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since 2024, internet celebrity clothing stores that once brought their own fans and halo have been closed down one after another. recently, zhang dayi announced the closure of his store "my happy wardrobe" with more than 12 million fans. although the news was sudden, this seemed to be no surprise in the first-generation internet celebrity entrepreneurial circle.

after all, before zhang dayi, more than 40 internet celebrity clothing stores closed this year. among them are stores with more than one million fans, such as retro big bang, jz craftsman, deep blue, girl kayla, and lola code. looking forward, a series of classic internet celebrity clothing brands such as qigege, split silk, inman, and mg xiaoxiang have also come to an end.

the closure of zhang dayi's store has once again drawn the attention of the outside world to clothing consumption. in the first half of this year, domestic retail sales of clothing products above designated size totaled 515.63 billion yuan, a growth rate that was 14.7 percentage points slower than the same period in 2023. at the same time, 52 listed apparel companies achieved total revenue of 134.918 billion yuan in the first half of the year, a year-on-year growth of only 3.17%.

in the second half of the year, where to seek the second spring of the clothing market has become a question that the entire industry is thinking about. e-commerce platforms such as taobao and jd.com are actively planning to export clothing. how internet celebrities can save the precarious profits of clothing stores depends on the specific trend of the industry.

“reluctance” and “struggle” after closure of business

how did an online clothing store make its first fortune from internet celebrities and then step by step fall to where it is now? in the era when zhang dayi was at the height of his power, he once revealed that his annual revenue was as high as 300 million. now, when he closed the store, he only said one sentence: "income does not represent profit..."

this is also a common pain point for most online clothing stores.

taking a closer look at the more than 40 internet celebrity clothing stores that have been closed down this year, it is almost inevitable that they will suffer losses due to this outcome. a netizen on xiaohongshu broke the news that a women’s clothing online store run by his friend achieved a turnover of nearly 10 million on 618, but the store still left a loss of 500,000 to 600,000.

as for the reason for the losses, the “return rate” that has killed countless online clothing entrepreneurs has become the culprit.

it is reported that the return rate in the clothing field is comparable to a curse. especially since this year, major e-commerce platforms have shifted their focus to consumers. in order to improve user consumption experience, many platforms have canceled the pre-sale model that has been in place for many years and directly merchants who want to rely on pre-sales to reduce the risk of returns are forced into a "dead end."

take the above-mentioned women's clothing online store as an example. the return rate of its store during the 618 period was as high as 80%. this resulted in a turnover of rmb 3.5 million for refunds and rmb 3.8 million for refunds. the total of the two reached rmb 7.3 million, almost swallowing up most of the turnover.

in addition, the costs in the clothing industry have become higher and higher in the past two years, including fabrics, design, labor, and warehousing, as well as traffic payment and marketing promotion. many clothing store owners are on the verge of closing down. of course, the online clothing track is not easy to deal with, and it may not all be caused by the return rate and the cancellation of the pre-sale system.

in fact, when e-commerce platforms began to care about consumers, the turnover of clothing sales once increased. take 618, the first big sale after the cancellation of the pre-sale system, as an example. during the 618 period, jd.com’s clothing sales increased by more than 380% year-on-year, with over 2,000 clothing, underwear, shoes, children’s clothing, etc. from ur, gap, jiao nei, 73hours, nike kids, etc. the turnover of children's shoe brands increased by more than 100% year-on-year.

why are internet celebrity clothing stores not favored by consumers, but abandoned by them?

first of all, it is not difficult to see from the data disclosed by jd.com that the beneficiaries after the cancellation of the pre-sale system are basically traditional and mature clothing brands. such clothing players usually have a strong supply chain and have accumulated many years of famous brand effect, or they only have deep cultivation. for a single category, the return rate is not as high as that of internet celebrity brands.

secondly, with the development of internet celebrity clothing stores to this day, the character image is still one of the most eye-catching features of the brand. but from around 2015 to 2024, after ten years, the clothing consumer market is no longer a pure figure-worshipping consumption. in the past, zhang dayi and others took pictures in front of the camera and used some big-name products to buy them, and they could sell them in a short time. the clothes are sold out.

today, consumers' increasingly rational consumption consciousness has defeated the traffic game of internet celebrity clothing stores, and the death of fast fashion has also made the tried and tested "banging game" a thing of the past. this is the original sin that internet celebrity clothing stores have hidden in their bones since their birth. today, when the entire e-commerce market is struggling with the supply chain, the "original sin" has become a thunderstorm.

of course, no internet celebrity store is willing to close down from now on.

