Reporter Qin Yi
Edited by Tan Lu
Sun Hefang spent 10 years to make the fashionable luxury jewelry brand HEFANG out of the circle.
Circus tents, rabbits and elephants, playground windmills, balloons and Ferris wheels, fairytale little mermaids, and even lye bread and coffee are all part of her design.
The average price of the main products of the brand is 1000-2000 yuan. In the past Double 11, Hefang gave birth to 5 single products with sales of more than 1 million, and so far there have been many single products with annual sales of 10 million.
Doing jewelry business, for Sun Hefang, is a matter of course.
I come from a professional jewelry design background, so I focus more on design itself than on channels and commercialization. Sun Hefang said in an exclusive interview with a reporter from "21CBR".
Hefang's online sales have grown rapidly, ranking among the top three in the Tmall fashion jewelry industry, and it has successively added stores in first- and second-tier cities.
Sun Hefang believes that this is the result of the interaction of the three trends of the rise of China's design power, the stereotype of the domestic light luxury market, and the self-pleasing needs of urban girls.
The following is Sun Hefang's own statement (edited and processed):
Positioning light luxury
The establishment of HEFANG was an accidental event in my life, and it was also an inevitable result.
My mother was in the jewelry manufacturing industry, so I was introduced to the jewelry industry earlier, and with my own interests, I knew early that I wanted to pursue a career in jewelry design.
Later, I was admitted to St. Martins, a prestigious art and design school in London.
After returning to China, I first worked as a jewelry and watch editor in fashion **elle for two years, during which I came into contact with many domestic and foreign jewelry brands, and found that the domestic market, light luxury positioning, inlay color jewelry brands, is vacant.
Can you do something different?
With the encouragement of the editor-in-chief of ELLE magazine, I started a brand that bears my own name.
In terms of design, texture and pricing, HEFANG aims at 25-35-year-old urban exquisite white-collar workers and fashionable girls. The product is hand-set in a way that rivals the traditional hand-setting of High Jewellery, and is somewhere between High Jewellery and affordable accessories.
Our parents are engaged in the jewelry manufacturing industry, and we are one of the few designer brands that have their own ** chain.
Once I have a good design, I can immediately go to the factory to proofing and produce, and constantly try new designs, new materials, and new processes, eliminating the cost and communication problems to consider when working with a third party.
Compared with traditional jewelry, the value of HEFANG is more reflected in the design.
Traditional jewelry is more of a high-quality product, and the value of Hefang's products is not only measured by the value of the material.
The user group who likes hefang is some urban girls who pursue beauty and fashion, and may pay more attention to the beauty of design and fashion taste than **.
The problem is that the value of the design is not visible to the consumer.
I first consider the brand positioning and design cost, followed by the cost of the product, and then give the price after comprehensive consideration.
As a designer jewelry brand, design itself is the biggest cost. Hefang is born in order to output aesthetic design, not to fight the best, we can not predict the acceptance of consumers, we can only continue to launch good products.
So far, Hefang's products range from a few hundred yuan to tens of thousands of yuan, and nearly 1,000 SKUs are on sale in all channels, with an annual turnover of hundreds of millions of yuan, which verifies the value of the design itself.
Quickly out of the circle
When Hefang was first established in Shanghai, it reached consumers mainly through mainstream fashion** such as elle, bazzar and cosmo, as well as boutiques and boutique department stores such as Lane Crawford and Colette.
Subsequently, it was discovered by fashion magazines**, which further affected the celebrity circle, and they wore Hefang's early products on variety shows, bringing promotion effects.
Hefang established its own e-commerce channel in 2016.
We are one of the first batch of designer brands to enter e-commerce platforms such as Tmall, JD.com, and Xiaohongshu, and our turnover has increased by more than 100% year-on-year for several consecutive years.
In 2018, it began to prudently expand offline physical stores, opening two first stores, one in the south and one in the north, the K11 store in Guangzhou and the Taikoo Li Sanlitun store in Beijing. Now, nearly 60 stores have been opened in major business districts in first-tier cities across the country.
In the three years of the epidemic, I clearly realized that the development of HEFANG cannot only rely on operating stores, but also needs to operate users, and the irreversible trend of the retail industry is: online reach, online inspection, and omni-channel coverage.
This year, the ratio of turnover between HEFANG's online and offline channels has basically reached a balance.
Online, during the Double 11 period, the Tmall *** live broadcast room ranked second in the industry's silver jewelry list.
HEFANG not only has a brand self-broadcast room established within the company, but also cooperates with some external anchors. After trying it, I realized that the way of live streaming big V bringing goods and participating in big promotions and price reductions is not a long-term solution.
As a result, we shifted more of our efforts to the brand's studio, so that customers could see the results without having to try them on in person. To this end, we have cultivated different styles of streamers.
In addition, our cooperation with fashionistas and celebrities is a two-way street, and because of the word-of-mouth accumulated in the early stage, sometimes they will take the initiative to contact us. We will also look for celebrities who match the temperament of the brand.
Before Dong Jie settled in Xiaohongshu, we were already friends. She often wears HEFANG products in her daily personal clothes and attending events, and when she entered Xiaohongshu, we hit it off and led to the collaboration.
In addition to Dong Jie, celebrities who have worn HEFANG include Zhang Ziyi, Ni Ni, Hu Ge, TFBOYS, etc., almost half of the entertainment industry.
Actively trying live e-commerce, KOL marketing, short **, etc., Hefang hopes to step out of the comfort zone, maintain the transformation of user consumption Xi, and strive to get out of the circle.
Thin water flows
This year is the 11th anniversary of the company's establishment, and we have gone from a studio of three or four people to more than 100 employees, and there are also two or three hundred offline salespeople.
The company has core departments such as e-commerce, sales, branding, design, and commodities. My current role is not only the overall manager, but also the design director.
As a designer, I need to be guided by subjective aestheticsAs a manager, I will analyze the market more rationally.
In terms of scale, HEFANG has gradually grown from an independent and niche designer brand to a relatively mature brand, and there is still a lot to work hard and learn Xi.
No matter how the product strategy and channel planning change, we have always insisted on "growing regularly", hoping to be a long-term designer brand.
In the past few years, a lot of capital has come to the door, and we have not thought about financing, because Hefang has been healthy and profitable since the first year of its establishment. I want to build a brand steadily and well.
What HEFANG really needs most is a mature brand operation team, sufficient experience and management resources. If the time comes, we do not rule out joining forces with new partners.
The challenge we are currently encountering is that the platform has begun to change from pursuing high customer orders to pursuing high conversion rates, that is, more advocating low unit price products. In offline shopping malls, the rate of customers carrying bags is declining.
This is both a crisis and an opportunity.
Hefang is not a cost-effective brand, and our pressure comes more from the improvement of raw materials and traffic costs.
Under the pressure of business, HEFANG did not respond to the trend and output more low-price products, but adhered to the original brand positioning. In the first half of this year, our omnichannel turnover increased by 58%.
In the past two years, HEFANG has tried to co-brand with brands such as Peter Rabbit, Maserati and Victoria's Secret, on the one hand, to maintain the popularity of HEFANG, and to give the public a sense of freshness.
For example, the Barbie series is a collaboration between my daughter and me. The Lonely Animals series, inspired by some social hot events, hopes to convey the environmental protection concept of protecting endangered animals with jewelry design.
I think crossover is just a form and gimmick, the core is still creativity, and the final content presented has an unknown attraction for consumers.
What we want to emphasize is the sense of design and texture, hefang is not a consumable consumer product, but a work that is still worth savoring after five or ten years.