With a set of "the same product as Lei Jun", can Vancl be revived?

"Can Vancl return to the mainstream of Internet clothing brands driven by Lei Jun's traffic? Explore the transformation challenges and opportunities for traditional clothing companies in the new era." Recommended for readers who are interested in brand transformation and e-commerce development to learn more.

Recently, Vancl CEO Chen Nian revealed in a live broadcast that Vancl once owed 1.9 billion yuan in cash, but the debt has been paid off. In addition, the company's inventory is worth 20 to 30 billion yuan, and the company's overall valuation is now close to 4 billion yuan. Some netizens joked that if they borrowed 5 million yuan from Chen Nian, they would give him a Vancl. Chen Nian immediately responded: "You still think Vancl is too cheap. Even if you give me 5 billion now, I will not sell Vancl."

The "vertical e-commerce leader" that once had annual sales of 2 billion yuan and a valuation of 3 billion US dollars has now lost its former vigor and vitality. If Lei Jun had not said "Vancl" three times in a row during the live broadcast, many people would have thought that Vancl had gone bankrupt. Now, driven by Lei Jun's traffic, can Vancl return to the public eye and re-enter the ranks of mainstream Internet clothing brands?

1. “Lei Zong’s same style” brings great wealth

Not long ago, Lei Jun specifically refuted the rumor that he was the hero of a cool novel during a live broadcast, saying, "I am not the top scorer in the college entrance examination, and I don't have 4 billion cold dollars in my bank account." In response to people joking that he dressed like Musk and Jobs, Lei Jun explained, "I wear what engineers usually wear, a Vancl T-shirt, Vancl jeans, and Vancl canvas shoes." Unexpectedly, this live broadcast, which was intended to "refute rumors but not bring goods", indirectly "resurrected" Vancl.

(VANCL official flagship store made Lei Jun's live broadcast into a sliced ​​short video. Source: E-commerce Online)

On April 18, the day of Lei Jun's live broadcast, the "VANCL Clothing Store" broadcast which started at 6:59 p.m. received 187,000 views, 172,000 more than the previous day; the live broadcast of VANCL founder Chen Nian at 8:19 p.m. had 246,000 viewers in the live broadcast room, 236,000 more than the previous live broadcast.

Faced with the sudden influx of traffic, the various VANCL-related live broadcast rooms on Douyin also knew how to take advantage of the situation. Not only did they use the slogan "Lei Jun's same style", they also changed the background music of the live broadcast room to Lei Jun's spoof song "Are you ok", and the anchors of various channels also took the initiative to wear the same style as Lei Jun.

It is reported that the "VANCL Official Flagship Store" account received huge traffic on April 21, with 501,000 viewers in the live broadcast room, nearly 25 times the previous number of viewers. Of course, VANCL did not forget to advertise for its good brother. Founder Chen Nian posted a photo of a Xiaomi car he bought, and VANCL's live broadcast room directly hung clothes on the Xiaomi car to introduce it. Using a car of more than 200,000 yuan to sell clothes of more than 20 yuan, this wave of contrast effect is really full!

The huge traffic also brought sales. According to media reports, before Lei Jun's live broadcast on April 18, the sales of "VANCL Official Flagship Store" were mostly around 10,000-25,000 yuan. From April 18 to 25, its daily sales exceeded 500,000 yuan. The daily sales on the 22nd and 25th were close to 2.5 million yuan, an increase of more than 300% from a week ago. The recent single-game sales of multiple VANCL-related live broadcast rooms have also reached more than 100,000 yuan.

However, this wave of traffic came and went quickly. According to Chanmama data, the number of viewers of Chen Nian's live broadcast peaked on April 19 and then dropped all the way. On April 22, the number of viewers of a live broadcast was only 27,000. The number of viewers of the live broadcast of "Vancl Official Flagship Store" also dropped from 501,000 on April 21 to 58,000 on April 22.

