After the realization of the future C2M model, what we hope to achieve is to truly solve the inventory problem in this industry. All production can be decided by consumers, and consumers can participate in on-demand production without causing huge inventory pressure on production and brand. . In addition, the realization of intelligent, customer orders can directly reach the factory, eliminating all the channels in the middle, greatly reducing the process and time of production preparation.
On October 23, the “WISE×C2M Smart Custom Eco Summit” was held in Shanghai. With the development of technology, the era of electrification of the manufacturing industry and the era of automation are coming one after another; the C2M model is based on the Internet, big data, artificial intelligence and other technologies, starting from the user’s needs, thus producing an industrialized customized model of personalized products. Based on this background, the conference invited the most representative capital parties in the domestic C2M field, industry upstream and downstream enterprises, senior analysts and entrepreneurs to deeply explore the transformation of the supply chain industry under the background of new consumption and new retail.
In the era of individuality, more and more brands are beginning to try customization. On the one hand, they hope that consumers will be more integrated into the product design process, making the retail experience more interesting; on the other hand, they also hope to increase the consumer’s stickiness to the brand. Similarly, the deepening of customization has also caused the factory at the back end of the supply chain to face the problem of upgrading.
In recent years, faced with the inventory dilemma of the development of the apparel industry and the trend of personalized consumption upgrades, customized and on-demand production has become a breakthrough for practitioners. How will C2M smart customization change the apparel industry? How should practitioners cope with this shift? What role does technology play in driving customization from niche to civilians? Representatives of personalized custom technology solutions Berlin and the senior strategist of the apparel industry, Yang Dazhao, conducted an in-depth discussion on this topic. The minutes of this roundtable are as follows:
Roundtable theme: How will C2M smart customization change the apparel industry?
Moderator: Senior Analyst Tang Jiamin
Round TablesBing:
Cimpress Greater China and YSD Cloud Shangding CEO Berlin
China Fashion Industry Strategy Expert Yang Dazhao
Moderator: I am very honored to have Ms. Berlin and Mr. Yang Dazhao, a senior expert in the Chinese apparel industry, to discuss with you how C2M Smart Customization can change the theme of the apparel industry. Berlin is a representative of personalized technology solutions, and Yang is always a senior practitioner and expert in the industry.. I believe that the two seminars today will have many sparks of thought.
Faced with the inventory problems faced by the apparel industry, or the new personalized consumer demand issues, everyone’s consensus is just as Mr. Liang said, there is no future for the apparel industry to be customized. But why do you say that smart customization is the future of the garment manufacturing industry? What is the reason for this?
Berlin: A brief review of the Chinese apparel industry. The Chinese clothing industry has had a very good dividend in the past decade. In China, there is a huge market space for doing clothing or chaining. Many brands are simple just over a decade ago. Open a shop. In the first-tier cities, the second line is completed, and the second line is done in the third line. The clothing can be achieved in the billions and tens of billions. The streets and alleys will see the brands we are more familiar with. But there is a problem. From one brand to another, such as casual wear, whether it is cut or design, homogenization is very serious. However, the rapid development of the market in the past has caused the previous apparel industry to not dig deep into the needs of customers.
In the past decade or so, the demand of Chinese consumers has been upgrading as a whole. There are products required for decades, and the products are required to be rich. To date, there is a breakdown of products, just like sharing the customers to Suning. Consumers, it is not enough to capture a single person, but also to be a market where there is a single pet population. So we can see today’s market, and we will dig deeper into the subdivision of brands, retailers and customers. In the face of customer segmentation needs, the product will be completely different for the brand or retailer or supplier. From the manual to the industrial upgrade, we have been doing mass production. But many factories are powerless in the face of increasing consumer demand, because they can’t meet the needs of the segment. For the brand, the market is already different. If you did the same thing before, you can sell it in 3,000 stores across the country. Today, I found that the entire inventory problem has dragged down many clothing industries.
As far as the big industry is concerned, the promotion of consumer awareness to the promotion of brand competition is the reason why the apparel industry has begun to do poorly. Pain is thinking, where is the way out for the Chinese apparel industry?
