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interface news reporter | zhu yongling

interface news editor | xu yue

like brandy melville (hereinafter referred to as "bm"), it is a fast fashion brand for girls' clothing from italysubdued also crossed the ocean to china and recently opened its first store in asia in shanghai.

subdued and bm have similarities in brand positioning and store style. for example, their products are mainly youthful and casual items such as tight t-shirts, sweatshirts, jeans, etc., with girlish patterns such as bears, five-pointed stars, bows, hearts, etc.; the store also adopts warehouse-style display and is a street store. in fact, the store is only a dozen minutes' walk away from the bm shanghai store. however, subdued's products are differentiated by size, and the price is slightly higher than bm. the price range of clothing products is about 200 to 600 yuan, so it is called "bm's expensive substitute" by some consumers.

however, subdued's pace of store expansion is faster than bm's. bm entered china in 2018 and currently has only three stores in the mainland, located in shanghai, beijing and chengdu. as soon as subdued opened its first store, it was already recruiting shopping guides in chengdu on social platforms. the brand said that it is "working hard to prepare new offline stores and online purchasing channels." subdued has not yet entered china's third-party e-commerce platforms.

subdued's move in china is in line with its global expansion plan proposed by 2024.

in march 2024, investment company nuo acquired a 30% stake in subdued. nuo is a joint venture between ferrari's major shareholder italy exor group and hong konga joint venture established by world wide investment limited (wwicl) in 2021, mainly investing in high-end consumer goods companies in italyaccording to reuters, citing people familiar with the matter, the investment is worth 70 million euros (about 550 million yuan).

according to fashion magazine the spin off, subdued’s co-founder and ceoalessandro orsini said at the time that through cooperation with nuo, the brand can accelerate global development beyond the european market where it has already taken root. nuo added,subdued will focus on the chinese and north american markets. according to subdued's official website, the brand, founded in the early 1990s, currently has 130 stores worldwide, most of which are located in europe. according to reuters, subdued's revenue in 2023 will be about 120 million euros (about 940 million yuan), of which more than 50% will come from markets outside italy.

moreover, the young people that subdued is targeting - according to the brand's founder, they are young people aged 14 to 20 who are just beginning to develop their own fashion style - are precisely the group of customers who love to follow trends and have low loyalty. in the chinese market, this can also be reflected in the replacement of young brands that take the mass route.

if the first generation of young brands were mainland or hong kong brands such as metersbonwe, semir, yishion, jeanswest, and baleno in the pedestrian street era before 2010, then the foreign fast fashion brands that developed with the rise of shopping malls were closely followed, especially the sub-brands launched by fast fashion giants specifically for young groups, such as zara's sister brand.stradivarius, bershka and pull&bear, monki, which is also part of the h&m group, and gu, the sister brand of uniqlo,abercrombie & fitchhollister, as well as gap, forever 21, c&a, etc.

at the same time, brands that replace the aforementioned brands to attract the new generation of girls and boys are gradually emerging. unlike the previous dominance of foreign-funded fast fashion brands, there is no shortage of domestic brands among the new generation of youth brands, and there is a trend of style segmentation.

for example, in the hot girl wear market represented by bm and chuu, local brands such as basemeng fg, w management, weekend hub, bettersay, and chic park followed closely behind, while young streetwear brands include wassup, beaster, boneless, etc. in addition, there are pso brand, masonprince, bosie, crying center, etc., which emphasize lifestyle trends, retro urban, and genderless young fashion brands. these brands are all expanding their offline sales networks.

another feature of this group of young brands is that they have more diverse ways of playing in terms of stores, marketing, user operations, etc. for example, some brands are not limited to standard shopping mall stores in terms of location selection, but prefer personalized non-standard commercial or street stores. for example, weekend hub and masonprince both opened their first stores in dongshankou, guangzhou. in addition, compared with high-profile marketing methods such as hiring spokespersons and shooting fashion blockbusters, many brands tend to use lower-cost social media marketing or community operations to build their brands.

obviously, the young clothing market in china is no longer a highly concentrated market for top brands. brand positioning is becoming more and more segmented, emphasizing personalization and following trends. however, it is worth mentioning that although the current sports and outdoor trend has a large overlap with the young customer base, new brands cannot easily disrupt its pattern.