take zhang dayi as an example. in her farewell message on weibo, she mentioned more than once that she would not give up the clothing business. from the current point of view, zhang dayi is trying to move towards the high-end route, which was also a path taken by the internet celebrity entrepreneurial circle at that time. in addition to zhang dayi, newly opened stores in sydney also have coats worth over 10,000 yuan.

can high-endization save online celebrity clothing stores that are on the verge of “extinction”?

one thing to note is that there is indeed a certain development momentum in the high-end field of the domestic clothing market, especially in the women's clothing category. data shows that as early as 2022, the domestic high-end women's clothing market share will reach 32.8%. however, the growth has been significantly slow in the past two years, and in 2023, this number will only change to 33.4%.

the declining desire for clothing consumption is also one of the key reasons for the collective disappearance of online celebrity clothing stores. even before the high-endization, the unit price of zhang dayi’s store was close to 400 yuan. according to the latest statistics this year, the per capita clothing consumption in china in the first quarter the expenditure is only 492 yuan.

obviously, zhang dayi and others are aware of the change, but whether the direction of the change is reasonable is another matter.

internet celebrities are anxious, and platforms are even more anxious.

how famous were the zhang dayis in the past?

on weibo super celebrity day in 2018, zhang dayi posted a group photo on social networks, including teng yujia, xia xia, lin shanshan, zhang linchao, and xue li. this was a glorious moment for a generation of internet celebrities. at that time, they were gaining more honors and traffic, and the clothing brands behind them had taken over the wardrobes of many girls.

times have changed, things have changed, and their names are rarely mentioned when e-commerce platforms talk about sales myths. at the same time, those internet celebrity brands that relied on e-commerce channels have gradually declined or even disappeared. surveys show that during double eleven in 2013, traditional brands and internet celebrity brands each accounted for half of the top ten women's clothing sales on tmall.

but by 2016, they were nowhere to be seen on various sales lists. a set of data shows that taobao opens an average of 2 million new clothing stores every year. but the era of taobao internet celebrity brands seems to be gone forever. in this context, not only internet celebrities are anxious, but the anxiety of the platform is beyond words.

how important is the clothing business to e-commerce platforms?

taking taobao as an example, it is reported that clothing has always been taobao's most advantageous category, accounting for more than 30% of its retail sales all year round. taobao clothing data shows that more than 400 million users buy clothes on taobao every year. the average number of taobao clothing users purchases is 22 times a year. about 20 million users buy more than 50 times a year on taobao, and the average annual clothing consumption exceeds 10,000 yuan. .

coincidentally, clothing has always been a popular topic on douyin. data shows that throughout 2023, the average monthly play volume of clothing-related short videos on douyin reached 220 billion times, and the average monthly content search growth rate exceeded 70% year-on-year. in 2023, douyin mall gmv increased by 277% year-on-year compared to 2022. %.

the same is true for kuaishou. public information shows that kuaishou’s sales of clothing and shoes account for the first place, accounting for approximately 33.91%. during last year’s double eleven, the originally deserted major sales period was basically supported by clothing consumption. the clothing category’s sales across the entire network were 137 billion yuan, accounting for 14%.

however, the frequent closures of online celebrity clothing stores seem to indicate a problem: the best dividend period for clothing e-commerce has disappeared. in the past, the success rate of platforms uniting internet celebrity founders to create gods has been greatly reduced. at least in the field of clothing consumption, e-commerce platforms led by taobao have gradually lost control.

what’s interesting is that domestic consumers’ choice of clothing is obviously moving closer to traditional brands after jumping out of the internet celebrity circle. in the first half of this year, anta, xtep, li ning, and 361 degrees generated a total revenue of 60.424 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 10.87% from 54.498 billion yuan in the same period last year, which was much higher than the 3.7% year-on-year growth rate of total retail sales of consumer goods during the same period.

this is not good news for e-commerce channels.

because the main sales channels of these traditional brand giants are still concentrated offline. data shows that anta’s e-commerce revenue accounted for only 33% in the first half of this year, and li ning’s even less. e-commerce channel revenue accounted for only 27% of total revenue, not even 30%.

it is undeniable that offline may have become the market foundation for the development of many leading clothing brands. in addition to anta and li ning, semir and heilan home are reorganizing their offline stores in the first half of this year. among them, semir has a net increase of 203 stores and heilan home has a net increase of 148 stores.

jiangnan buyi directly disclosed in its financial report that in fiscal year 2024, the brand's offline retail stores recorded a comparable store revenue growth of 10.7%. as a result, e-commerce platforms may be even more worried, but the online clothing market will not give up easily. taobao, jd.com, doukuai, pinduoduo, and xiaohongshu have been increasing their support for the clothing category in the past two years.

