Apparel / Textiles & Accessories

With a pair of yoga pants, the Canadian yoga apparel brand lululemon has accelerated its attack on a global scale and has obtained rich returns.

According to lululemon's financial report for the first quarter of 2021, sales of all product categories, sales channels and regions of the company have soared. During the period, revenue in North America increased by 82% year-on-year, and global revenue more than doubled year-on-year.

These beautiful data, first of all, benefited from the continuous expansion of lululemon's e-commerce business. In addition, after the economic restart, physical stores have resumed business one after another, which is also a major benefit to lululemon. You know, in the first quarter of this year, the number of its global stores has reached 523.

Lululemon's aggressive posture continued in the Chinese market. Recently, lululemon opened a store in Hefei Yintai Center, Anhui. This is the first store opened in Anhui and the 54th store in mainland China.

While lululemon is rapidly competing for the Chinese market, Chinese yoga pants manufacturers are doing the opposite, and "harvesting" overseas consumers through e-commerce platforms such as Ali and Amazon.

A battle for yoga pants is being staged around the world.

01

Eastward

Lululemon chose to open a store in Hefei, of course, because of its market.

According to media reports, Huang Shanyan, senior vice president of lululemon China, is straightforward: “Hefei, as the sub-central city of the Yangtze River Delta, has entered the fast lane in recent years. At the beginning of this year, it announced that its GDP exceeded one trillion yuan. The opening of the (Anhui) first The store is an important measure for lululemon to deploy in the Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Shanghai and Anhui economic circles and to penetrate into second-tier cities."

"Going deep into second-tier cities" is the result of lululemon's gradual progress.

Luna, the founder of Sumday Athletics, a Chinese original sports and leisure clothing brand, recalled that when lululemon entered China in the early days, there was no large-scale promotion and the price was high. In 2016, there was only one store in Taikoo Li North District, Sanlitun, Beijing. It seems that people with overseas backgrounds were not particularly crowded at the time."

In the past five years alone, Luna lamented: "The number of lululemon users in China is no longer in the same order of magnitude as before. Lorna Jane and some overseas niche brands have also entered China in the past few years."

Especially in the past two years, due to the changes in fitness demand and consumption patterns caused by the new crown epidemic, lululemon has accelerated the pace of penetration into the Chinese market.

According to the media, as of January 31, 2021, lululemon's US stores accounted for 60.5% of the total global stores, while China's accounted for only 10.6%. However, in the past fiscal year, the growth rate of the number of stores in China was the highest in the world, reaching 44.7%.

While lululemon attacked, it captured a large number of "die loyal fans" in China. A pair of yoga pants sells for nearly 1,000 yuan, which still can't stop people's consumption boom. In their view, lululemon is "a luxury item in yoga clothes", and some emphasize "only wear lululemon".

The reason why it is so popular that it has even become the "standard equipment for the middle class", in Luna's view, lululemon's core competitiveness is its fabric technology. Luna said bluntly: "Good fabrics will really improve your product experience a lot."

This view is almost the consensus of consumers who buy lululemon. An operator of a yoga studio in Guangzhou told the media: "The quality of lululemon is really good. It can be worn to fit the body while showing the lines, so it is favored by yogis."

The New Retail Business Review believes that behind the consensus is the rise of the "pleasure economy".

As Luna observes, in the past, in public and professional occasions, everyone’s dress should conform to their current identities, but now, the younger generation of consumer groups has shifted from group-oriented behavior to individual-oriented behavior, and is more inclined to "I want to dress well." Comfortable".

At the same time, "yoga fever" has also brought strong consumer demand for lululemon.

No Agency analyst Tang Xiaotang believes that in addition to the extremely strong bondage between lululemon and target customers, this brand is also standing in the forefront of China's yoga industry.

The research report of the Tou Leopard Research Institute predicts that the market size of China's yoga industry will reach 68.63 billion yuan, more than twice that of 2018. According to refined GymSquare statistics, the size of China's yoga venues will reach 42,350 in 2021, continuing the growth trend for many years. , Compared with 2020, an increase of 9.1%.

Leaving aside other things, just this year's lululemon Tmall Super Brand Day attracted participants from offline theme activities in cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Hangzhou, Suzhou, Shenzhen, Chengdu, Xi'an, Dalian, and consumers from stores across the country. , And the users who participated in live online courses, tens of thousands of people are doing yoga at the same time, which is spectacular.

Because of its strong stickiness and large market, in addition to lululemon, international giants such as Nike, Adidas, Under Armour, and Gap's sports brand Athleta have all rushed into this subdivision track and tried their best to snatch Chinese consumers.

02

West out

The yoga pants craze started by lululemon has a lot of followers in China.

According to media reports, from the factory side, the production boom of yoga pants rose in 2016.

Ye Xiangjia, the e-commerce leader of Fujian Quanzhou Mutuzhe Sporting Goods Co., Ltd., said that a year later, many e-commerce brands and Internet celebrities came to the door, "all following the style of lululemon."

The most obvious feature is that many swimwear manufacturers have turned to the trend and began to produce yoga pants and yoga clothes.

Ye Xiangjia said that most of the new brands came to the door at first, and the new brand orders were small. Mutuzhe first opened a 1688 factory store to increase inventory and provide e-commerce customers with "drop shipping" and other cooperation. With the increase in orders, Mutuzhe gradually abandoned swimwear and cycling wear with small profit margins and focused on the production of yoga wear.