The overall trend of the e-commerce market in China is still escalating, including consumers. Every consumer in the room can go out today without eating, but no one goes out without wearing clothes. This is called just need, and this demand is always needed. At the same time, the average purchase volume of each consumer is definitely increasing, but the demand is changing. beforeWhen the brand is launched, consumers will accept it. Today’s consumers may want to have more choices, hope to have their own personalized things, and hope to meet different and more subdivided needs. For the brand to meet the needs of the market segment, there are many niche brands in foreign Europe, and in China, there are very few brands in the market segment. Many European brands only do the maternal market, sometimes subdivided into three months to nine months, because they are very subdivided, so they have achieved great success. This is to seize the different needs of different customers in different scenarios, and then digging it to bring the value.
Why do we have customized needs because the entire market has changed. It has changed that the development of this industry is more inclined to satisfy consumers. If we want to seize the market, we must make changes. What is revealed today is an inventory problem, but the deeper level is actually the problem of changes in consumer demand, which also includes the level of model change in the traditional industry chain. Under this circumstance, the clothing industry will not change, and may find other special ways to live, but the demand for customers is still to be dig deep, and it is necessary to find their own positioning and find ways to meet the different needs of consumers.
Yang Dazhao: I have seen a lot of customized startups in the past two years, but I understand that the biggest conclusion is: Why is there no money? This is a very unexpected place for me. I started to wonder if customization is a real or a pseudo requirement. Let’s take a look at this issue. Does customization really need civilians? For a group with a monthly income of only one or two thousand, three or four thousand, do you really need a tailor-made suit of one or two thousand dollars? Does his life scene have an opportunity to showcase this product? This question leads us to think again, is there a chance to customize the civilian population? Anyway, I didn’t see the money making. This is for sure. The money that burns investors is also groping.
The second question, as far as the apparel industry is concerned, what do you need to subvert this industry? In fact, it only needs patience to wait. The time I am patiently waiting for actually refers to the need to do technological innovation.
To give you a simple example, the future development of the apparel industry requires several key technical aspects:
First, how to display my products directly in the Tmall store through 3D and AR technology after designing, and in the process of display, we call it pre-sale, pre-sale, and then drive the background. Supply chain manufacturing, but what needs to be changed in this link? I talked with Ma Shuji of Beijing Institute of Clothing a few days ago. After this technology matures, school educationIt will change completely, because the grades you have learned in the seasons are useless, there is no value, you need to carry out 3D design under the premise of big data, and the 3D design picture changes the elasticity of the fabric and the fiber into the background data. It is not a simple two-dimensional data. The consumer selects this product online. What does he drive after he clicks? He drives automatic sampling, which drives automatic machine manufacturing and automatic 3D printing. The designer does not need it. The pattern maker does not need it, and the sample is not needed. When this technology can be implemented, the tradition of the clothing industry will change. After this stage arrives, I think that customization will become profitable, but before the above technology has become a common phenomenon, the current customization is still in the process of exploration and understanding. . And in this process of understanding and understanding, it has very few requirements for the back-end supply chain.
I have done a lot of investment and mergers and acquisitions over the years, but the final result I found a question: Why are it difficult for entrepreneurs in our clothing industry to get the money from venture capital? Because people in our industry started with manuscripts and painting clothes, starting with sheep and cotton, starting with yarn dyeing and fabric accessories, and then filming the film for sale. All the links in the middle, any one link is not done well, your products can not be sold, the industry chain of this industry is too long, the chain of industry chain is too strong, so it is difficult to meet in this industry. Young entrepreneurs can get the money from venture capital with their laptops and programming. It is very difficult to make a famous brand quickly after the brand goes online.
