＂Boss＂ Edison Chen and his trendy business

Tiger Sniff Note: This article comes from WeChat official account small dining table, ID: xfz008. Article author Ruoxi Xu.

In the summer of 1996, at the age of 16, Edison Chan planned to leave Hong Kong and return to Canada to study.

After seven years by his father’s side and still not finding a sense of security, he seems to have adapted to such a migration. Along with him are the few close friends he has gained in Hong Kong in the past few years.

Perhaps out of resentment, anger, and a vague admiration for his father, who was too busy with business to ignore him, Edison Chen said to his friends before leaving: "It would be great if we started a company together in the future."

At that time, Chen Edison, like all teenagers who encountered family discord, chose to rebel. What was different was that he had an innate obsession more than ordinary people: making money.

"Hip-Hop became my father, became my mother, it told me not to trust anyone, not to depend on anyone. Life is hard, you have to be cold. Do everything well, you have to make money. It doesn’t matter if you lose your family, you have brothers." During his years in Canada, street culture was the best home he thought he could find, and Edison Chen later chose to open a tide brand store, which is rooted in this.

After the "Pornography Door" incident, he found that the things that could give him a sense of security were still the same: the Hip-Hop brothers, and the trendy brand stores that could make him money.

Condensation Group (CLOTFAMILY), a trendy trading company that opened on a whim, became his only reliance after his father went bankrupt and he was caught in the whirlpool of public opinion. He caught up with the trend, even if he was not old-fashioned in doing business, but in the end, with his dutiful and hard-working spirit, the company has developed silently. It has been an established company for 14 years.

In the past ten years, Edison Chen has often appeared in the mainland, and CLOT’s trendy brand stores JUICE and JUICE STAND have locations in Shanghai, Beijing, Chengdu, Changsha, etc. In early 2017, CLOT took a tens of millions of yuan in financing from Hupu Sports, demonstrating Edison Chen’s ambition for the domestic trendy brand market.

In view of the common domestic "three years a small fall, five years a big fall" start-up company survival miserable, compared with many popular blessing, but ultimately unable to escape the fate of bankruptcy of star companies, CLOT does have its own advantages.

For example, the "ability to get goods" has become a big reason why Edison Chen’s trendy brand store JUICE is unique in the eyes of fans. "For example, the limited edition sneakers that VLONE cooperated with Nike only gave 250 pairs in the whole mainland, while Edison Chen can get 500 pairs," an investor told the small dining table.

"Why are big brands willing to cooperate with us? It’s very simple, as long as the clothes I wear are easy to sell," Edison Chen once said publicly. Although it is inevitable to be arrogant, at least it shows that since his first day as a star, he has been thinking about how to quickly monetize his popularity.

In mid-August, Edison Chen quietly came to Beijing again to stand for a cooperation between CLOT and VLONE. At the same time, his new company in China, INNERSECT, a tide culture communication platform, also confirmed that it would complete 10 million-level financing in June, and the investor was Qianshan Investment.

Edison Chen was moved

In 2003, Edison Chen and his childhood friend Pan Shiheng came to Tokyo, and after being introduced by friends, they met Hiroshi Fujiwara, the founder of the trendy brand GE, known as the "godfather of Harajuku".

At that time, Tokyo had long been the "tide capital" of the whole of Asia due to its early absorption of European and American culture. At that time, Hong Kong was very popular in Japanese trendy clothing, but there were few specialty stores. A piece of clothing sold for 700 Hong Kong dollars in Japan, and a parallel version sold for 1,700 Hong Kong dollars in Hong Kong. The two young people spent two or three months here. One day, Fujiwara Hiroshi said to Chen Edison, you like our clothes so much, why don’t you open your own store?

Remember that Edison Chen once revealed in an interview that he usually reads books, among which the marketing guru Gladwell’s "Tipping Point" touched him the most. Gladwell said, "If you do something first, there is a 99% chance of success."

Although today’s trendy business in China has developed at an unimaginable speed, with various themes such as metal, graffiti, military, and death, whether grandiose or low-key, players take what they need and enjoy it. But at that time, it was still a business that not many people noticed.