in august this year, taobao and tmall launched the "tmall chinese clothing award". within a few days, jd.com announced an additional investment of 1 billion to fully deploy the clothing category. perhaps, in the near future, zhang dayi's clothing store will be revived. i hope this day can come sooner. after all, the platform and internet celebrities are waiting for it.

overseas consumers: the new “god” of “internet celebrity clothing stores”?

in the past few years, it seems to be an indisputable fact that domestic clothing consumption has bid farewell to the enthusiasm of the past and has begun to fall into the cold winter. data show that the average annual growth rate of my country's apparel industry has slowed to less than 5%, which is obviously different from the past ten years. but from a global perspective, the value of the clothing market is still rising.

statista data shows that the global clothing market will reach us$673 billion in 2023, twice the size of the global furniture market. overseas has therefore become a new gold-mining ground for clothing entrepreneurs. the entire cross-border e-commerce market has also proven with practical actions that the strength of the clothing category is not inferior to that of the past.

data shows that the current clothing category accounts for more than 30% of domestic cross-border e-commerce exports.

in the process of accelerating their overseas expansion, major platforms also regard the clothing category as the first driving force. in august this year, taobao's apparel industry's overseas transaction volume increased by nearly 40%. jd.com became the official online retail partner of asia for london fashion week. the performance of temu, shein, and tiktok shop directly created a new outlet for cross-border e-commerce.

all in all, the overseas clothing consumer market should not be underestimated, and the domestic cross-border e-commerce channels are basically mature. perhaps internet celebrity clothing stores that cannot survive in china can go abroad and find new opportunities for rebirth.

in overseas markets, the return rate that internet celebrity clothing stores are most worried about has been solved. it is reported that the return rate of overseas clothing is extremely low compared to that in china. according to statistics from the "2024 global consumption trends white paper", in malaysia, the return rate of clothing and sports categories in live broadcast rooms does not exceed 10%, and the overall refund rate in indonesia is about 5% to 10%. .

secondly, the domestic internet celebrity economy has grown from the wild to the prosperous, and now it has no choice but to come to an end in the face of declining consumption. for consumers who have begun to pursue rationality and pragmatism, the internet celebrity effect has greatly reduced the magic power it once had. of course, this is also the inevitable result of an over-mature economic model.

however, this type of model has just begun overseas. whether it is the celebrity effect or the influence of internet celebrities on the other side of the ocean, they have not exhausted their novelty. influencer marketing hub has predicted that the global influencer marketing market will reach us$16.4 billion in 2022, and is expected to increase to us$84.89 billion by 2028.

internet celebrities go overseas to continue their clothing business, and there’s no telling if they can make a comeback.

of course, everything can't go as smoothly as imagined. there are many details that internet celebrity clothing brands must consider if they want to succeed cross-border. one of the most important problems is that domestic internet celebrity clothing stores have been unable to get rid of the bad habit of empty designs. the clothes behind many internet celebrities such as zhang dayi and xue li have had plagiarism problems.

overseas markets have always attached great importance to copyright, and xiyin understands this very well. in 2023 alone, xiyin was involved in more than 10 plagiarism incidents. according to relevant media data, in the past three years, xiyin has received as many as 50 plagiarism prosecution cases. as competition in fast fashion intensifies, there will only be more such melees, not less.

lack of originality has always been one of the causes of the collapse of internet celebrity clothing stores.

but the cost of strengthening design is not something a small brand can afford. taking jiangnan buyi as an example, as the brand was once unable to escape from the design scandal, its investment in design research and development has skyrocketed in the past two years. in fiscal year 2021, jiangnan buyi’s clothing design expenses were only 23.907 million yuan, and in fiscal year 2022, the expenses were only 21.727 million yuan. yuan.

by the 2023 fiscal year, jiangnan buyi’s investment in design and r&d expenses will be 168 million yuan, accounting for 3.8% of revenue.

there are about 170,000 garment manufacturing companies in my country, and there are about 13,000 companies above designated size (annual main business income of 20 million yuan or more), accounting for only 8%, and more than 90% are small, medium and micro enterprises. this means that the vast majority of clothing companies do not have original design capabilities at all.

however, fashion consumption is unpredictable, and the clothing market has revolved around the word "fast" for many years. it is easy to imagine how tolerant the extremely harsh overseas environment is for these internet celebrity stores that want to go global.

last but not least, overseas clothing consumption is also involved in a "price war". starting from january 15 this year, amazon’s us site will reduce the sales commission for clothing products priced between us$15 and us$20 to 10%. the original figure was 17%. zhang dayi and others who still want to transform into high-end products at home have no choice but to lower their profile when they go overseas.

even so, whether overseas consumers will pay the bill is an unknown variable.