Just customized in Berlin, customization is a must in the future, but it is really necessary to understand a question first. Is it a supplement to normal consumption or a personalized one? This is very crucial. Normalized consumption supplements may account for 70%-80% of sales in hundreds of billions of dollars, and personalized supplements only account for 20%-30% of sales of hundreds of billions. Of course, this ratio can be expanded in the future and chosen by consumers. I see Berlin’s customization is to choose colors, patterns, different patterns, clothing styles, the last one to place an order, received this product, such a chain does have great value. What process is needed when this value is slowly becoming more diverse? Because after all, the current society is the era of consumer-led consumption, what consumers like and what they want, basically by consumers themselves. Our supply chain, our manufacturing, is just helping consumers achieve their aspirations to satisfy them. This process has to be realized. It is really not an easy task. I have participated in many such activities and I have seen many technology companies are working hard in this direction. They have broken through the difficulties in technology and need a process. . But I think in the long run, this customization will definitely have an expansion in the retail and sales of traditional clothing, but it will take a little while.
Berlin: Today, I saw a lot of suit customization. We saw that many men’s wear brands have invested a lot in these four or five years.The money is added to the suit customization. General Yang said that it is particularly real. It is not so much to make money, but more to invest in the future. In the meantime, I am also thinking about what kind of needs are customized to meet? What kind of people need to be customized? We strongly agree that in the entire Chinese market, in the apparel industry, there is still a certain distance between consumers to directly customize this matter, especially compared with the overall customized market in the West.
At this stage, before the implementation of self-customization in the future, customization is just a tool to change the supply chain. This tool was originally used for the B-end. For example, Suning Liang’s general introduction may be to the B-side retailer. Or a brand, or someone with data. As a retailer, or as a brand, do a short amount of small-volume market testing, which was not capable of doing this before the supply chain was not custom-made. Now with new technology, you can do these attempts.
Of course, there is a time from B-side customization to future mass customization, but in the middle of this, we can do a lot of supply chain, including making a huge change to the marketing industry. People who have previously done marketing or dealerships in the apparel industry will be removed, and this process will change a lot. The customization we talked about today is not necessarily a step-by-step approach to C-side customization. It is a slow process. There is a tool to make the industry and the supply chain change. Let the B-end get the value and then do some upgrades. . In the future, perhaps after the customization has developed to a very high level, everyone in the room can become a designer and design their own things.
Moderator: Perhaps for the audience present, they are more concerned about the current market changes, what does it mean for themselves? When the finalization of the whole chain is still far away, what are the challenges that I face as a brand and manufacturer? What changes and responses do I need to make?
Berlin: From the top upstream manufacturers of the apparel supply chain, there is still a long way to go from the manufacturer to the smart factory. Although we can see the development of some factories like Shenzhou International in the direction of intelligence, investing a lot in new machines and software, but in fact, 90% or higher ratio is still very traditional. I have seen many production plants, and each production process is manual.
In the morning, Ali’s colleagues shared very well. He probably shared three different stages of future intelligence. One is to simplify the 1.0 version. Let’s start with the fine art. A factory starts with a simple data line. The ERP system will increase the efficiency of the plant first. The second step is to gradually add some fine art transformations to enable some steps to realize intelligent production. When the volume and front end of the factory have certain requirements, upgrade and intelligentize. Renovation, so the whole process is not done overnight, but it must be slowly from all aspects of hardware and software.Both the consideration and the strategic planning are going in this direction. For a brand, it depends on what the brand’s business model is, or what the brand wants to bring to itself with this customization.
I have an analogy, like Adidas has been customizing for more than 20 years, since the beginning of the 20th year, and also invested millions of dollars to specialize in shoe custom production line, this production line is today a break even business line, and Adi The greater value of investing in this line is that you can get the customer’s consumption habits preferences and guide product design through customized business. Adi’s annual explosions are based on certain data analysis, which is also the advantage of customization.
Change a scene and talk about a street fashion. If you want to be a street fashion brand today, you must have a corresponding supply chain. Otherwise, it will not be able to rise in China. The social hotspot has changed from three months to one month and now one week. The hot spot of the last week does not come out this week, and there is no value. For brands, such a flexible supply chain can help you react quickly, one is to seize different hot spots, and the other is to maximize the value of various social hotspots.
