Wei Mi loses momentum and can only “seek change”
Editor’s note: This article comes from WeChat public account “螳螂财经”(ID:TanglangFin), author 佘凯文.
It seems that following the cancellation of this year’s “Vimi Show”, it will be difficult to say next year!
Not long ago, two news about Wei Mi were burst out, and Wei Mi was once again pushed into the air of public opinion. First, Wei Mi broke the rules and signed the first big-size model from the British Ali Tate-Cutler; then it was blown out by the US media CNBC, and the company headquarters laid off about 50 people on October 9 and 10, including Junior staff and senior leadership, the number of layoffs accounted for 15% of the total number of employees at headquarters.
In July of this year, 螳螂财经 has the author “Who killed” Wei Mi Xiu? “It is said that the days of Wei Mi at this stage are not so good, so now the continuous big move is “self-help” or “digging graves”?
Wei Mi loses momentum and can only “change”
A brief review of the experience of Wei Mi in the past two years.
Last year, a topic about whether or not to enable transgender models should be mentioned again. Ed Razek, the then marketing director and the “Godfather” of Wei Mi, gave “No, I don’t think it should be invited. They…we are not the third love of somebody. We are their first love.” The answer angered everyone.
After
, it was attacked by consumers, media, competitors and so on.
Going forward, Wei Mi’s sales have been in difficulty. Since 2015, Wei Mi’s dominance of the market has come to an abrupt end. In 2018, the market value of the company’s parent company, L Brands, has evaporated more than half, in the second quarter of 2019. Wei Mi’s online and offline sales fell 9% and 6%, respectively, and L Brands’ share price has fallen 34% this year.
As for the “big show” of the year, this year has also been announced to be closed, but in fact, this show has already been “glorious no longer”. In 2014, the number of viewers of the Vimi show was 9.29 million, and it fell by 30% in 2015. There are only 6.59 million, and by 2018 there will be only 3.3 million viewers.
And in July of this year, Jeffrey Epstein, personal wealth management manager of L Brands boss Les Wexner, was arrested and imprisoned for alleged sexual assault and trafficking in minors. Sexual harassment was implemented, and Wei Mi’s “Word of Mouth” was once again frustrated.
Plus Aerie, LaNe Bryant and other competitors’ “hurricane ignition”, Wei Mi can be described as embattled.
For these reasons, Wei Mi has to change. Since the end of last year, the personnel changes of Wei Mi have not stopped. First, the CEO Jan Singer suddenly resigned. In August of this year, Ed Razek, who created the “Mymit Myth”, also announced his departure; plus the latest news shows that in L April Holt, president of the Smithsonian store operations, which has been in the Brands underwear division for more than 16 years, will soon leave the company.
After this, the high-ranking Wei Mi is equal to the big change of blood. The successive departure of the “following merits” seems to have taken away the final “persistence” of Wei Mi.
Especially after Ed Razek left office for 2 months, Wei Mi signed their first large size model, and can guess that “the difference between whether to accept large size and transgender models will definitely lead to the departure of Ed Razek. The key reason.”
In Wei Mi’s own words, this is “out of the brand image update”, but on another level, it’s not that Wei Mi finally made a compromise to “market” and “political correctness”.
Return to “political correctness”, may not please both sides
After picking up, whether Wei Mi can “restart” still needs to see the market accept this change, but from the past historical experience, perhaps Wei Mi did not bother with both sides.
Over the years, Wei Mi has jumped out of the “niche” circle, brands and products are popular, for example, before 2015, Wei Mi once occupied more than 40% of the North American underwear market; Mi Mi represents the “mind” elite thought, just as Wei Mi has been slammed “Victoria’s sex has nothing to do with ordinary people”, which was well known to everyone before, but no one will break it.
However, with the addition of the large size model, it can be seen as a thorough showdown of Wei Mi, and even the only remaining “niche” is not needed.
The brand changes its audience based on its own situation. Many brands have tried to cater to the market. Especially for Wei Mi, at this stage, it can be said that it is at the most difficult time. As a bystander, it may be that the audience is “tolerant”. It is a last resort, but there is absolutely nothing wrong with it. The question is, will users of Wei Mi think so?