Obviously, when Fujiwara said that, Edison Chen was moved.

After returning to Hong Kong, Chen Edison and Pan Shiheng moved quickly. On May 20 of that year, they opened their own trendy store JUICE on the second floor of a building on Paterson Street in Causeway Bay, selling some agent trendy brand clothing, including Undefeated, VisVim, Nike, Subware, Recom, etc. At the same time, they also joined forces with some well-known brands to launch limited products – shoes "KISS OF DEATH" in cooperation with Nike, jeans in cooperation with LEVIS, limited edition bear dolls, etc.

To Chen Edison’s delight, Gladwell’s words were true, because he was the first to eat crabs, and the sales rate of all cooperative limited-edition products reached 95%.

In the operation of the company, he and Pan Shiheng serve as the creative director and the executive director respectively, and each has their own division of labor. Chen Edison always has a lot of whimsical ideas, and some design work will be carried out by himself, and he is also good at going abroad to find tide brand suppliers to get goods – after all, as a former Hip-Hop brothers group, most of the tide brand suppliers in Europe and the United States are brothers he has known for many years. The business negotiation and subsequent project landing are in charge of Pan Shiheng.

In terms of store management model, Edison Chen’s important insistence on the CLOT brand is not to distribute, so until now, CLOT’s genuine clothing can only be purchased in major branches, official websites and exclusive cooperative e-commerce platforms. In 2006, after CLOT entered the mainland, it divided the store operations in mainland China and Hong Kong into two independent systems, which operated separately, but the supply of goods was unified, all from Edison Chen, and the price was also unified globally.

One is responsible for opening the brain and the other is pragmatically doing a good job as a professional manager. Edison Chen and his partner have been cooperating smoothly in business. Even after the "pornographic photo door" incident, the business has not been greatly affected. According to media reports, the annual revenue of each business sector of CLOT has reached 10 million US dollars.

Chen Edison’s early business was indeed an important factor in his ability to win the first pot of gold. Around 2013 was the peak period for various celebrities to open stores and do trendy brand business, while the prescient Chen Edison was 10 years early.

The evolution of subcultures to the masses

The rise of trendy brands may have started with the decline of luxury goods. In 2014, China’s luxury goods market suffered its first decline in eight years, falling by 115 billion yuan from the previous year. Since then, the luxury goods industry has been struggling in China.

For a long time, the attitude of Chinese consumers who are full of wallets in the face of luxury goods is that trust is far more than picky. As the new generation of consumers born in the 1980s and 1990s has the voice over the consumer market, the luxury goods industry with weak design, rigid supply chain and operation model is facing a reshuffle.

Last year, the founder of the Spanish fast fashion brand Zara, Amancio, was once again the richest man in the world. At the same time, brands such as Ralph Lauren, Coach, and MK are facing a trend of closing their stores, or have to adopt a wide range of price reduction strategies to passively participate in the intense competition brought about by the iteration of this new consumer concept.

The diversion of cultural trends to consumer groups has allowed big names to step down from the altar. The newly emerging consumers are a group of people who have a critical eye for uniqueness, design, texture, and cultural connotation. Under this trend, trendy brands have become a very promising segment.

The narrow sense of tide brand refers to independent designer brands that originated in "street culture", including clothing, shoes, accessories, etc. In recent years, some large sports brands such as Adidas, Nike, and some luxury brands such as LV and CHANEL have also entered the tide brand industry in the form of limited editions and sub-brands. In addition, in recent years, with the rise of domestic designer groups, local independent tide brands have also been emerging.

Compared with the high price of luxury goods and concerns about the mass production and quality of fast fashion designs, trendy brands have gradually gone out of the niche due to their independent design, niche output and better quality, and are increasingly accepted by young people who pursue individuality.

Liu Bo, executive director of Clearstream Capital, which has just invested in a domestic trendy fan, told the small dining table that the current trendy brand is on the eve of the explosion, "mainly to reflect a sense of cultural belonging and an identity." Liu Bo said that this is a typical subculture. Evolution to the masses.

