Luxe.Co Series Report | Reinventing Established Fashion Company of China: PEACEBIRD Rejuvenated

The growth of the China fashion industry has a rather brief history, whereby fashion brands with 10-20 years could count as established brands. These established China fashion brands continue to face strong internal and external challenges as consumers evolve:

• Internal Challenges: Overcoming the development bottleneck caused by the brand lifecycle and the traditional supply chain pattern
• External Challenges: Competing with international fast fashion giants and luxury brands, as well as new and emerging domestic fashion brands

How will these established China fashion brands innovate and reinvent themselves to overcome these challenges?

Under “Luxe.Co Series Report | Reinventing Established Fashion Company of China”, this time, we will explore the strategies and actions taken to reinvent and evolve PEACEBIRD, a prudent and traditional fashion brand, into a leading young, modern and trendy fashion brand.

In our interview with PEACEBIRD, they shared the latest challenges faced by the China fashion industry:

1. Comprehensive upgrade and rejuvenation of established fashion brands, from design to marketing
2. Precise alignment of design and research to market feedback data
3. Effective establishment of an omni-channel approach (online and offline) in a fast-evolving retail environment
4. Successful influence of the mindset of the more informative new generation of customers.

From Design, Marketing to Visual Communication

Maintaining the New Generation Customers

Positioning in Design

Peacebird’s innovation starts from the design stage, by targeting young generation customer profiles and their lifestyle.

At Peacebird’s "Live on Stage" womenswear fashion show for AW2017, they invited the new generation idols including Chunxia, Zhang Xueying, Li Qin and Li Xian as a voice for the Youth. The fashion show was divided into four parts: “Time and Space Echo”, “Retro Journey”, “Rebel Smoke” and “Punk Declaration”, promoting a vanguard and trendy image.

Learn from Overseas Experiences

Peacebird invested in Alexis Mabille, a French haute couture brand in 2015. By investing in overseas brands, Peacebird acquired international operation experience and improved product design capabilities.  It also provided an avenue for them to acquire international fashion resources and promote a domestic fashion brand globally with the aim of becoming an international fashion brand.

While Alexis Mabille has a niche market with its haute couture compared to Peacebird’s wide market positioning of “let everyone enjoy fashion”, there are opportunities for introducing cross-over products, especially in marketing French haute couture to a large domestic China market.

Cross-over Cooperation

Peacebird started working on developing cross-over products since 2014, and in the AW2017 fashion show, Peacebird and Pepsi presented their first cross-over collection. Peacebird also launched collections targeting youth culture, for example, Emoji collection, weird duck menswear collection, Mini Peace “Cars” Cartoon kids wear collection, and the LED’IN collection with celebrity Huang Jingyu.

Young Designers Team

The average age of the Fashion Design team at Peacebird is 28 years old. This enables a closer alignment between the design team production and the fashion needs of their youthful target market.

There is also a focus on encouraging youthful spirit and dynamism. Peacebird’s staff and customers are known as “Birdmen”, in which “Birdmen” invokes the spirit and passion for trendy fashion with an independent character and loyalty to essence.

Birdmen Community

In addition to the marketing strategy of youth culture communication, Peacebird also integrates into the social life of young customer groups by running Birdmen community and brand activities. For example, Peacebird developed music related brand marketing activities including music festivals, campaign model’s playlist sharing, and music related fashion products.

In 2016, Peacebird celebrated its 20th anniversary with a Birdmen Music Festival, focusing on dramatic and passionate electronic music and graffiti to interact with young fans. Hosting this festival is an important part of Peacebird's strategy on brand rejuvenation.

Peacebird employees also set up a "love nest" community, which regularly organizes environmental activities, sports and activities supporting poor children in remote areas.

Leverage on KOL’s Influence

In online marketing, Peacebird stressed the influence and power of fashion KOLs. Peacebird works with many fashion bloggers, KOLs and celebrities making styling influence on young customer groups.

In addition, Peacebird also set up an "online KOLs" division, focusing on social media content marketing and entertainment marketing.

Balancing Pan-Entertainment Marketing and Fashion

At present, the young generation customer groups in the fashion industry have more and more personalized appeal, which provides more opportunities for fashion marketing.

