Wang Yiyang'S Creative Process: Focus On Design Brand

So far, most Chinese independent designers have put a lot of energy into fashion week, or integrated into the operation system of domestic fashion media, such as VOGUE.

However, Su Ran is not obsessed with this traditional way of promotion and marketing. Its only show was in the autumn and winter fashion week in Shanghai in 2012, and in accordance with its consistent style, T customers were not only professional models but also customers.

But the more practical reason behind this is that the cost of fashion week and show is high, but the effect is hard to estimate.

It is not economical for a medium-sized garment company with its own market segments.

But Wang Yiyang recently began to think about fashion week.

He found that in the past two years, more young designers and Showroom were emerging in Shanghai fashion week, and the industry chain became closer. The involvement of buyers in the two or three tier cities also interested him. These changes may bring more commercial value to fashion week.

As the earliest independent designer sample in China, Wang Yiyang has defined his unique growth path, which is located in a four story small building beside a 798 hidden trail. It is the newly opened office of ZUCZUG in Beijing.

The one or two floor is the exhibition space. The three or four floor is a wide studio with a couch of tatami. The top floor is a beautiful modern rooftop made of environment-friendly wood.

This is probably the most significant change since the company was founded in 2002.

Prior to that, its design and operation center has been in Shanghai.

"We will be more open to outside architects, photographers and designers," Huang Zhifeng said. "Beijing is a cultural center, and many of our founders are friends here.

In the future, this office will produce more possibilities. "

The founder he mentioned is the designer Wang Yiyang, who is not always mentioned behind the brand name.

In terms of design and fashion, Beijing is indeed replacing the brand that he once founded in Shanghai, and gradually emerging new studio communities, or new possibilities.

What we received was Huang Zhifeng, a 70 year old Fu Jian, who became a partner of Su ran brand since 2008. He used to be one of the earliest agents.

When he took out the rice flavor village snacks and the Arctic Ocean soda, he appeared to be seamlessly integrated into the daily culture of Beijing.

Such a daily culture has also become a distinct tone of its products.

Also recently, Su ran released a series of "hairdresser" themed products, including T-shirts, long skirts and cloth bags.

As in the past, it did not find stars and professional models, but worked with several new young photographers to take a video of a blue white neon pillar rotating around the door of an old state-run barber shop.

Relying on the rapid spread of this video on the Internet, "nothing" has been preliminarily successful.

The first thing that micro-blog was crazy about being forwarded by young people was su Ran's theme of "vegetable market" in 2012. It printed the fish and meat patterns on the T-shirts that Chinese people saw everyday, so that ordinary people in different industries could wear them, and photographed and videos with photographers.

The purpose of designing this series is just to give back to VIP customers, but has gained popularity in the spring and summer discount season.

Since then, discovering interesting products from life has become a regular series, such as "barber shop", and the zodiac theme "Ma Mou" and "White Snake" at the end of the year.

This brand is designed with this kind of design language highly praised by young people on the Internet, setting up a design style that looks different and deeply rooted in local culture.

At the same time, it has also achieved sustained commercial success.

Today, the retail sales amount to hundreds of millions of yuan, the annual growth of 30%, in the country has more than 80 shops, from Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou spread to the commercial real estate boom in Wuhan, Chengdu, Shenyang and other places.

The team grew from nearly 30 people to more than 100 people, and developed 5 product lines with different price ranges, ranging from 2000 to 4000 yuan, ranging from 1000 to 5000 yuan, and the audience ranges from 25 to 40 years old.

But 10 years ago, just like all designers, influenced by magazines, Wang Yiyang, who graduated from Donghua University shortly after, tried to imitate the routes of Western and Japanese designers. "But it wasn't until we went to that country to see its culture, architectural environment and fashion relations that we found that there was a misunderstanding about western design."

The "tea cup" series he created later was a breakthrough attempt - not to imitate western design, but to use western designer's work style to find inspiration from his own growth experience. Later, he took the series of "tea jar" series to participate in exhibitions of large and small scale.

"Tea jar" can be seen as a subtle exploration of Wang Yiyang's balance between personality and commerce, but there is still a certain distance from today's element.

His energy gradually shifted to more business potential.

In 2008, he decided to break through the pattern of traditional designers to fight alone, and gradually realized that "if a brand's supporting point is entirely based on designers, it will be very dangerous."

At this point, Huang Zhifeng became a new partner, helping to expand the channel.

The Wall Street journal once wrote that Wang Yi Yang has always been "a business minded designer."

"In pixels, there are so few local brands that focus on partner mechanisms, and 90 percent of designer brands are husband and wife."

Huang Zhifeng said.

In this way, the culture of the founder is still influencing the brand, but the channel and supply chain are controlled by more experienced people.

From the same year, Wang Yiyang set up his own design team, and took the concept of "design from life to imagination" as the basic idea.

He wants to develop his own designer from inside rather than looking for mature talent from outside.

He began to use ordinary people as models of print advertisements, and sought to create a relatively relaxed and unconstrained environment in store design.

The 5 product lines he developed is not based on the traditional age stage, but from the needs of life.

