experiences, and to share modern women's thoughts on the workplace, family, friendship and self-growth. From a longer-term perspective of clothing history, Liu Xiaolu hopes to become a classic female brand like CHANEL in the future, and CHANEL will become a generation of classics by liberating women's concept of dressing themselves. In addition to changing the way women dress,printed tape measure, CHANEL has also created an all-encompassing world, involving all aspects of women's lives and meeting women's needs from the inside out. Liu Xiaolu believes that this is an internal and external vision. I hope that we can go in this direction in the future. I hope that many years later, people will feel that both inside and outside have promoted the transformation of the underwear industry. Duowei Haituo Boutique investment banks focusing on global emerging industries Read the original article and start the global high-quality search engine with one click. Return to Sohu to see more. Responsible Editor:. tape-measure.com