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in the past summer, high temperatures swept across the country, and many young people on the streets adopted "hardcore sun protection", covering their entire bodies with sun protection clothing, leaving only their eyes exposed. as a leading sun protection brand, jiaoxia also called on young people to wear sun protection clothing and "embrace the sun."

but no one expected that when the sun was at its hottest, this brand, which started out as a sunscreen brand, would be the first to feel the chill in the market. this summer, the brand department of jiaoxia was laid off, and some people commented that the leading sunscreen brand "did not want a brand anymore."

text | chang fangfei

interview｜chang fangfei chen jingxuan

editor | xinye

operations | kojiro

top sunscreen brand, "no more brands"

upon hearing the news of layoffs at jiaoxia, 35-year-old fashion designer lin yuan recalled the interview she had two years ago.

lin yuan fully believed that jiaoxia was doing well at that time. at the beginning of 2022, it targeted the design department of the leading sports brand and poached people in an organized and generous manner. at that time, lin yuan worked for a well-known domestic sports brand. everyone in the design department received a call from a headhunter. the conditions offered by jiaoxia were too tempting to refuse - 13 salaries, 500,000 annual packages, equivalent to a 20% salary increase.

more than one employee revealed that for a long time, the industry's top income was the killer weapon for bananaxia to attract talent. the working environment is also top-notch. bananaxia's headquarters is located in the hanjing financial center next to shenzhen shennan avenue, next to the internet giant tencent.

jiaoxia's confidence comes from the ammunition that is hotly loaded. at the beginning of 2022, jiaoxia disclosed a c round of financing of up to us$46 million, and its valuation jumped to us$3 billion (about rmb 21 billion). ten years after its establishment, the estimated value of this new consumer company has increased more than 100 times. in the company's plan, the next milestone is to go public in hong kong.

▲ a store in jiaoxia, shenzhen. photo/ visual china

every aspect of the work was moving faster. lin yuan's interview progressed quickly, and she completed two rounds in one day. what impressed her most was the interviewer's attire. at that time, the brand focused on fashionable sun protection clothing, and everyone from employees to supervisors wore wrinkled white t-shirts.

at first, lin yuan thought this represented the "uninhibited attitude" of a new consumer brand. it was not until the interviewer and her friends who worked at jiaoxia "warned" her that for design positions, "leaving get off work at midnight is considered early" that lin yuan realized that in order to keep up with this company running at full capacity, employees had no time to manage their image and "could only grab two pieces of clothing to go to work." behind the unkempt appearance was the fatigue brought by the high-intensity work.

at that time, jiaoxia's large-scale poaching had just begun. in addition to grassroots designers, some core management were also introduced. at that moment, guo xiao bid farewell to pop mart and joined jiaoxia as cmo (chief marketing officer).

at that time, it was the founder of jiaoxia, ma long, who chose guoxiao. in 2013, ma long, who was born in the 1980s and was still studying at the hong kong polytechnic university, saw the trend of consumption upgrading, interrupted his studies, and returned to the mainland to start a business. he and his partner lin ze targeted the sun protection track and created a small black sun protection umbrella, which surpassed the paradise with decades of brand accumulation in one fell swoop and became the sales champion of umbrellas. after that, jiaoxia expanded its product line to sun protection clothing, sun protection hats, sleeves, masks and other sun protection products, and planned to enter the light outdoor market and start the business of assault jackets.

in the past summer, high temperatures swept across the country, and many young people on the streets adopted "hardcore sun protection", covering their entire bodies with sun protection clothing, leaving only their eyes exposed. as a leading sun protection brand, jiaoxia also called on young people to wear sun protection clothing and "embrace the sun."