Peacebird stated that they always prioritize fashion between entertainment and fashion, although the current fashion is also going through a process of pan-entertainment. The general principle of Peacebird's marketing strategy is to consider fashion vision before entertaining.

Young Visual Communication

Whether it is an external campaign, or a Tmall online flagship store, or an official website, Peacebird always select models with a “young and international” look. Through visual planning and communication, Peacebird aims to align itself closer to the younger generation.

For example, Peacebird womenswear selected Molly Bair, Natalie Westling, Ruth Bell, Sora Choi and other popular "Cool" models to shoot fashion campaign photos. They also hired international renowned photographer Josh Olins, who worked with the Burberry and Tory Burch campaigns previously, to raise their brand image to international fashion standards.

Flexible Supply Chain: Improve Market Response Ability

Internet developed many “Tao” brands in the China fashion industry. At the same time, the development of information technology accelerated apparel manufacturers' flexible supply chain management, and improved the sensitivity and agility of their supply chain response to market demand changes.

Peacebird believes that a flexible supply chain is a key area for innovation, and one which the China fashion industry can learn from the global fashion industry. Equally as important is for Peacebird’s products to accommodate China’s market conditions, consumer preferences and emotional resonance.

Quick Data Response

Peacebird innovates its supply chain by building a more vertically integrated business model to achieve accelerated access to sales terminal information, direct feedback to the design department to create more trendy products.

For example, Peacebird developed professional design information systems to integrate all brick-and-mortar stores into the network platform management, including information release, electronic ordering and point of sales. According to real-time data, Peacebird is able to capture the daily sales and stock data, provide customer feedback to the back end, adjust production and supply plan, and speed up the high frequency of new stock arrivals.

Mr. Zhang Jiangping, the Chairman of Peacebird stated that they are applying a “more styles, less quantities” approach. They will only make orders at 60-70% of total quantities, and will make further production decisions based on market feedback with sales data.

Quick Inspiration

In the fast fashion industry, the rapid market response mechanism also requires the designer's keen inspiration and rapid understanding of pop culture.

In addition to the company management’s regular overseas visits to learn from global fashion professionals and markets, Peacebird is also operating a fashion university project. Through attracting overseas designers to the company and sending staff overseas for assignments, Peacebird aims to enhance and reinforce its core design capabilities.

Intelligent Logistics & Automation

In addition to streamlining online and offline supply channels, Peacebird also built its own intelligent logistics base to achieve a more effective integration of distribution and warehousing.

1. "BELT picking MODEL" Very Narrow Aisle (VNA) forklift automatic navigation optimization system
2. Automatic conveyor system with a length of nearly 2000 meters to handle containers
3. Customized logistics information system
4. Peacebird’s "Cloud Warehouse" ordering system to connect goods distribution between the main warehouse and retail stores. Online orders will be fulfilled by the nearest warehouse.

Enhance Experience and Back to Essence in the New Retail Environment

Multi-Brand Stores in Major Cities

In the new retail environment with omni channel approaches, Peacebird launched in 2016 its strategy of opening multi-brand stores in major cities in China.

"Peacebird Board Meeting Annual Report 2016" showed that during the reporting period, Peacebird’s retail store development prioritized the optimal distribution structure, and planned distribution in major city core business areas and emerging channels.

Peacebird stated that the purposes of opening multi-brand stores are as follows:

• To bring new shopping experiences to the customers
• To build an interacting platform with customers
• To communicate and promote the brand image
• To discover new retail models and customers’ lifestyle

Peacebird opened its second multi-brand store at Wanda shopping mall on Chuhehan Street in Wuhan in April 2017. Peacebird’s IP was also included. Peacebird stated that the store's current operation and efficiency was satisfactory, and the brand promoting effect was significant as well.

As a conclusion, we would like to quote a speech by Mr. Zhang Jiangping, the chairman of Peacebird, at their annual meeting at the end of 2016:

“We are all talking about new retailing. It is to build the interaction and communication between our brands and our customers. We need to maintain positive attitude and embrace the new channels. The so-called change refers to new tools and new approaches. In fact, from the ability of human thinking, it is not complicated at all. These can be mastered through learning. We still need to work on the essence of the business, how to make the price/fashion ratio to the optimal.”

| Chinese reporter : Sun Ying