Who is buying a down jacket for 7,000 yuan?

Visual China.

Text |Value Planet, Author |Return, edit |Tang Fei.

Earlier, the domestic down jacket represented by Bosideng adjusted the pricing to more than 7,000 yuan, and it was also on the hot search for a time, and entries such as "domestic down jacket price increase" and "domestic down jacket sold to 7,000 yuan" caused netizens to debate about domestic down jackets.

According to the data of the e-commerce platform, many products such as Flying in the Snow and Duck Duck** came to 5,000 yuan-6,000 yuan, and the down jacket brand Skypeople under Ape Counseling exceeded 7,000 yuan, and Bosideng was close to the 10,000 yuan mark.

Some netizens joked that I had a monthly salary of 2,800 yuan and wanted to buy a down jacket of more than 7,000 yuan, but my mother complained, "Then you might as well stop going to work and stay at home directly, isn't it warmer?" ”

Behind the joke, it is the fact that domestic down jackets have continued in recent years. According to the data of the China National Commercial Information Center, from 2015 to 2020, the average unit price of down jackets in China rose from 452 yuan to 656 yuan; The transaction price of large-scale cold-proof clothing exceeded 1,000 yuan, of which more than 2,000 yuan accounted for nearly 70%.

From the follow-up point of view, there is still a trend of domestic down jackets. Relevant reports point out that in 2027, down jackets are expected to reach 8316 yuan of **.

This trend of continuous years makes people want to ask: where is it expensive? Who is paying for the "sky-high" down jacket of 7,000 yuan?

Behind the rising down jacket** is a combination of factors.

Zhang Li, who has been engaged in the clothing industry for many years, told us that the type of filling and the type of filling directly affect the down jacket.

At present, goose down and duck down are commonly used in the filling of down jackets on the market, and goose down has the advantages of light odor, larger down, longer down and better warmth effect than duck down. However, because the goose cycle takes 8-12 months, and the duck cycle only takes 3-4 months, the goose down production is lower, and its ** is naturally higher than duck down.

Whether it's duck down or goose down, ** is going all the way up. According to the GB T 14272-2021 standard down ** of Down Gold Network, 95 goose down and 90 goose down** soared from 867 yuan kg and 790 yuan kg in July 2023 to 957 at the beginning of this year1 kg yuan and 87374 yuan kg.

Source: Down Gold Net.

95 and 90 white duck down** are up from 482 in July 2023, respectively4 yuan kg and 38236 yuan kg, although there has been a decline in the middle, it is still all the way to 467 at the beginning of this year7 yuan kg and 41238/kg。

Source: Down Gold Net.

In addition to fillers, Zhang Li went on to say that compared with products such as sweatshirts, jeans, and coats, down jackets involve more processes in the manufacturing process, and many down jacket foundries have to subdivide the process. And to give a relatively high salary to recruit experienced production personnel, and then complete the cooperation between different processes.

At the same time, the down jacket brand has extremely high quality requirements, and the production personnel can only slow down to meet the brand's requirements and avoid secondary rework. Taking workmanship and routing as an example, if the brand requires exquisite workmanship and straight routing, then the production staff can only slow down the speed of needle walking, and there is not much work at the end of the day, which virtually increases the production cost of down jackets.

With the progress of technology, black technologies such as charging intelligent temperature control and graphene have gradually been added to down jackets, and it is conservatively estimated that the ex-factory price of a goose down jacket with relatively good quality, full pounds and full of black technology has reached four figures.

Last year, NetEase Yanxuan also announced on its official Weibo that its thousand-yuan down jacket had a production cost of more than 900 yuan due to the complex production process.

Source: NetEase Yanxuan official WeChat.

In addition to the cost of raw materials and production, the cost of sales is also first. Next, clothing stores should pursue high dynamic sales, and their store locations are mainly located in core business districts. The core business district means that the rent is higher than that of other surrounding areas, and this part of the rent cost will inevitably be passed on to consumers.

*If merchants want to get more traffic, they need to face the high promotion costs of platforms such as Douyin, Tmall, and JD.com.