So we have to customize the brand: like a suit, if it is a high-fix suit is valuable, if your market is three hundred and five hundred suits, this chat with the brand of the suit, they The customer is just a graduate student, just find a less expensive suit, wear OK, put on the right to buy immediately. If you make a tailored tailored suit, it is not a requirement for him. The first one is not customized or not necessarily customized by type or industry. Before you enter, be sure to consider the value that this thing gives me, what is the short-term, medium-term, and long-term, what value it brings to my brand. Whether it is a manufacturer or a brand, it needs to be considered.
Yang Dazhao: There are two problems with customization. You need to think clearly. First, you can only do what you can do now. Second, I can do what consumers want to do. This is very important. Now they are the former. I have a device, I can make a suit, and all customizations can only be highly standardized.
For example, consumers are likely to want the pattern I like, and it is difficult to get what I like. When I contacted Coolt before, Fosun was considering investing in them. Someone asked me, what did you think about this project? I read their entire business model plan, and after I saw it, I found a problem. Cool was perfect based on what he could do. For example, the automated assembly line, a large number of human body three-dimensional database, this is very comprehensive. But how do you realize that these hardware devices and data cost so much? In this process of realizing, I found that there is a link that is the place where it is killed. It is said that a 24-hour one-button can be issued, and guests can make choices and can customize and customize the products they want through big data.
I want toThe question is, where is the traffic? Because the most expensive is not to buy equipment, nor to obtain data from 3D human body, the most expensive is to obtain traffic. How do consumers log in to your platform to spend on it? I have seen a lot of equipment in this process so far, and it is not allowed. Because the current technology has to solve various indicators of the body, the amount is very accurate, either to strip off, wear special clothes, point to point. Now just sweep it, use two-dimensional to measure, or not, this is a problem.
The second is to let consumers go to the custom of the few people to become a popular custom that everyone can enjoy, the cost is not acceptable. I tried a custom company to give me a custom shirt. He took a taxi to our house and took thirty or forty minutes to make a shirt. The price of the shirt was 366 yuan. I asked him, how did you come over? He said that he came by taxi, took a taxi for 25 yuan, and went back to 50 yuan. The cost of the shirt was thrown away. He bought a shirt at the door. In fact, the retail price was only 400 yuan, throwing away the cost and doing it. One loss.
Doing customization, there is no difference between the cost of doing one piece and 10,000 pieces. This is the purpose of customization to achieve perfection. In this process, there are too many technological breakthroughs in textile and clothing, including shirt customization and pants customization. In fact, I want to explain a problem, you can do what you can do, or do what consumers want you to do. If you think that what you can do is a consumer trend, in the fashion industry, the importance of consumer ownership is more important than what you think.
Moderator: What role does technology play in the middle of customizing the issue from the niche to the masses?
Berlin: Technology allows customized production to enter large-scale industrial production, and on-demand production is something that must be achieved. We talk about customization, do not need any technology, go to Huaihai West Road today, walk into a tailor shop, tailor your clothes, make clothes for you, this is personal customization, he may only do three clothes in 24 hours, but today Cool, using a technical production line, it can achieve tens of thousands of items can be different, and there is no artificial error. We speak from a custom, from manual customization, and its cost is very important. Nowadays, shirts have the platform to make customized shirts, and the price of custom shirts is reduced to tens of dollars. The cost of real customization is really not so different from the cost of producing many pieces. It is really able to make this industry even more popular.
For example, do refrigerators, home appliances, add a LOGO, plus 15% price, customers will buy it. If you do something custom, this thing is doubled, or three times or more, unless you work with luxury goods, if you are an ordinary brand, it is difficult to meet such a premium. What kind of problem is the customized solution? Customized solution is that custom large-scale is to standardize customization to some extent. If you want to expand the volume in the industry, it must be scaled up, so there are some things that must be standardized.
The customization of the automotive industry is very far, but the standard architecture, the necessary parameters must be due to some machine science reasons, it must be customized. For example, the car is currently four wheels, each wheel makes some changes, but can not say where the wheel wants to be placed in the car, I just make an analogy.
