In Depth Report: The Increasingly Cruel Environment Designer Brand May Not Have Spring.

The fashion industry is driven by creativity, but in a more ruthless "jungle world", designer brand is no longer related to the core interests of the giant.

The designer brand is after all an oligarchy.

Now, luxury brands seem to no longer favor designer brands, and the latter's independent survival is also a big question mark.

Recently, the frequent designer brand news has brought the public's attention to the difficult situation of designer brand.

And the protagonist is not a young designer who has been involved in the "business world", but a designer brand who has been working hard for years and has laid a solid foundation.

Within 6 months, Stella McCartney, Christopher Kane, Dries Van Noten, Tomas Maier and other designer brand equity have changed.

Some of them were sold off, others were acquired and lost independence.

In view of the complex market environment, people can no longer decide what the future of designer brand is.

However, this is based on the inevitable result of the business model, and there is virtually no choice between the two sides.

17 years after the opening of the group, the British designer Stella McCartney announced in March this year that it would buy back 50% of the shares held by Kai Yun group.

This means that Stella McCartney will become an independent brand again.

There seems to be no compromise in the "peaceful breakup".

In the statement, Stella McCartney showed her desire for independent operation. She said, "it is an opportunity that she can not refuse to withdraw the shares of Kai Yun group and let the brand go back to its independent operation", and stressed that this does not mean that she and Kai Yun group will go their separate ways, and will continue to cooperate with Kai Yun group in sustainable fashion.

The success of Stella McCartney is partly due to its design talent, but on the other hand, it is closely related to its two generation identity.

The most direct motive for this paction is the plan of the group to divest its group's performance.

Popularly speaking, it is to sell those businesses that are "not enough to make money" and can not contribute quickly to a beautiful financial report.

The relationship between luxury brands and designer brands is a constant game. As one of the most successful designer brands, Stella McCartney is no exception.

Since the establishment of the brand by Kai Yun group and Stella McCartney in 2001, the two have been discussing the cooperative relationship continuously, but there has been no result.

Among the designer brands, Stella McCartney is the best among them.

But once it is put in the brand matrix of Kai Yun group, Stella McCartney will not be enough.

Although the group has never released the specific sales data of Stella McCartney, the brand's share in the total revenue of the group is far less than that of Gucci, Saint Laurent and other core brands.

In fact, the intention behind Kai Yun group has been traced back earlier this year.

In January 12th this year, Kai Yun group lowered its Puma share to 16%, and said that distributing Puma shares to shareholders is an important milestone in the group's history. The group will devote itself to the luxury industry.

Then, the open cloud group, which is more ambitious, began to accelerate its subtraction.

In April, Kai Yun group announced its last non luxury brand and outdoor sports brand Volcom seeking sale, which is similar to Puma because it is no longer the core asset.

The latest group is selling designer brand Christopher Kane, which sells 51% shares to its designer.

According to relevant statements, Kai Yun group has begun to discuss with Christopher Kane the conditions for the latter to withdraw the overall control of the brand, and the two sides will continue to cooperate to gradually achieve the shareholding ratio.

In 2006, Christopher Kane created the brand of the same name, and sold the shares to Kai Yun group in 2013.

In order to focus more on luxury goods business against LVMH, just two days ago, designer Tomas Maier's personal name brand was declared closed by the group.

Tomas Maier can continue to enjoy the brand name and trademark rights. However, Tomas Maier, who has worked for Kai Yun group for 17 years and has just stepped down as the creative director of Bottega Veneta, has doubtfully suffered a double blow.

Capital, which is a double-edged sword, can provide designer's brand with "survival", but it is also a kind of "fatal" consumption for its creative core.

Luxury giant defense investment buys designer brand, but as long as the brand can not make money, it will be sold or even shut down.

This kind of investment may be just a "small game" for the luxury giant, but it is a major decision for the designer's brand and a key golden age for designer's brand.

Stella McCartney, because of its special star and two generation background, has developed very smoothly in fashion design career. The brand of the same name was also invested by Kai Yun group at the very beginning. It belongs to the designer brand with a high degree of commercialization and scale.

It should be emphasized that designer brands that can reach the level of Stella McCartney development are rare.

The cruelest fact is that in recent years, Kai Yun group, which is the main driver of sustainable development, would rather lose the Stella McCartney's "green fashion" brand and the brand. It can be seen that the group's extreme desire for growth and the designer's brand have become a weakness.

All along, designer brand has been appreciated by luxury group and is regarded as an endorsement of its commercial value.

Commercial capital is an accelerator, its mission is to "urge long", so that the rapid expansion of the brand and commercialization, but also allows the brand to help the group's resources, save a lot of trial and error and time costs.

