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interface news reporter | zhu yongling

interface news editor | lou qinqin

clothing brand robinhood recently announced yang chaoyue as its brand spokesperson. unlike some strong cooperation, the influence of the two is very different - yang chaoyue has nearly 19.94 million fans on weibo, while robin hood's official weibo has only 135,000 fans, and the number of fans on its main site douyin is also lower. more than 100,000.

this is not the first time that the little-known robin hood has cooperated with celebrities. it has invited peter ho and jia nailiang to endorse it in 2021 and 2023 respectively. in comparison, the brand chose yang chaoyue this time to enhance the influence of the brand and its women's clothing category among young consumers.

according to the brand's official website, robin hood claims to be a brand founded in the united kingdom in 1943. it registered a company in hong kong in 1997, entered the chinese mainland market in 1999, and opened its first flagship store in xidan, beijing. however, when searching for english content related to the brand on the internet, almost no relevant information can be found.

tianyancha app shows that robinhood’s current operating entitieszhejiang yunxiang technology trading co., ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "yunxiang technology") was registered in 2020. there are no companies from hong kong among the shareholders, and there are only two individual shareholders. thisit seems that this is more like a common strategy of some local clothing merchants, which is to package an international identity for the brand in order to increase the brand value.

although not yet well-known in the mass market, robinhood has seized on the opportunity of douyin live streaming in the past few years. according to data released by robin hood on its official public account, the brand entered douyin in 2021 and achieved gmv exceeding 1 billion yuan in just one year. in 2023, gmv reached 4.5 billion yuan, and it plans to reach 8 billion gmv in 2024. yuan. although gmv does not take into account non-payment, returns, etc., and there is a certain gap with actual revenue, this set of data can at least show the rapid growth rate of robinhood in the douyin channel.

robin hood mainly relies on live broadcasts by experts to promote sales on douyin. data from the third-party platform douchacha shows that in the past year, the number of live broadcast influencers who have brought goods to the robin hood brand is 4,819, including 43 leading influencers with more than 10 million fans, including crazy little yang ge, he hui peers, guangdong couple, jia nailiang, etc. in this regard, robin hood is similar to domestically produced down jackets that have emerged in recent years such as yaya and gao fan. they all rely on the distribution of douyin dabo to achieve rapid expansion.

robin hood has undergone two brand positioning adjustments in the past few years. according to the brand's public account, robin hood upgraded its brand positioning to "street fashion jeans" in 2021, taking the trendy brand route. in 2024, robin hood will turn to the down jacket track and adjust its positioning to "focus on down fashion basic models."

more specifically, robin hood is entering the mass down jacket market. douchacha data shows that the unit price of the robin hood brand in the past year ranged from 200 yuan to 300 yuan. at present, most of the down jacket products on the shelves in robin hood's official flagship store are priced within 500 yuan, and the same down jacket by yang chaoyue is priced at less than 300 yuan after discount.

although robin hood's public performance shows that it seems to have the potential to compete with leading brands, in order to gain a foothold in the mass down jacket market, its current sales scale alone is not enough.

an obvious shortcoming of robinhood is that it is dominated by the sales mentality and lacks brand power. robin hood also mentioned in its public account that the brand has only used sales to open up the market, but "brand building has not kept up, the top layer of the brand is missing, and brand awareness is almost zero." therefore, robin hood will cooperate with brand consulting company barton in 2024 to reorganize and upgrade the brand.

the aforementioned new positioning of "down fashion basics" is barton's move for robin hood. specifically, robin hood wants to solve the pain points of down jackets that are not suitable for daily use, are bulky and fat, and are difficult to match. therefore, the products must be basic, versatile, simple and beautiful. in line with this positioning, robin hood's product and pricing strategy is to create unisex designs that are the same for men and women and suitable for all ages, and continue the past mid-to-low-end pricing. these strategies also help robinhood cover a wider market, relieve inventory pressure caused by a large number of skus, and reduce design costs.

but robin hood does not emphasize functionality, which is actually the core of the down jacket category. after all, warmth is the first demand of people wearing down jackets. judging from the competition between down jacket brands, today’s competition in terms of functionality of down jackets goes far beyondfilling amount,the velvet content has long been extended to fabric technology, process technology and other aspects, especially for mid-to-high-end brands.

for down jacket brands such as robin hood that target the mass market, the only way to compete with competitors is to improve the quality-price ratio, which means that the brand must rely on scale to reduce costs on the production side, or increase investment in research and development. out comparison. for now, robin hood seems to be focusing more on the former. tianyancha app shows that the brand’s parent companyyunxiang technology has no patent information yet. for comparison, yaya's parent company has 4 invention patents that have been authorized or are under review.

according to public reports,robinhood plans to launch a full range of brand and cross-border e-commerce strategies in 2024. the goal is to develop into an international brand with mainly online and supplemented by offline in the next 5 to 10 years, with annual sales reaching 50 billion to 1,000. billion. robin hood will now “become a young, fashionable version of uniqlo”"as a brand vision, for comparison and reference, the revenue of fast retailing group, the parent company of uniqlo, in fiscal year 2023 is approximately 135.4 billion yuan.

but before catching up with uniqlo, robin hood must first break through in the domestic market. douchacha data shows that in august 2024, bosideng and yaya occupied the top two positions in the douyin e-commerce clothing and underwear category rankings, yalu and xuezhongfei were ranked 5th and 7th respectively, and robin hood ranked 139th.