▲ people go out in the hot sun wearing sun-protective clothing. photo/ visual china

but no one expected that when the sun was at its hottest, this brand that started out as a sunscreen brand would be the first to feel the chill in the market. it was reported that in july, the brand department of jiaoxia was completely eliminated, all employees of the public relations department resigned, and the marketing department was merged into the sales department. some people commented that the leading sunscreen brand "did not want a brand anymore."

in response, jiaoxia said that this was just a normal organizational restructuring, and less than 1% of the staff left because they were not suited to the new positions. the public relations department was still there, and the newly established public affairs department was recruiting staff. however, qi simin, a former employee of the brand department, revealed that this restructuring was mainly based on layoffs, and "only a few people were able to transfer to other positions."

thrilling jump

although for many consumers, it is difficult to distinguish between bananaxia and another new clothing brand that focuses on underwear, bananain, brand building has always been the top priority of bananaxia.

around 2022, banana began several thrilling leaps at the same time. everyone realized that the small sunscreen track could not support a valuation of us$3 billion, and banana had to tell a better brand story and find a higher ceiling.

prior to that, jiaoxia had significantly expanded its product line, set up seven studios of different categories, and quickly expanded its products from sun protection to the entire outdoor field. zhang lin, who had just joined the company, mentioned that jiaoxia's vision was to become "ikea for outdoor products" and to "rely on a large number of products to attract the middle class to shop in the store."

▲ at a glance, the jiaoxia store displays sunscreen products. photo/ visual china

but no matter how ambitious one is, it all comes down to design drawings and fabrics. according to public reports, jiaoxia product development is generally divided into five stages: from "planning", "design restoration", "trial version", and finally "final version" through "user testing".

for designers, "planning" is the first hurdle. before joining the company, lin yuan could hardly imagine that the software she used most often was ppt. she stayed up late to weave the slides, just to prove that this design drawing would definitely be recognized by users and directly create profits for the company. it didn't take long for her to find the trick - finding more sales data of similar patterns can increase the pass rate, "because the boss is a science and engineering man."

at the execution level, sales targets are still the most important, and everything must serve this goal. zhang lin revealed that according to the established pace of new product launches in jiaoxia stores, the development cycle of all categories must be compressed to 60 to 90 days. this time is based on the standard of jiaoxia's previous hit product sunscreen clothing.

in order to keep up, products such as sunglasses and luggage, which have complex parts and take a long time to make molds, can only be forced to omit some steps. sometimes, before user feedback is collected, and "the stability of sunscreen sunglasses has not been verified", the product has already been put on the shelves for sale. no one dares to challenge this standard, because the consequences of dragging their feet, in addition to receiving a red light from the project manager, "the performance of the entire studio will be deducted."

in order to get rid of the image of "only making sunscreen products", in 2022, jiaoxia hired a consulting company at a high price to try to find a new brand positioning.

at that time, camping and hiking gradually became the favorites of the middle class, and it seemed that only outdoor brands in the entire clothing market still maintained a sexy growth rate. the swiss brand on's revenue exceeded 1 billion swiss francs for the first time, a year-on-year increase of 70%. on the sports shoe resale platform stock x, france's salomon is the fastest growing outdoor brand, with a transaction volume increase of more than 2000%. jiaoxia also took a fancy to this sweet cake and wanted to seize a position in the market between hardcore and fashion. the "lightweight outdoor" route was quickly established.

the concept of lightweight outdoor equipment has at least three directions from the initial idea to the formation, namely "exquisite outdoor equipment", "light outdoor equipment" and "urban outdoor equipment". few people can see the difference, but guo xiao, the cmo at the time, still tried to emphasize the technological attributes of jiaoxia, "although our equipment does not pursue extreme values ​​and extreme scenes, it still has its own technological accumulation and can provide good protection in most daily outdoor scenes." this is the "positioning for the next 10 years" planned by guo xiao for jiaoxia, and it is also the fundamental reason why he is willing to join this company.

expansion means a lot of money is spent. the prospectus shows that promotion expenses (advertising and marketing) are the largest expenditure of jiaoxia. in 2019, the investment was less than 40 million yuan, and in 2021 it has jumped to nearly 600 million yuan, a crazy increase of nearly 16 times in three years. however, the actual income has only increased sixfold. in addition to sun protection clothing, the repositioned jiaoxia urgently needs a new hot product to prove itself.

in the winter of 2023, among the popular single-product jackets, jiaoxia is betting on the air fleece jacket, priced in the 1,000 yuan price range. the company has high hopes for this, hoping that it will be a big hit product that can be sold from summer to autumn and winter, and from the south to the whole country.

