Abandoning Arc'teryx, cycling clothing becomes the new favorite of the middle class?

The cycling pandemic in 2024 has led to the explosion of outdoor functional clothing. Niche outdoor sports combined with KOL marketing have become a new formula for brands to create hits. What are the market dynamics behind this phenomenon and how does it work?

New consumption guide: Niche outdoor + functionality + KOL = the secret to a hit product?

What will be the hottest thing in the outdoor world in 2024? The cyclists wearing tights on Chang'an Avenue in Beijing, Wukang Road in Shanghai, and Longjing Road in Hangzhou may be able to tell you the answer.

If camping and hiking became a trend in the past two years, it was because people were tired of city life and only ran to the mountains and wilderness on weekends and holidays to seek comfort from nature.

The recent cycling craze is that workers are building their own "freedom to chase the wind on two wheels" between two points.

Cycling in the wind and enjoying the scenery along the way can heal the body and mind of urban residents and bring them a lot of emotional value. Cycling is not only a way to exercise the body, but also allows you to take photos and check in on the road and post them on WeChat Moments, which can maximize your social value and kill two birds with one stone.

Having said that, outdoor sports have been popular in waves, and have also made many brands successful: lululemon is popular among middle-class women, and Arc'teryx's jackets have become a standard for the middle class.

Which brands have been made successful by the growing cycling sport? Who will be the next Lululemon or Arc'teryx in the cycling world? How can brands stand out in the outdoor craze? Follow the New Consumption Think Tank to find out.

1. Cycling clothing is the biggest winner behind the cycling craze

Let’s first look at the current brand structure of the domestic cycling wear market. In the cycling wear category, overseas brands such as Castelli, Rapha, and Assos started early, are highly professional, and have high pricing, occupying the top position in the market, while domestic brands such as Lampada and MBO Meissenland are popular among domestic consumers due to their high cost-effectiveness, and have grown rapidly in the past two years.

How fast has the price of cycling wear increased? We can get a glimpse of this from the data of the recent 618 promotion. According to data disclosed by Tmall headlines, since the start of the 618 sales this year, the search volume for "cycling wear" on Tmall has increased by 176% year-on-year, and the overall sales volume of cycling wear has increased by 390% year-on-year, which is definitely a blue ocean track with high growth and high potential.

Since there are already leading overseas players in this field, do domestic brands still have a chance? Of course, domestic brands have a better chance of overtaking.

The mass market of domestic cycling wear is still in its early stages. From the perspective of market share, overseas big brands and domestic brands are in a state of competition. Next, the competition is about who can seize the minds of consumers as soon as possible and compete for market share.

So where are the opportunities for domestic brands? How can they achieve overtaking? We can infer the reasons why cycling clothing has become so popular.

Cycling apparel is popular because of the popularity of outdoor activities in recent years. Cycling continues to heat up, attracting a large number of new people to join the circle. The "2023 China Bicycle Industry Survey Report" released by Meiqi.com shows that the number of riders who have been riding for less than one year has increased from 11.33% in 2022 to 11.88% in 2023.

Second, as outdoor clothing, cycling clothing has high color saturation, is eye-catching and has its own traffic blessing. Therefore, "cycling outfit" and "cycling OOTD" have also become hot topics on Xiaohongshu. According to Xiaohongshu's "2023 Outdoor Life Trend Report", the number of cycling-related notes published last year increased by nearly 400%, with a reading volume of over 1.3 billion, and the reading volume of cycling OOTD-related topics exceeded 100 million.

Third, cycling activities have social attributes, and cycling enthusiasts are happy to share. Therefore, cycling clothing and other essential equipment can be better spread offline as social currency.

Image source: Xiaohongshu "2023 Outdoor Life Trend Report"

2. Master this formula and you will be the "Arc'teryx" of cycling clothing

Based on the above reasons why cycling clothing became so popular, we can deduce the following formula: niche outdoor sports + functional clothing + KOL social media communication → traffic code.

The essence of this set of traffic codes is that the business conducted by targeting a small group of professional people is of extremely limited scale, but by reaching the general public through KOLs and attracting more people to participate, unlimited business can be done.

Brands that have mastered this set of traffic codes will have good sales. A good example is Arc'teryx.

You know, Arc'teryx, which was hailed as one of the "three treasures of the middle class" last year, was sold to Amer Sports by Adidas in 2005 due to poor sales. The market only began to improve after it was acquired by Anta in 2019.

The scale of niche outdoor business is actually very limited, so how did Arc'teryx break out of the niche market? The secret to Arc'teryx's popularity is hiking + jackets + KOLs.