Today’s clothing customization allows consumers to choose under certain specifications. The size and pattern of the clothes are different, but the type library can be standardized. In the case of standardized customization, only the production parameters of these products are put together. Although it is only one-piece production, there are 5,000 different shirts or suits that are produced on the same production line. At the same time, it may be that 5,000 pieces are the same, but each pattern is different. To achieve the effect of scale, it is required to identify which piece of clothing is in which step. Is this dress order one or three? If there is no system, it is impossible for people to find them in the pile of clothes.
Yang Dazhao: Future customization is a supplement to the future consumption pattern. Customization is definitely not a price, and the customization of the future must be consumer sentiment. For example, give my lover or my daughter a birthday, or the same thing wants to make it more content, meaning, fun, custom-made in this respect, the opportunity is often three hundred dollars than the shirt, or I have set a suit for 40,000 and now a thousand dollars. I think it is much bigger than this opportunity. Because of the customary understanding of the broad definition, the non-selective passive consumption that supplements traditional consumption, now becomes the chosen pattern can put its own name, this becomes more interesting, and the demand of this future market is more extensive.
In this aspect of suit customization, my main concern is not the price demand market. I wear a suit. I chose a brand and a famous brand. This suit has to be used in Paris or Italy for tens of thousands of pieces. This process does not add to the trouble. This process is to give consumers a sense of respect and respect for the product itself. Like Lamborghini, custom-made cars of more than 16 million yuan, basically two to three years, when you paint, let you choose the color, leave your signature, why do you “torture” consumers in the process? A person who can buy more than 10 million cars is not taking this car right away. What he wants is a wonderful and unique marketing experience. What advanced customization really wants is the feeling of marketing. It is not the clothes. If you spend tens of thousands of dollars to customize the suit, the high-end suits in the home must be especially large.
For a person with a monthly income of 10,000 people, even if you save a lot of links in the middle, I have been thinking about a problem. Is it necessary for him to wear a high-grade custom suit? If this is the case, we will look at the basic things in the store and the sales are very good. Because I think that in the Internet era, when consumers consume, what they want is that your innovation can save him time and give himBring more and shorter shopping pleasures, this is completely different from the emotional feelings brought by traditional customization. This is the tradition of hand-tailoring in the future, and there will be many people doing it with online customization. Online customization, like suits and high-standard products, will have a greater pressure to survive in the future. But the customization based on emotions and special traditional flexibility has interesting and fun prospects. You can try it. This prospect may be brighter in the future.
Because it is now the Internet age, consumers from the mindset of consumer products to consumer content, in fact, you see the basic T-shirt of Uniqlo, which is made interesting by the artist’s joint name. Consumers don’t want T-shirts, they don’t want cheap T-shirts, I want to make me feel interesting, interesting, and able to show off my own things.
Second, you see that all the clothes are in English. Why do everyone buy that thing? Because buying this means that we are a kind of person, that we are interesting people, we are a group of people, we are meaningful.
Standardized products must be interesting, which consumers want. People don’t want cheap shirts, or affordable suits, but T-shirts that make me interesting and wear them to get attention. The champion brand’s T-shirt, the company’s performance is very good, because all styles are its logo, nothing, consumers can mix and match, because consumers are different when you ask for different, but There is also a strong herd effect, so I asked for the same. In Sanlitun, Beijing, when I saw the opening of the Beijing Champion Store on the weekend, I would only do T-shirts when I did 6 million a day. It’s not a T-shirt. It’s all about standing on the streets of Sanlitun. Young people like me, I prove that they are as cool as you. This is the biggest difference in the transition from product consumption to content consumption. Customization is personalized and a supplement to emotions.
Berlin: For the street brand champion, the first product to buy is the coolest, especially distinctive. But after a week, when you watched the whole class wearing a champion, there was no idea of buying it. We talk about customization, one is to give consumers the choice, the other is that the entire supply chain has such a flexible supply chain that can support all your things. I can build a similar product in a short time. We have seen a lot of street fashion cards recently. After wearing the street, we will go down at once and then have new tide cards. But a flexible supply chain can meet this fast-changing demand.
Tang Jiamin: Thank you today for the wonderful sharing of Berlin General and Yang Dazhao. Our round table is over, thank you!