▲ the price of banana under air fleece jackets ranges from 800 to 1,500 yuan. photo/ @蕉下beneunder

just two months later, the battle seemed to be over ahead of schedule, and jiaoxia lost to the opponent who rushed towards it. according to jiuqian's platform, 40% of the sales of jackets on e-commerce platforms in 2023 came from camel, which was the absolute number one. in the second quarter of this year, jiaoxia's sales were significantly lower than expected, and its jackets even began to be sold at half price.

in places that are hard to notice, stronger competitors are lurking in factories in third- and fourth-tier cities. low-priced white-label products have become the biggest winners. data from the third-party platform chan mofang shows that jackets priced below 500 yuan are the absolute mainstream.

"cut off two buttons"

almost no one was surprised that banana company eliminated its brand department.

qi simin worked in the brand department of jiaoxia for two years. she often felt that she was stuck in the gap between profit targets and brand building. building a brand requires long-term investment. in order to cultivate users' trust in the brand, products are the first threshold. once faced with the pressure of performance growth, jiaoxia seemed to have returned to the old path.

suppliers upstream of the brand have a deep understanding of this. wang dongliang has been developing clothing fabrics for more than 15 years, and has won many new consumer brand customers with his rich r&d patents. in 2021, his company reached a cooperation with jiaoxia, when the latter was in the process of expanding its product line.

at first, he thought this was a good opportunity to collaborate on the development of new products, and took a lot of fabrics to recommend to jiaoxia. but he soon found out that all he had to do was "pixel-level copying." the designer told him directly that he had to copy the best-selling underwear of his competitors, and the fabrics had to be exactly the same. hearing this request, he was stunned, "it's like a child who suddenly decided that he had to have what others had."

for a long time, jiaoxia's investment in product research and development has been low and gradually declining. the figures in the prospectus also confirm this. from 2019 to 2021, the proportion of jiaoxia's research and development expenses in total revenue gradually decreased from 5.2% to 3%.

in addition to insufficient r&d investment, the company also has an extreme control over product costs. in order to maintain asset-light operations, jiaoxia did not build its own supply chain and completely adopted oem. the most memorable experience for qi simin was when the boss thought that costs needed to be further reduced before the new sun protection clothing was launched. the supplier's fabric costs had been reduced to the lowest, but after several rounds of discussions, the boss still showed no signs of giving in. the final solution was completely beyond qi simin's expectations - "just cut off these two buttons."

▲ jiaoxia men's and women's sun protection clothing. photo/ visual china

in her opinion, this will directly affect the user experience. some buttons are used to prevent exposure, and some are used to adjust the waist-to-body ratio, but it doesn’t matter, “the product details page will not display it.”

on the other hand, the pricing strategy of jiaoxia products is quite aggressive. the average multiple of the thermal underwear industry is 2.5, that is, the price is 2.5 times the cost. according to public reports, jiaoxia sets the price of thermal underwear at 3.6 times the cost. the price of jiaoxia's traditional strong categories, including umbrellas, sunscreen masks, and hats, is more than 4 times the cost price.

behind this is jiaoxia's more aggressive growth target - for a long time, the business department's kpi was to achieve 100% annual revenue growth, and any department that failed to meet the target would have its performance bonus deducted on a monthly basis.

more than one employee believes that this was done under pressure from going public, and that jiaoxia was eager to use sexy financial data to prove that it was a "dark horse." wang yuanyang, who worked at taobao for many years and is now starting a brand business, made a similar judgment. he believes that seven years is the cycle of a new consumer brand, and at this time "profitability becomes the most important indicator for evaluating a company." when jiaoxia planned to list on the hong kong stock market, nine years had passed since the brand was founded.

in order to quickly increase its revenue, in addition to reducing costs, jiaoxia began a large-scale performance-based advertising campaign. according to the growth black box report, the investment accounted for 90% of the advertising budget. in other words, it was "spending money to buy deals."

in 2021 alone, jiaoxia has cooperated with more than 600 kols and frequently entered the live broadcast rooms of top anchors such as li jiaqi. taking advantage of the live broadcast e-commerce, jiaoxia disclosed in its prospectus that the top live broadcast kols contributed more than 280 million yuan in gmv in three years, accounting for 8% of jiaoxia's total revenue from 2019 to 2021. but the cost of the launch is also quite high. qi simin recalled that the cost of jiaoxia's investment in the cooperation with influencers alone "exceeded 100 million yuan" in one year.