For example, last year, Marine Serre, the winner of the LVMH youth Designer Award, expanded the team from 3 to 16 in the past year. The number of buyer shops signed with the brand grew 3 times to 70 stores.

But this is not always the case.

Because the group resources are concentrated on the core luxury brands, most designer brands can only be marginalized when they are bought.

Dictated by the group's strategic management, it also limits the right of the brand to make free decisions. Such clamping will sometimes affect the most creative production of the brand, and the pressure of brand performance may also make the design department conservative and reduce the design breakthrough.

This is precisely the luxury consumer's biggest consumption of designer brand, which is to make designer brand lose its core attributes.

After all, design means continuous breakthroughs and uncertainties, while business seeks a replicable business model and a mass production design to get the fastest return.

More designer brands also become cannon fodder in commercial games.

Jil Sander, Helmut Lang, John Galliano, Roland Mouret and other brands after being acquired into mediocrity is a warning.

In the history of fashion, Paul Poiret and Andr e Courr ges also had the same situation.

For some designer brands for many years, they can not be blamed solely on designers' ability, but also because of poor management and lack of attention.

At present, the hasty luxury group has limited patience with the mature designer brand with poor performance.

Even the star designer Marc Jacobs has become a big hidden danger in LVMH's mind. Due to its low performance, it has been sold for several times.

Because of this, many designers are very clear about the passive situation after being acquired, so they are more willing to remain independent rather than being domesticated by luxury magnates.

In particular, Dries Van Noten, which relies on the garment business to support the independent operation of the brand, is an ideal benchmark for students of design department in all fashion colleges.

But now, this belief has begun to be shaken, which surprised the industry.

The sale of Dries Van Noten has been a major shock in fashion lovers recently.

The Belgian designer recently announced that he sold most of his stake to Puig, a Spanish perfume group. He still holds a minority stake and continues to serve as chief creative officer and chairman of the board.

People used to think that Dries Van Noten was the most unlikely brand to abandon independent operation. He did not cater to the fashion industry trend.

Transition series, "cash cow" perfume, electricity suppliers, advertising, which are reshaping the trend of fashion industry, he never followed.

And his products are sold in only a few stores, stubbornly adhering to the marketing strategy which is totally different from the luxury brands of large shops.

In his personal documentary Dries, he once said, "large luxury brands are becoming more and more important. They have bought all the small designer brands, and McQueen, Jil Sander and Helmut Lang have been sold.

The fashion world is changing rapidly, accessories become more and more important, and fashion is becoming more and more cold.

But I do not want to sell my brand, and do not want to cater for this world full of accessories, shoes, handbags and other icy products.

On the contrary, I will insist more on what I represent, that is, the lightness of technology and fashion.

However, Dries Van Noten also admitted in a media interview that business has brought great trouble to it.

In March of this year, Dries Van Noten said that it hired Vend financial me Global Partners, New York's financial advisor, to look for external investors for its brand. At that time, many fashion groups and private equity funds showed interest, and eventually took over from the Puig group, which originally owned a small number of brands.

Many people were surprised by the result.

Puig group's main business is perfume, although it owns Nina Ricci, Paco Rabanne and other designer brand, but fashion is not its main business.

In combination with Dries Van Noten's earlier remarks, its antipathy to perfume and other icy products is in sharp contrast to the brand's current destination.

Some analysts say that although a large group like Puig can bring more extensive sales network to Dries Van Noten, as the designer said, "better serve consumers", Puig group may not be able to improve the quality of Dries Van Noten, because most of its designer brands are not popular.

This may also provide an explanation for Dries Van Noten to sell its brand to Puig.

Instead of selling the brand to luxury magnates and accepting the growth pressure of the group, it is better to let Puig take over the higher brand acceptance of the designer's brand and keep the brand's "small and beautiful" tonality, while freeing the designer from the tedious brand management and commercial pressure.

With the fast fashion low pricing mechanism and the luxury brand's "encirclement and suppression" independent designer's survival space, in the Six Gentlemen of Antwerp, besides Walter van Beirendonck, Ann Demeulemeester and Dries Van Noten, other designers have few movements in recent years, and Martin Margiela has officially retired.

Coincidentally, Italy luxury knitting brand Missoni issued a statement saying that it has sold a minority stake to private Holdings Company FS Mid-Market Growth Equity Fund.

The fund will hold 41.2% of the shares, and the Missoni family will continue to own the remaining shares.

Although it can not be classified as designer brand in a strict sense, Missoni has been keeping family business for a long time. The abandonment of independent operation seems to imply that the survival environment of small independent brands is more and more difficult.

Of course, fashion.

There is no lack of solid independent designer brand.

Rick Owens and Wakubo Rei have maintained good development over the years with loyal customers. Especially the latter has achieved more business success with the Dover Street Market of the buyer's shop, and Dover Street Market is also a small number of profitable buyer shops nowadays.