It can be seen that no matter how lively it is, it is not just traffic that determines the fate of Vancl.

2. In the era of hot-selling items, old-fashioned clothing brands fall behind

Although Mr. Lei has made Vancl a little popular again, I am afraid that many netizens of Generation Z are still confused about Vancl. After all, when Vancl became popular, the generation born in the 1980s was still called "young people".

In 2010, Vancl launched the popular "Vancl Style" advertisement, "I love the Internet, I love freedom, I love getting up late, I love night food stalls... I am the same as you, I am Vancl." Overnight, it spread throughout the streets and alleys. This year was also the most proud year for Vancl, with more than 30 million pieces of clothing sold throughout the year, and total sales exceeding 2 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 300%, ranking fourth in the industry.

(Source: Internet)

At that time, other mainstream clothing brands like Vancl also included Metersbonwe, Jeanswest, Kappa and other "8090" brands. Nowadays, these clothing brands that were once popular in China have fallen from the altar and are in the process of self-rescue and transformation.

In January this year, Metersbonwe announced that Hu Jiajia would no longer serve as chairman and director, and her father Zhou Chengjian was re-nominated as director. During the seven years that Hu Jiajia served as chairman, Metersbonwe continued to emphasize the brand's youthful tone, and implemented measures such as upgrading offline channels, deploying shopping centers, and using smart retail to transform the supply chain. However, due to unclear positioning of the company and products, it still failed to reverse Metersbonwe's losses.

According to financial reports, during the six years from 2017 to 2022 when Hu Jiajia served as chairman, the company's revenue fell from 6.47 billion yuan to 1.44 billion yuan, with a cumulative loss of about 3.24 billion yuan in six years. In order to get out of the predicament, Metersbonwe laid off employees, closed stores, and sold buildings four times to survive. Now that the founder has returned to the helm, it is still unknown where he can take Metersbonwe.

In fact, recently, in addition to Vancl's renewed popularity due to Lei Jun, Jeanswest also became a hot topic for signing Wang Yibo as its global spokesperson, triggering a heated discussion among the public about Jeanswest's brand strategy.

(Photo source: Weibo)

As one of the three giants of casual wear, Jeanswest has experienced the crazy expansion and market share grabbing of foreign fast fashion brands such as ZARA, H&M, and Uniqlo, as well as the impact of e-commerce platforms in the Internet era. Its sales have been declining year by year since 2014, and it has closed more than 1,300 stores in four years.

In order to survive, Jeanswest introduced platform thinking in its business model and actively developed a new "joint sales" model. By taking consumers as the center, it realized platform data sharing, information sharing, and decentralized decision-making, stimulated the enthusiasm of brands, platforms, and supply chain partners, and found a new growth engine with e-commerce as a breakthrough, which allowed it to breathe a sigh of relief.

In comparison, the Italian sports brand Kappa, which has been in China for a long time, seems to be in a bleak situation. In 2010, when it was at its peak, Kappa's sales in the Chinese market reached 4.26 billion yuan, and once pushed China Dongxiang's gross profit margin to 60%.

However, after entering the 2010s, Kappa's halo as a European brand gradually disappeared. As its performance declined, many franchisees who had helped it expand in China left.

At the same time, because Kappa only operated its brand and did not produce or sell its own products, it could not control the franchisees' large discounts that damaged its image, and it also fell into a dilemma of having a large amount of inventory but no place to sell it. In addition, Kappa's "back-to-back" logo was rampant in pirated products, and the brand's reputation plummeted.

(Source: Jiemian News)

In recent years, although Kappa has been working hard to launch various joint series, actively transform itself, open directly-operated stores, and even sponsor the Olympic Games, the results have always been limited.

It is not difficult to find that many old clothing companies began to decline after entering the 2010s. This is because the early clothing market was determined by brand aura and channel visibility. A brand could quickly establish its popularity and drive sales growth by extensively promoting on TV or rapidly expanding in different levels of the market through a franchise model.