qi simin's superior once told her that "the brand is responsible for dressing up (the company) in beautiful clothes and making a good appearance." jiaoxia also invested heavily in brand advertising to create a "facade." according to multiple employees, the advertising and consulting investment for the entire "lightweight outdoor trilogy" exceeded 20 million.

among them, jay chou was chosen as the spokesperson. past experience shows that wherever he is, there is traffic. in the midsummer of 2020, jay chou appeared in kuaishou's live broadcast room for the first time. in less than half an hour of live broadcast, the number of viewers exceeded 10 million. in the same year, after he was officially announced as the spokesperson of heilan home, 20,000 down jackets of the same model were sold out in the live broadcast room of the top anchor in an instant. if you want to invite him, you have to pay a high price.

▲ jiaoxia officially announced jay chou as the brand spokesperson. photo/ video screenshot

but the money was spent, but the subsequent communication around users did not keep up. the entire brand team developed many plans around communication, but in the end "none of them were implemented." even the advertising effect was difficult to measure. usually, extensive user research was required half a year before and after the advertisement was launched, but because no suitable employees were found, "it could only be left unfinished." in the end, this series of commercials seemed to "only shock investors, not impress consumers."

at the same time, the brand department also started to make its own podcast, benchmarking lululemon's user operation method, and established its own outdoor community bu camper, regularly organizing users to go creek trekking, hiking, and "taking beautiful photos." it even established a wholly-owned subsidiary, jiaoyou, with the founder of jiaoxia, ma long, as the supervisor. the subsidiary's business scope includes camping services, tourism development project planning and consulting, photography and video production, etc.

the general environment has changed, but many players who emerged in the era of consumption upgrade are still immersed in the inertia of growth and continue to use their previous strategies. at the time when jiaoxia was expanding with great fanfare, xu xin, an investor who stepped on the trend of consumption upgrade and invested in jd.com and vipshop, found through field research that "1 billion out of 1.4 billion people do not have the money to upgrade their consumption." this is almost a footnote to the rapid change of consumption trends.

after two failed attempts to submit prospectuses, jiaoxia realized the difficulty of going public. the new consumption market was also cold in the primary market. in one new consumption case after another, marketing was done first, and then the product was polished. countless examples have proved that this road is full of thorns.

the cold finally reached jiaoxia. guo xiao, the cmo who was invited by jiaoxia founder ma long three times, announced his resignation. after the organizational structure adjustment, the brand department not related to conversion faced the abolition of the company.

more intense war

everyone in the industry has felt the change in water temperature.

wang dongliang, a fabric supplier, has felt the chill of the market the most in the past two years. the frequency of new fabrics released by jiaoxia has dropped drastically, from nearly 10 yuan per year to 90%. this year, jiaoxia originally ordered 20 tons of fabrics from wang dongliang for its new products for trial sales, but after more than half a year, "only 7 or 8 tons have been sold."

the situation of other brands is also not optimistic. everyone recognizes the situation and quickly adjusts the goal - "maintain the current market share and survive first." in the past, brands were busy filling the windows of online flagship stores, but now, wang dongliang's new fabrics developed this year "have not been sold at all."

two years ago, the entire clothing industry, including jiaoxia, significantly expanded its product categories and added production lines, and now has to bear the blowback. and every time a product line is added, "it means a new competitor is added," said wang dongliang.

jiaoxia looked around on the track and saw opponents everywhere.

▲ under the scorching sun, people are "fully armed" with sun protection when traveling. photo/ visual china

nowadays, all functions in the outdoor field have been highly segmented, and there are brands that meet every need of users. many new brands have seized these tiny opportunities. acmeitem, an outdoor brand founded in 2021, saw the need for children to wear quick-drying clothes outdoors, and its revenue exceeded 100 million in less than two years; also relying on wool quick-drying clothes, the performance of the new brand outopia increased sixfold in 2023.

in addition to meeting the needs, only core technology can stand at the top of the outdoor product contempt chain. among the jacket fabrics, the gore-tex technology developed in the united states with waterproof and windproof functions is top-notch, but expensive. only professional outdoor brands such as arc'teryx and the north face are willing to use it. products with top-quality fabrics cost several thousand yuan per item. this did not stop the middle class with spending power. in 2018, arc'teryx had only 14,000 members in greater china, but by the end of 2023, this number had increased a hundredfold to more than 1.7 million.

