In the annual online competition of the “6.18” Shopping Festival, Uniqlo is facing a collective attack from domestic women’s clothing brands. It was previously reported that in the Tmall “6.18” shopping festival pre-sale event from June 1 to June 3, the top three sales of women’s clothing were fashion brand collection store ITIB, Urban Revivo (hereinafter referred to as UR) and Yi Fuli – Uniqlo ranked fourth.
This time “6.18” Uniqlo does not ignore it. Like most brands, Uniqlo started its 6.18 promotions as early as May 18. For example, it pushed a list of products participating in promotions and discounts on its official accounts, Weibo and other official accounts to encourage consumers to purchase more in advance.
1 Live broadcast has become an important battlefield for online traffic and sales
At least in the past two years, live broadcast has become an important battlefield for online traffic and sales, and it is also a very important part of Taobao’s ecosystem. For Uniqlo, it seems to maintain a wait-and-see attitude towards live broadcasts. From this 6.18 event, we can see that many women’s clothing brands are already “fighting” in Taobao live broadcasts, and Uniqlo’s live broadcasts always seem a bit “Buddhist”.
Different from most live broadcasts where the atmosphere is lively and tense, the anchors always remind viewers that “only the first 200 people will receive cash coupons” and “buy 2 items at 10% off and 3 items at 15% off” , most of the time during Uniqlo’s live broadcast, only the anchors were explaining the differences and selling points of clothing styles, fabrics, colors and other details to the camera.
But the live broadcast cannot be dull. It is a show in itself – it needs to create limited quantities, rush to grab, and have repeated stimulations of fast and slow hands.
A long-term practitioner in the clothing industry told Jiemian News that Uniqlo may feel that many brands are doing “discount live streaming”, and there are often limited-time special discounts online and offline. , so UNIQLO may focus more on some content output when doing live broadcasts, such as the live broadcast of UNIQLO Pavilion at the 2020 Shanghai International Import Expo.
“Many Chinese consumers’ impression of live broadcasts is still deeply influenced by Li Jiaqi. Watching live broadcasts requires buying cheap, so Uniqlo’s live broadcasts are not popular.” This person said .
Similar to the huge Uniqlo exhibition hall at the Shanghai International Import Expo, this brand seems to focus more on offline rather than online. For example, it promotes its lifestyle magazine offline, which is produced by a Japanese team, or regularly holds exhibitions of new styles.
But from a business perspective, these actions have too little impact on online traffic.
2 The siege of domestic women’s clothing
Because at the same time, many domestic women’s clothing brands are desperately trying to broadcast this battlefield on Taobao Use force.
Some of these brands are backed by large traffic users. If you are unfamiliar with ITIB, which ranks first in Tmall 6.18 pre-sales, this is not surprising. ITIB is a designer clothing collection platform that was only established in April 2020. Its rapid rise to prominence in just one year is largely due to Taobao’s head anchor Wei Ya.
Since its establishment, Viya has helped with almost every large-scale event held by ITIB.
For example, in October 2020, the brand VIYA NIYA, where Wei Ya is the manager, jointly launched a series with ITIB, and Wei Ya herself also helped with catwalks and live broadcasts. As of the evening of October 14, Viya helped ITIB’s Tmall flagship store directly reach a turnover of 194 million on the day of the event; in April 2021, ITIB once again cooperated with Viya during Shanghai Fashion Week to hold a joint designer release show. And through the live broadcast, “show now and buy now”. According to Vogue Business, the number of viewers of this live broadcast reached 20.45 million, and the transaction volume exceeded 410 million yuan.
According to sources quoted by Fashion Business Express, the deep tie-up between ITIB and Viya is due to the fact that ITIB has launched in-depth strategic cooperation with Qianxun Holdings, Viya’s husband. This time on 6.18, Viya also sold a large number of ITIB products in the clothing live broadcast on June 2. In the ITIB Tmall flagship store, the words “Viya recommended” can be said to be everywhere. The head anchor who gathers most of the attention is an absolute weapon for brands to impact sales.
In the ITIB Tmall flagship store, the four words “Viya recommended” can be said to be everywhere.
On the other hand, high cost performance but still personalization is also the advantage that distinguishes domestic women’s clothing brands from Uniqlo.
Both ITIB and UR and Evely, which ranked second and third in Tmall pre-sales this time, are more pursuing fashion trends in design style than Uniqlo. . In addition, these brands are also good at constantly offering competitive promotional temptations during live broadcasts or daily promotions, or holding traffic-draining activities where celebrities and KOLs bring products.
Adapting to the rules of the e-commerce shopping festival and investing heavily in Taobao Live Broadcast have also made many brands gain a lot. For example, Everly has fully embraced live broadcasting since Double Eleven last year, creating multiple themed special events, which will also be broadcast 24 hours a day on sales days, and it plans activities to invite celebrities to bring goods. In addition, after the epidemic in 2020, Eveli also increased its efforts to cooperate with Tmall’s new retail team on shopping guide live broadcast projects.
In a sense, traditional women’s clothing brands are taking advantage of today’s live broadcast and other tools to transfer their long-term accumulated communication capabilities in department stores and physical retail to online.
In fact, under the influence of the epidemic, clothing brands have made decisions to adapt to their respective situations. For example, Evely is trying every means to guide consumers online, while Uniqlo has decided to increase its efforts to expand offline stores in China. By the end of August 2020, the number of UNIQLO stores in mainland China reached 767, surpassing the 764 directly operated stores in Japan for the first time; by the end of September 2020, the number of UNIQLO stores in mainland China increased to 782.
Therefore, for Uniqlo, continuing to output brand concepts and improving shopping experience may be more important than simply impacting sales.
The Tmall flagship store is not Uniqlo’s only battlefield. With the help of the 6.18 event, UNIQLO is also trying to promote the application of its mobile flagship store mini program to open up product selection and services on all store online store platforms. At the brand level, UNIQLO also pays more attention to the placement of magazines and Xiaohongshu KOL, and constantly outputs concepts similar to “UNIQLO can also look like a big brand”.
In an online arena like Tmall 6.18, sales ranking may not be the most important. Whether it is momentum or long-term tonality, it is the brand’s own decision. . However, as the design and operation capabilities of domestic brands are gradually catching up, Uniqlo’s situation of winning is likely to be broken soon. </p