Looking through the past, there are many cases in which the transformation has been made as a last resort. For example, as everyone knows “LV”, the number of LV stores in the world has increased significantly since 2012. There are dozens of new stores in China in one year, but this rapid expansion has brought a trouble to LV. The popularity of the crisis.
Before the hearts of ordinary consumers, LV is a “high unreachable” existence, and a package of tens of thousands of people makes people “distracted”. After the LV has expanded significantly, a large number of low-end basic models have been eliminated.The fee has caused LV to gradually lose its mystery, and it has been abandoned by many high-end consumers who are pursuing “things are rare”.
In addition to the spread of the European debt crisis at the time, LV paid more attention to the Chinese market, and even entered the second and third tier cities in order to increase sales. But contrary to expectations, LV’s close people did not bring him the corresponding return. In the first quarter of 2013, the first quarter sales report showed that the first quarter sales of LVMH fashion leather goods only increased by 0.4% year-on-year to 2.38 billion euros, which was the department since the 2008 financial crisis. The lowest increase in performance.
In 2013, Bernard Arnott realized the brand crisis and decided to suspend the opening of new stores, reshaping the image strategy of high-end brands, and narrowing the customer base to a smaller number of wealthy people.
This process is full of hardships. It can be said that until today LV has not been able to climb the height of Hermes again, but the brand heritage of LV and China’s huge consumer market still make it steadily forward.
Reviewing Wei Mi may not be so lucky. After losing the previous tonality, Wei Mi will also usher in the loss of old users. After all, there are Aubade brands to choose from.
And the “mass market” will surprise Wei Mi? We must know that the “body” and “economic” in the United States are inversely proportional. Whether the “big size” users have the ability to consume Wei Mi is still a problem. Besides Wei Mi is not like LV. The hug for the Chinese market is obviously not enough. The length is not deep enough, and the lack of a large enough new market will be the biggest problem for Wei Mi in the transformation.
After losing the sense of superiority, is Vimy still Victoria?
The reason why Wei Mi can become “Vie Mi” is closely related to the “story” described by “beauty” in the past.
Why are these “story” not easy to use now? Or is it because this audience is too difficult to bring?
Some people say that because the aesthetic standards have changed, these are just excuses for “political correctness.” Not accepted by the “mass”, in fact, Wei Mi does not have to cater to.
The success of Wei Mi was undeniable. At one time, many people who didn’t care about this industry thought that there were only two kinds of underwear brands, one called “Vimi” and the other called “Other Brands”. But when Wei Mi goes to “tolerance”, is Wei Mi or Wei Mi?
From the perspective of the Vimy action, it seems that the failure in recent years has been attributed to “need to further expand the market” or “not able to cater to the new market taste.”
In fact, it is not a year or two of criticism by public opinion, but why can it still achieve more than 40% market share before?
On the one hand, it is because of the frequent problems of Wei Mi in the past two years. As mentioned above, those things that should not be said or should not be done, Wei Mi did not understand that doing it is one thing, but said It’s one thing to say nothing; on the other hand, to summarize the consumer in one sentence is “Do not say in the mouth, the body is very honest”, this is placedWhere consumers are the same, so Wei Mi Benda can say that it can even say that it can even raise its own tonality, cut with ordinary consumers, and position itself as Hermès in the underwear industry.
Of course, more problems still lie in the product. Wei Mi did not realize that the audience’s preferences changed, but “disappointed” with Wei Mi.
The last year’s Wei Mi Xiu was ridiculed as “Fu Anna Home Textiles Show” in China. According to the comments of relevant people, “the earth print + fluorescent, which model can not save Wei Mi”.
After looking around, the big wave underwear brand is watching, and many brands like c.gilson, Christie Nicole and so on are also high-end and sexy, but why haven’t they been affected?
So, Wei Mi’s “fixed tone” is not the key. On the contrary, this is why Wei Mi is “Victoria”, and now Wei Mi is also destroying it by himself, and also destroying Wei Mi users. “Superior sense.”
As for the loss of “superiority”, is Weiwei still Weiwei? The answer to the question may be revealed soon, we can wait and see.