Specifically, Arc'teryx caught up with the bonus period when hiking, an outdoor sport, became popular, and its jackets met the public's daily demand for outdoor clothing. The most important thing is that videos of domestic and foreign KOLs wearing Arc'teryx jackets and testing their waterproof effects went viral on social media, allowing the brand to achieve communication fission on social media and reach more people.

Image source: TIKTOK

Are there any brands in the cycling clothing industry that have mastered this traffic code? Of course there are, and MBO Meissenland is a good example.

After the epidemic ended in 2022, outdoor sports exploded, and many bicycle shops were hard to find. In 2023, in Wu Lei's cycling diary "There is a Reason to Ride", Wu Lei, wearing MBO cycling clothes, rode a bicycle to explore northern Xinjiang, pushing the popularity of cycling and the brand's popularity to a new level.

Image source: Douban

Does the mechanism of MBO's explosion sound familiar to you? Cycling + cycling clothes + KOL communication. It perfectly corresponds to the formula for explosions mentioned above. Therefore, MBO, which started as an OEM and only entered Tmall in 2021, became the TOP2 brand in the Tmall cycling wear category during this year's 618 promotion, becoming a rising star in this category.

The only thing that remains to be confirmed is how to visualize the functionality of cycling clothing such as shock absorption and wind resistance reduction, moisture absorption and perspiration removal, and quick drying on social media, which has become a challenge for cycling clothing brands.

Similarly, with the trend of outdoor sports becoming more and more popular, there are actually many high-growth outdoor categories to be developed. For example, niche sports such as skiing, surfing, and fishing are in a state of strong categories and weak brands, and there is great hope that a number of star brands will emerge in the future.

3. Trends are time-limited, but functionality is an eternal need

Through the above deduction, have you found such a trend, from sun protection clothing, assault clothing to cycling clothing, functional clothing is becoming more and more popular. Finally, let's talk about why clothing brands are rolling out functionality.

One of the reasons is that consumers are becoming more rational and pay more attention to the quality-price ratio. For the same price, consumers will definitely look for products with better quality and better functions. This also forces brands and manufacturers to focus on the functionality of clothing.

For example, sun protection clothing and shark pants are very popular. With so many new brands starting from the same starting line, how can they break through?

Sinisn, which won the top spot in two categories during Tmall's 618 shopping festival this year, can tell us the answer. Sinisn's strategy is very clever. It has taken a different approach in terms of functionality, adding skin care ingredients such as hyaluronic acid, niacinamide/ectoine to shark pants and sunscreen clothing to improve the skin feel.

Image source: sinisn Tmall flagship store

You think clothing is a fashion industry, but the winning brands tell you that clothing is now a technology industry and must be functional. Because trends and fashions have time limits, but functions do not, and functionality is an eternal demand of consumers.

In the past, with the rapid economic development and consumption environment, Chinese consumers had great demand, and clothing brands could basically make a lot of money as long as they launched new products quickly. At that time, most clothing brands were driven by simple commodity production to drive growth.

For example, domestic brands such as Metersbonwe and Semir emerged in the 1990s, the golden period of rapid development of China's apparel industry, and achieved rapid growth by relying on quick market response, efficient production and extensive sales channels.

It is obvious that the current consumption environment is undergoing drastic changes. The continuous development of productivity and relatively limited consumer demand have created a large-scale surplus of goods.

For clothing brands, this means that consumers’ demands are not limited to good looks. In the consumption trend of emphasizing quality and price ratio, texture and style have become considerations. For example, for a basic T-shirt of the same price, the one that is more sweat-absorbent and more comfortable will obviously sell better.

If we are facing a consumption environment that is undergoing structural transformation, clothing brands should also actively explore transformation paths.

Looking back at the development history of my country's clothing brands, those brands that were once glorious but are now loss-making or even bankrupt all have serious path dependence - chasing trends to launch new products, and trends are time-limited. Clothing has a short life cycle, and before they catch up with the next wave of trends, the products become outdated, which also aggravates the inventory crisis.

Furthermore, inventory backlogs not only increase storage costs, but also affect the launch and sales of new products, creating a vicious cycle that leads to a break in the capital chain, and the brand can only be eliminated by the market. This also explains why so many brands are now choosing to return to basics and strengthen functionality.

Because functionality never goes out of style, clothing brands can only survive the cycle by focusing on functionality.

Just like as long as there is summer, the demand for sun protection will always exist; as long as people sweat, breathability and quick drying are eternal needs. We can also see that this summer, functional keywords such as cool feeling, quick drying, waterproof, UPF50+... are sweeping the product details pages and live broadcast rooms of major clothing brands.

Image source: Tmall official flagship store of each brand

Author: Shi An, Editor: Zhu Tian

WeChat public account: New Consumption Think Tank