At present, Mutuzhe is also a manufacturer of fitness series clothing for brands such as Adidas, Fila, and ZARA, with an annual sales volume of more than 4.5 million pieces (sets).

Hong Jianku, chairman of a swimwear group in Jinjiang, Fujian, revealed that since the outbreak, the company's yoga clothing orders have nearly tripled, with sales reaching 70 to 80 million yuan.

Chinese yoga companies are not only catering to domestic consumers, nor are they only OEM production for international giants, but also sell yoga pants to consumers in Western countries through cross-border e-commerce "going to sea".

The New Retail Business Review has learned that there are two major "going overseas" channels for Ali and Amazon.

According to data from Alibaba 511 Global Online Exhibition in 2020, a yoga company in Shanghai increased its first-day inquiries by 125%, and each foreign trader had to receive 7-8 inquiries at the same time.

Enquiries are enthusiastic, which is positively related to consumer enthusiasm. In fact, many yoga companies ship out through AliExpress under AliExpress. For example, a yoga clothing company in Shenzhen entered AliExpress in July 2018. Its single product sales have exceeded 18,000 pieces and annual sales have exceeded 1 million US dollars.

Amazon is another "main position" of cross-border e-commerce for Chinese yoga companies. Take Xiamen Junyi, which is deeply engaged in the yoga pants and cycling pants business, as an example. In 2020, the company continued to dig and expand the sports category on Amazon. As a result, sales in Europe increased by more than three times year-on-year.

It is worth mentioning that Chinese companies are also good at using social traffic offensives. Domestically, they use platforms such as Douyin and Xiaohongshu. Foreign countries have TikTok, an international version of Douyin.

Cross-border e-commerce new media Yien.com shared a case. A seller of branded yoga pants said that a certain product was on the shelves for only 11 days and there were only 3 comments, but it could rush to the 34th place in the category rankings. It is estimated that monthly sales will reach 50,000 pieces.

Media analysis believes that the reason why this product has become popular is that there are big sellers doing TikTok promotion, which "detonated the market's enthusiasm for this product."

With the hot sale of a certain brand of yoga pants, the search interest for yoga pants will be further driven. The popularity of the consumer end will soon be transmitted to the factory end, forming a "virtuous circle" with the production and sale of yoga pants. Moreover, the consumption power that promotes and promotes this "virtuous circle" does not come from a certain country, but from the whole world.

Faced with such a rapid momentum, many yoga companies in China are also stepping up their deployment.

In June 2020, a "Second-Generation Trade" who returned from studying abroad and specializes in yoga clothes said: "We estimate that the epidemic should accelerate the development of e-commerce, so we are now accelerating the pace of deploying sites. Last month A new Japan station has been opened."

It is not difficult to see that, unlike lululemon and other international giants relying on brand influence to fight the world, relevant Chinese companies are more reaching consumers through supply chains, e-commerce channels and social traffic.

There are sharp differences between the two, but there is one biggest intersection-the Chinese market.

03

Battle

The Chinese market also shows the characteristics of lululemon harvesting the high-end market and Chinese companies chasing the low-end market. However, this situation is not stable, but all parties are fighting and fighting each other.

In the field of high-end yoga pants, Nike is regarded as the "strong enemy" of lululemon.

This is because Nike is strong, the price is relatively close to the people, and the Chinese version of Nike App has been specially developed for the Chinese market to understand the needs of Chinese consumers from more channels.

Nike said that most of the content in the Chinese version of the Nike App is localized in China, such as eating habits and exercise skills tailored for Chinese consumers.

According to the media, Nike can obtain members' consumption habits through these channels, use algorithms to push content to consumers in a targeted manner, and even customize products for specific consumer groups. This product customization service will also be applied to yoga categories.

In fact, lululemon's strong performance is closely related to the consumer community it creates. The community provides people with sports courses, lectures and various outdoor activities, which has spawned and expanded the group of "die loyal fans" and strengthened the stickiness of consumption.

From this perspective, whether Nike can use its own private domain platform to truly interact with consumers in the field of yoga pants, and then precipitate "die loyal fans", will be the key to its market grab.

International giants have been working non-stop, and domestic brands such as Li Ning and Anta have also made efforts. In 2018, Anta launched a new brand, AntapluS, to provide new middle-class fashion sports enthusiasts aged 25 to 35 with four categories of products: yoga, indoor fitness, running, and sports life.

Although yoga products are only a small part of the product matrix of domestic brands such as Li Ning and Anta, due to the intensified national trend, these products can still be favored by consumers and cannibalize more markets.

In addition, Chinese manufacturers of yoga pants and yoga clothes are not willing to be fully OEM. Some are making full use of their own R&D and manufacturing capabilities to slowly build their own brands.

Analyst Drizzie said that due to the supply chain advantage of the Chinese market, a number of high cost-effective yoga clothing brands and fitness bloggers’ own brands have emerged on the market. The means of purchasing goods quickly expanded the scale.

It seems that the development of lululemon's high-premium branding is still difficult for domestic brands, but the market brand concentration is not high. In Drizzie's words, “in the Chinese market, the head yoga wear brand is far from established. Comparable influence in overseas markets".

In other words, domestic brands, including emerging brands, still have opportunities to stand out. Next, this may be the "highlight" of the battle for the yoga pants market.