Taking the Douyin platform as an example, Liu Yang, a Douyin merchant, told us that at this stage, the Douyin category is showing a "three high" trend.

One is the high refund rate. Generally speaking, within 24 hours after the anchor has not yet gone off the air, and within 7 days after the delivery is signed, the refund rate is about %-85%, and the industry average refund rate is about 70%, which means that the merchant must bear the high cost of freight insurance, manual secondary receiving, and sorting.

The second is the high cost of streaming, a 3-4 hour live broadcast, burning tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of streaming costs is the norm. Moreover, the core logic of Douyin live broadcast is low, **down jacket is relatively high**, and the conversion rate of live broadcast may be lower.

As Liu Yang said, taking a live broadcast on the morning of January 9, the official *** of Duck Duck Down Jacket Douyin as an example, Daduoduo data shows that the live broadcast room is 2The number of people in the 5-hour live broadcast exceeded 1070,000, but the conversion rate is only 041%。

Source: Daduoduo.

Third, the operating cost is high, and the down jacket brands represented by Duck Duck, Snow Flying, and Bosideng are generally self-broadcasting because of their brand advantages. However, whether it is to build a live broadcast room, or to hire anchors and operation personnel, you need to pay corresponding costs.

Under the premise of high costs, in order to maintain corporate profits, some companies have to turn to higher profit margins to reduce pressure, and "price increases" seem to be the most direct way to increase profits.

According to the financial report of Canada Goose, the head brand of global down jacket products, in the second quarter of fiscal year 2024, Canada Goose's total revenue was 2$8.1 billion with a gross margin of 639%。

With the continuous price increase, the 2023 24 interim report shows that Bosideng's gross profit margin has reached 654%, and the gross profit margin of Flying in the Snow was 441%, Bingjie's gross profit margin is only 267%。

Other brands that are not as well-known as Bosideng generally have a gross profit margin of only 20%-30%. Canada goose down jackets are popular in the market and have a super high gross profit margin, which has added courage to the price increase of domestic down jackets and made more people want to become the next "Canada goose".

Although the sky-high price of down jackets has been repeatedly criticized by the outside world, the existence is reasonable, and there are still some consumers who are willing to pay for these down jackets at this stage.

The French writer Roland Barthes pointed out in the book "The Popular System" that in one popular myth after another, we actually give different connotations to "clothing", so that "clothing" becomes a symbol of a certain meaning.

When this concept is passed on to the down jacket market, it has become that some consumers want to convey a certain "spiritual symbol" by wearing a down jacket to highlight the difference in their own identity. Just as Anta created the concept of "luxury luck" for Arc'teryx, trying to shape it into the Hermès of the outdoor brand, opening stores next door to Hermès to create a high-end image.

On the Tmall platform, sky-high down jackets are still the world of international brands. For example, the Canada goose priced at 9,500 yuan has more than 10,000+ repeat customers, and the rick owens down jacket with a price of 8,653 yuan has more than 90,000+ repeat customers.

Source: Tmall.

The part of consumers who pursue "identity value" is likely not to choose Yaya, Flying in the Snow, and Bosideng, which originally took the route of the national public. Taking the Douyin platform as an example, the sales volume of Duck Duck, Flying in the Snow, and Bosideng sky-high down jackets of about 10,000 yuan in the past 30 days are all 0.

Source: Daduoduo.

Is it true that consumers in the Douyin live broadcast room don't buy 10,000 yuan down jackets? In fact, no, some women's down jackets priced at 10,000 yuan, or even as high as 40,000 yuan on the Douyin platform, although the brand awareness is not high, but because of the beautiful layout, they are still sought after by consumers. For example, Douyin has a product called "[Cream Puff] Love Warm Down Jacket 10,000 times!" Although the unit price of the new national standard 90 white duck down is as high as 9,999 yuan, 1,558 pieces have been sold in the past 30 days, and the sales volume has exceeded 900,000.

Source: Daduoduo.

And those consumers who have special needs for down jackets do not hesitate to spend a lot of money to buy suitable clothing. For example, special people who are keen on skiing and mountaineering, because of the extremely high requirements for the warmth of down jackets in this kind of scene, they are generally willing to pay for sky-high down jackets.