Liu Bo said that the current tide brand business in China is still dominated by buyers’ shops in Europe, America, Japan and South Korea, which is related to the current trend of domestic trend culture. As the origin of Hip-Hop, the cultural status of black culture in Europe, America and other regions is still difficult to shake. The influence of tide brands produced by domestic independent designers is still greatly limited.

"However, blindly introducing foreign brands cannot become the main body of the market after all." Liu Bo said that foreign trendy brands are sought after because of their strong culture. Similarly, we may also create local trendy brands with Chinese sub-cultural attributes, so that local trendy brands have a place in the world.

In the trendy brand market, the star’s trendy brand store has become one of the most concerned categories. As a star with a large number of fans, it is a huge traffic entrance in itself. After entering 2000, the mainland fan economy has gradually formed a scale. The rapid development of the pan-entertainment market has exceeded 450 billion yuan. The income structure of stars is increasingly diversified, and the opening of star stores has become a common phenomenon. So far, the number of mainstream star stores has exceeded 300. The apparel industry ranks among the top three in the preferred format for star stores.

It is worth noting that in the clothing business, more than 60% of the stars have chosen the trendy brand. The average age of these stars who created the trendy brand is 37 years old, and they have the ability to understand and lead the trendy consumption concept of young customers. The unit price of customers is about 400 yuan, which is aimed at young consumer groups.

Chen Edison’s street style CLOT, Yu Wenle’s yuppie tooling Madness, Liu Jialing’s black and white punk hardy hardy, Jay Chou’s Phataci, Li Chen Pan Weibai’s NPC, Zheng Kai’s DaHood, Ashin’s STAYREAL, and Luo Zhixiang’s STAGE all belong to this category.

At present, the trend of de-stardom of star stores is gradually emerging, and more stars are participating in the operation of the brand as designers and managers. The company’s operation, the strength of the team and the guarantee of the system have changed investors’ cautious attitude towards non-standard projects, and have also accelerated the integration of trendy brands with capital. In this regard, Edison Chen is clearly leading the way again.

Last year, Edison Chen proposed the idea of opening 100 stores worldwide. At the beginning of this year, CLOT Hong Kong was the first to engage in capital-level cooperation and accepted tens of millions of Hong Kong dollars in investment from Hupu Sports.

As the mainland market becomes more and more important, Edison Chen hopes that his business in the mainland can also perform better. Recently, mainland entities have welcomed new investors, Qianshan Investment.

Investor Xu Weize told the small dining table that in terms of operation ideas in mainland China, in addition to opening a store, Edison Chen is also working hard to explore new ways to play – INNERSECT, a platform for the dissemination of trendy culture, which is the main body invested by Qianshan Investment.

It is reported that the first INNERSECT global trend culture experience exhibition will be held in Shanghai in October this year. "This is Edison Chen’s new concept in brand operation and even the dissemination of tide culture," Xu Weize said. "It can be said to be a global tide culture event. In addition to clothing tide brands, it will also carry out cross-border cooperation with music and sports."

In addition, with the development and growth of domestic e-commerce, JUICE, which insists on offline sales, has also included e-commerce operations as its operational focus in recent years. Xu Weize told the small dining table that after peacefully breaking up with domestic trendy e-commerce company YOHO, JUICE is also working hard to explore its own e-commerce platform and try to build it into a trendy cultural collection platform that integrates transactions and trend information.

Edison Chen, who has faded from the entertainment industry, shows his business ambitions. Xu Weize said that Edison Chen has been running around in the United States for his trendy brand business and trendy culture dissemination over the years. With the intervention of capital, the future CLOT will take a "de-Edison" path.

"Before, people in their 50s and 60s who didn’t listen to Hip-Hop music didn’t know Edison Chen. Now everyone knows Edison Chen, and they want to come to Edison Chen’s store to take a look. At first, I put CLOT and Edison Chen together on purpose. But now, I’m glad that there are many people in foreign countries who only know CLOT and don’t know Edison Chen. When we open 30 stores, 50 stores, there will be more people like this," Edison Chen said.