For example, the birth of the "zero" series stems from the rising demand for sports in urban life, emphasizing natural simplicity, and the sign language series of environmentally friendly materials is because he realizes that "environmental protection" and "Internet" are important directions for the future.

The designer team of 16 people is almost 80 or even 90.

Wang Yiyang values designers' personality and problem-solving skills rather than college and educational background.

"I don't deny personal traits because I don't like traditional design brands. In clothing design, personal traits are always the most important, but I hope it can be combined with life needs."

Wang Yiyang said.

When communicating with the design team, he also told them to put aside the traditional "show" imagination.

"Don't think about how it is displayed on the T platform or in the blockbuster. You have to imagine in your mind that a woman on the road or a bar, or a life scene of an ordinary person, must be a real environment."

In terms of pricing, the price of the "zero" series of 1000 yuan can make some young people who care about design also be able to.

The "sign language" with a slightly higher price is mainly targeted at women over the age of 40 who have economic strength.

With such a complete set of methodology and gradually mature internal ecosystem, it has completed the pformation from a designer brand to a design brand, and has identified the brand characteristics, which can reflect the design language of the contemporary era and design and life equally.

Gradually, few people mentioned Wang Yi Yang's name, but talked about it as a brand.

Wang Yiyang even joked with Huang Zhifeng, "to destroy me".

Huang Zhifeng's personal experience is complementary to Wang Yiyang.

As one of the earliest agents of clothing brand in China, Huang Zhifeng began to go to the Pearl River Delta clothing distribution center in 1990s.

After 2001, the way that many clothing brands were assembled in a building, so that he had the original capital accumulation agents separated from the street shops.

These local brands include the exceptions and elements that are now known.

He was also the first agent to expand the exceptional Street store to a 140 square meter shop.

The chain of designers, buyers and consumers began to splice together, giving young designers some room.

In that year, Wang Yiyang left the local fashion brand Layefe, which was founded by Chen Yifei, and then established his own brand name, which was later than the exception of the fashion brand founded by Marco, who graduated from Suzhou Silk Institute of technology and her then husband Mao Jihong, and 3E, another fashion designer Chen Xiang.

At first, Wang Yi Yang developed his business by working with a large department store in Shanghai.

Unlike Chinese designers who grew up in the global education system such as central Saint Martin or Parsons School of design, designers like him can face up to the local market and become authentic.

Characteristics.

There is another important change in China's garment industry in 2008.

The impact of traditional channels is weakening, such as Sanlitun Village (renamed Taigu) such shopping centers are rising, followed by Qiao Fu grass and old Buddha, and Shanghai's Xintiandi, K11, etc., have broken through the traditional department store mode, lifestyle, format or even decoration style to distinguish.

Su ran once again seized the opportunity.

Compared with 90% of the shops sold by the national distributor before 2008, the percentage decided to reduce the proportion to 70% and control the channel more.

Special products such as "nothing" and so on are placed in the design shop of the Arts Center, the buying shop of peppermint glutinous rice scallion, as well as YOHO!

At the same time, it also intends to control the scale of the shop expansion. In the 6 years, it only added 20 stores, because Huang Zhifeng found that "some brands are closed soon after they start shop, and we hope for healthy development."

According to store performance and pavement image, Su ran also set strict grading standards, namely, A1, A2, B, C1, C2 five grades, every three months to review a sub.

Class A is a direct store, and special products such as "nothing" series are usually distributed in these shops.

For example, this "barber shop" is only available in 30% of the shops nationwide.

Huang Zhifeng believes that this requires training for shop assistants, and shop design and plane cooperation with the third parties.

Most of the B categories are dealer shops, and C is a shop that needs rectification.

stay

Besides, Su Ran is still exploring how to make an electric business, and the Internet that brings inspiration to it has also challenged it.

"In the future, we should consider that our online stores should be reduced from distributors' control, and the ideal proportion is 40% of Direct stores."

Su ran was preparing for online stores two years ago. Huang Zhifeng hopes that it will be successfully launched in 2015 - an online service that is not just a simple online payment and WeChat opening, which considers itself an Internet based department store.

Before that, Su ran must first solve a series of possible problems, such as profit distribution, supply chain support and so on.

Su Ran has grown into a medium-sized garment Brand Company. Another challenge is the loss of individuality, that is, how to protect the brand while expanding the scale.

This is the problem that Chinese independent designers, such as Shang Zhe and Zhou Xiangyu, are not going to encounter, but they are the drawbacks that team creation may face.

Su Ran has been exploring how to build a business brand while maintaining creativity.

In terms of brand maintenance and business balance, Huang Zhifeng was inspired by Wakubo Rei's model. This designer continued the early avant-garde in the show. At the same time, the development of sub line Black and Play thoroughly pursued real wear and was also an important source of income.

She also opened her own retail store, Dover Street Market, selling other young designers in addition to her own brand.

This is naturally an ideal state, but it is also another possibility.

Wang Yiyang has been working with several stores in Shanghai to collaborate with Van Gogh's store furniture. In the second half of this year, there will be two new series of cooperation with peripheral designers and artists.