According to the Tmall platform, the two products of Arc'teryx priced at 6,500 yuan and 12,000 yuan have more than 70,000 repeat customers. Archaeopteryx-related products with more than 10,000 yuan have sold a total of 343 orders on the Douyin platform in the past 30 days. Discente, which is priced at 9,900 yuan, has more than 100,000+ repeat customers on Tmall.

Source: Daduoduo.

In general, with the improvement of the scientific and technological level and design ability of clothing fabrics, it is an inevitable result that the domestic brand down jacket has been pushed to a certain height. ** Differentiation reflects the diversification of the market, and what consumers need to do is to take what they need and consume rationally.

In 2023, cost-effective will become the first choice for more and more consumers.

Yataro Matsuura mentioned in the book "Cheap Chic" that "when everyone has what should be there, it no longer makes sense to compare who has more than whom, and the product will eventually return to the essence of use."

This is actually the same consumption 4 mentioned in Miura's book "The Fourth Age of Consumption".The characteristics of the 0 era are similar. The book points out that in the fourth consumption era, consumers re-examine the meaning of consumption, personalized and differentiated consumption has become extremely important, and they are no longer willing to pay for excessive brand premiums, and products characterized by simplicity and sharing are welcomed.

Reflected in the clothing market, the old money style, the quiet luxury style, and the Maillard style have become the mainstream of the 2023 clothing market. And the core of the down jacket is warmth, but this warmth itself has a strong substitution. Therefore, in the past year, the jacket that can be worn "as three pieces", the 100-yuan retro military coat and the Northeast large-flower cotton jacket have briefly become a hot spot for consumption, and their common feature is that the warmth is not inferior to the down jacket, but it is more cost-effective.

At the same time, there was no long-term cold wave weather in the country this winter, and the lack of cost performance and the influence of the weather made the overall sales of sky-high down jackets bleak.

We searched for 5,000-100,000 yuan Douyin down jacket products on the Daduoduo platform, and the cumulative number of products on the shelves in the past 30 days was 5,000.

Among them, there are 4,180 product links with 0 sales, accounting for 826%。The sales volume in -200 product links were 655 and 62 respectively, accounting for respectively. 2%。There are more than 600 product links, and only 76 are there, accounting for less than 15%。

Source: Daduoduo.

Under the premise of poor sales of sky-high down jackets, merchants have to face high inventory pressure. Taking Bosideng as an example, its 2022 interim report shows that its inventory turnover days once reached 212 days.

The clothing market itself has the characteristics of "rapid change of fashion and short product life cycle", such as the inability to quickly complete the inventory clearance, it is impossible to quickly return funds to invest in the research and development and production of new products, and it is impossible to stimulate consumers' desire to buy, thus posing a huge threat to the growth of corporate revenue and profits.

In addition, there are many young consumers who are beginning to look for "replacement" in the foundry. Long Long, a post-00s consumer who has just joined the work, told us that the clothing in the mall is too outrageous, and it is not good for him to open his mouth to ask for money from his family after he has graduated and joined the work. So he began to search for "experience posts" in various forums and post bars, and successfully found several big brand OEM stores.

Although there are not many styles to choose from in these stores, the quality is almost the same as those big brands in the mall, but it is less than a fraction of the tag price. The down jacket I bought last autumn, because it was made by a foundry, the quality and appearance were exactly the same as that of an imported brand, but it only cost more than 500 yuan, and the actual original price was more than 8,000. Long Long said.

In fact, it is a double-edged sword, although it will bring higher returns to enterprises, but it will also inevitably lose some consumers.

Enterprises need to be cautious when formulating a strategy, and how far down jackets can go depends on whether the brand can support this. Previously, there were some ice cream brands in the field of consumer goods that "regarded themselves as the best, and indeed won market recognition for a short time, but the brand quality could not support the pressure after the novelty passed", and finally disappeared from the market.

Therefore, enterprises should not only focus on making a fuss on the first place, but also work hard to build brand connotation.