However, after entering the 2010s, although brand halo and channel expansion are still important, people's focus has also been refined to the novelty of design and the speed of product updates. At the same time, the rise of street fashion has also accelerated this trend. The operation of clothing brands is no longer driven by a dominant image, but relies on a series of hits to piece together and deepen the market impression.

This is also the reason why many old clothing companies have gradually disappeared as e-commerce and mobile Internet have accelerated their development.

3. Resurrection? Vancl is not optimistic

Although it now has traffic, Vancl still has several major problems to solve if it wants to revive.

First, product quality is difficult to guarantee. Although Vancl chose OEM production in the past, it still had strict quality control management for many products. But now Vancl has not only found factories to do OEM, but also developed "trademark licensing" and "selling trademarks" businesses. This has led to the emergence of a number of "Vancl"-related stores and live broadcast rooms on various platforms, and the quality of products is also uneven.

Secondly, the marketing operation is not strong. Vancl, which used to operate the platform, still had its own main position, but now, Vancl has sold its logistics, and its official website has also jumped to the WeChat applet, with more layouts on e-commerce platforms and Douyin live broadcast rooms. Vancl, which has lost its platform advantage, is more like an ordinary clothing brand, competing with many brands for traffic. Vancl's prices, which were considered "good quality and low price" when online shopping was not well developed, have now lost their cost-effectiveness advantage.

In addition, brand traffic relies on freeloading.

New Oriental, a company that is also in decline, has risen again in the field of live streaming e-commerce with its unique live streaming style and distinctive personality. However, Chen Nian, the founder of Vancl, not only does not have many attractive stories or personality, but he is also often involved in controversial remarks.

In 2016, Chen Nian, a young artist, was a guest on the show "The Vicious Liang Huan Show" and said, "I think a hundred years from now, everyone will definitely remember Mu Dan, and Jay Chou will definitely be rubbish." As a result, many viewers in the recent Vancl live broadcast room still left messages saying, "Apologize to Jay Chou!"

In 2022, Chen Nian and Li Guoqing, the founder of Dangdang.com, started selling goods in the Douyin live broadcast room, but this cooperation did not seem to be very pleasant. Only 8 Vancl shirts were sold in the first live broadcast, and the best-selling polo shirt was only sold for 50,000 yuan. Therefore, Li Guoqing was "expelled" from the live broadcast room by Chen Nian.

Later, Chen Nian said in the live broadcast room on the evening of the 23rd that Li Guoqing invited him to live broadcast together, but he was unwilling to do so anymore. He felt that Li Guoqing did not keep his word, "At that time, Qingzi asked me for 50,000 pairs of canvas shoes, but only sold more than 300 pairs."

With such an "unlikable" corporate leader, it is indeed difficult for Vancl to tell stories and sell emotions in the live broadcast room. No wonder it can only rely on the traffic of Lei Jun and Xiaomi SUV.

However, private label clothing is a systematic business, which includes early design and pattern making, supply chain procurement, inventory management, marketing, logistics and other aspects. It is not possible for a company to take off with just a wave of traffic.

For example, at present, although Vancl's sales have increased, problems have also arisen: on the one hand, there is an inventory problem. The T-shirts of "Lei Jun's Style" have changed from spot goods to pre-sale and are out of stock; on the other hand, the prices in the live broadcast rooms authorized by Vancl are chaotic. The prices of "Lei Jun's Style" T-shirts are 39.8 yuan/two pieces and 59.8 yuan/two pieces. It can only be said that Vancl received the first wave of Lei Jun's overwhelming traffic, but "the iron must be hard to forge". In today's fiercely competitive clothing market, without brand value, it is difficult to guarantee product quality, and customer service has no advantage. Although Vancl, which only relies on low prices, has not completely cooled down, the road ahead is still long and difficult.

Author: Wen Lin; Editor: Yang Yong; Source public account: Hydrogen Consumption (ID: 1093588)