It is noteworthy that Wakubo Rei has constantly put forward new ideas in clothing design, and his brand is also unique in management and management, which is rare in the industry.

She emphasized that Comme des Gar ons is a creative company, but it still can not ignore business elements, because design means business.

Raf Simons, J.W. Anderson and Thom Browne can be considered as prominent representatives of our peers.

Among them, Raf Simons and J.W. Anderson founder Jonathan Anderson are creative directors in Calvin Klein and Loewe respectively, and LVMH holds a minority stake in J.W.Anerson.

Thom Browne was acquired by Sandbridge Capital, a private equity fund under Tommy Hilfiger in 2016, with an annual income of $100 million.

At present, the independent British brand Erdem has created $13 million annual sales with high-end loyal customers.

Azzedine Alaia, who died in November last year, is known for its "outsider" status in its fashion system.

In 2000, he sold the brand to Prada group and bought it back in 2007.

Azzedine Alaia has always pursued the pursuit of perfectionism, not following the rhythm of the fashion industry today, without regular fashion releases.

However, after the death of the designer, Azzedine Alaia, as the brand, is still continuing. The group has opened shop in succession, or intends to make further commercial expansion, but all these are no longer related to the designer himself.

More often than not, designer brands are barely surviving and are always at risk in a rapidly changing market.

Earlier, Nicolas Ghesquiere, Alber Elbaz and Stefano Pilati all came out to launch personal brand news, but they all ended without any reason, because the difficulty of creating and running independent brands.

Most of them compete for luxury brands with capital strength.

Alexander Wang, a designer of the same name, is also beset by turbulence and management problems within the group.

In October of last year, Alexander Wang decided to let go after being a personal brand creative director and CEO for a year, replaced by Goop original CEO Lisa Gersh.

In 2015, he resigned as Balenciaga creative director and decided to focus on his brand.

At present, the designer of the mature brand is struggling, but there is no potential new designer brand in the market for a long time.

This may prove that it is easy to create a brand nowadays, but it is more difficult to stand in the market than before.

Peter Copping, the Oscar brand successor, has publicly stated that designer brand has no chance, and the industry has not given too much space to the new brand.

In the past, luxury brands enhanced brand innovation through acquiring designer brands. Now they are more willing to directly recruit designers to be the creative directors of major luxury brands, thereby reducing the group's investment costs.

For designers, this is undoubtedly a rare good opportunity, but the price is often sacrificed for personal brand investment time, or even shut down personal brand.

Dior Kris Van Assche, former creative director of men's wear, actively shutting down personal brands for dedicated work.

Earlier this year, LVMH suddenly replaced Kris Van Assche and pferred to Berluti's strategic personnel changes.

More recently, Vetements has been greatly influenced by creative director Demna Gvasalia's entry into Balenciaga.

According to the analysis, Demna Gvasalia will devote more effort to Balenciaga instead of Vetements's product innovation. Others argue that under similar aesthetic system and price, people are more willing to buy Balenciaga with higher visibility, resulting in a sharp decline in Vetements performance and a large discount sale.

After clarifying the business logic of the current market, the designer's brand is at present.

The contradiction of the situation is also obvious.

Less profitable designer brands are in urgent need of capital pfusion in a more complex market environment, but luxury goods giants seem no longer willing to acquire designer brands.

Kai Yun has stepped up the stripping of designer brands, while LVMH on the other side has slowed down the pace of acquisitions.

According to Bloomberg's earlier analysis, more than 70 brands of LVMH have no intention of acquiring new brands. The current focus is on how to manage these brands and enhance the competitiveness of the first tier brands.

The recent group's emphasis on Dior and C line is the embodiment of this strategy.

Fashion headline earlier commented that fashion

Seemingly more and more irregular, but in fact, the fashion retail format is undergoing profound changes. The era of oligopoly is coming. Luxury fast fashion and electricity giants are expanding the market share, leaving the time and space of "small and beautiful" more and more limited.

Whether it is the Colette store or the difficult operation of Italy's 10 Corso Como, the buyer's shop, which provided free display platform for designers, was reluctant to take care of themselves, while the designer brand relied on the orders of these buyers' stores every season.

A slight reduction in the number of orders may hurt designer brand's unstable foundation.

Earlier data show that in the Chinese market, one hundred designer brands can only live one.

The fashion industry is driven by creativity, which will never change.

But imagining an increasingly cruel "jungle world", single handedly designers may struggle to save their lives, even if they expect to live small and beautiful, they will need some luck.

Whether the designer's brand is independent or not, it inevitably becomes part of the capital game.

In a sense, when a designer creates a brand, it means losing the brand.