in this fierce competition, more than one employee felt that jiaoxia's performance growth was weak. in zhang lin's view, the fundamental reason was that jiaoxia "only launched new products but did not innovate". sometimes she was too lazy to even look at the design drawings, "it's nothing more than changing the pattern and selling it again." as for the jacket, which was expected to become a "king bomb" internally, jiaoxia spent a lot of time discussing the appearance and functions with suppliers, but the technology it developed was still highly dependent on external parties, "and the internal core capabilities were still not accumulated."

the development of new products has failed, and even the comfort zone of sun protection has become a battleground.

▲ jiaoxia sunscreen fans, sunscreen umbrellas and other products. photo/ visual china

almost all clothing companies you can think of are selling sun protection clothing. at the beginning of this year, li ning took the lead in launching ice smoothie sun protection clothing; anta launched light shield heat protection sun protection clothing, and camel also released "cold white skin" sun protection clothing. according to the data of magic mirror insight, uniqlo, bananain, which started out as an underwear manufacturer, and sinsin, which crossed over from shark pants, all made it into the top ten of the list.

the good days of jiaoxia making money by relying on super high markups are over. more white-label brands are entering the "hot" sunscreen red ocean. on the douyin platform, brands such as ono kazuko and moshun, which started out with stockings, have also started selling women's sunscreen clothing. more consumers have learned to skip the brand side and go directly to the oem factory to get the same brand products at a lower price.

in yiwu, zhejiang, a shop claiming to be a jiaoxia oem factory produced "blush masks", which sold over 100,000 pieces a day. now, every user knows that the factory price of sun protection clothing can be as low as 10 yuan, and the factory price of 30 yuan is already a mid-to-high-end product.

now is the time to test the appeal of the jiaoxia brand, but the company chose to lay off this department. this seems to represent the result of the brand building in the past two years. "the moat of the brand is the core users, which can attract a small number of people and attract the public to watch," said wang yuanyang. "but in everyone's mind, jiaoxia is still just selling umbrellas and sun protection clothes."

after expanding its product line, jiaoxia's sales efficiency has also declined. many channel dealers revealed that except for some popular products, other products are seriously overstocked and can only be cleared through other channels "at cost price". "there are too many products on hand. after all the products are sold out, i also want to sell white-label products. white-label products are easier to sell."

faced with fierce competition, jiaoxia chose a more radical management style, and it was difficult for employees to adapt. zhang lin felt the pressure from her superiors shortly after she joined the company this year. the superior would directly tell her, "you will only be given one month. if the (product) progress is not good, you will be fired immediately." not only her, but employees in other studios also often heard similar words.

this high-pressure management method directly leads to staff loss. several employees revealed that the staff turnover rate of jiaoxia is very high, "if you have worked for more than half a year, you are already an old employee." even the headhunters in shenzhen know that they should try not to recruit people for jiaoxia, because "if you have not worked for less than half a year, the headhunters will not get commissions." just recently, zhang lin also resigned and decided to work for another leading domestic sports brand, "i want to go to a down-to-earth place."

the hot summer has ended, and it is autumn again, a season suitable for outdoor hiking and camping. originally, this was also an important time for jiaoxia to test the results of its transformation into a light outdoor business. but obviously, the jackets have not yet made enough money to support the family. after experiencing a personnel earthquake, jiaoxia still has to find a way to resist the coming winter.

(all interviewees in this article are pseudonyms.)

references:

[1] “three-year bonus period of the outdoor industry ends, who are the winners?”, latepost

[2] “consumer investment queen xu xin: after missing out on bytedance and pinduoduo, i summarized a three-part approach to looking at companies,” inspur new consumption

[3] "8,000-word interpretation of jiaoxia: how to break the curse of losing money in the new consumption?", growthbox

[4] “banana bet on the right pair of shoes”, huxiu.com

[5] “without li jiaqi, who would buy jiaoxia?”, nanfang chuang

[6] “the layoffs at banana: not destined to be like lululemon, but suffering from lululemon’s disease”, tencent deep net

(the article is original by daily people, any infringement will be investigated)