Industry magnifying glass The rivers and lakes of thermal underwear

Mondo Culture Updated on 2024-02-01

In the rivers and lakes of thermal underwear, new and old brands compete on the same stage, and their playing styles have their own characteristics.

With the sudden drop in temperature in many places recently, the sales of thermal underwear, a cold "artifact", have also risen.

From November to the end of December 2023, the sales of thermal suits on the Douyin platform alone have exceeded 100 million yuan, and the GMV growth rate has reached 3694%, and the number of views exceeded 10 million in multiple days.

Thin or thick? Antibacterial or skin-friendly ......From fabric technology to shape design, from label ingenuity to marketing competition. In the rivers and lakes of thermal underwear, new and old brands such as Jiaoxia, Bananai, and Sangun compete on the same stage, and their playing styles have their own characteristics.

Speaking of bananaxia and bananai, seventy or eighty percent of consumers will not be able to distinguish between these two brands, and even some consumers simply recognize the two as one.

Relying on the innovative R&D and sustainable reuse capabilities of lightweight protection technology, Jiaoxia provides the public with lightweight outdoor products for urban outdoor, suburban outdoor and mountain outdoor applications, including clothing, umbrellas, accessories, shoes, contents, utensils, daily chemicals and other categories. [1]

Bananai is a brand that has redesigned basic life models such as underwear, socks, sunscreen, warmth, and home clothes around the somatosensory problems in various scenarios. [2]

In short, Jiaoxia used to make outdoor sunscreen products, and now it does outdoor clothes, accessories and everything; Banana used to make underwear, but now the track has expanded to socks and clothes.

But having said that, no matter what you did before, now the two "bananas" are colliding with the underwear industry, and they are bound to become competitors, but fortunately, the two have taken a differentiated path.

Jiaoxia still focuses on the brand's own lightweight protective technology and the "core" of the outdoors, and builds thermal underwear as a part of the entire "outdoor layering system", that is, the concept of a close-fitting basic inner layer.

Around this system, most of the products launched by Jiaoxia for the underwear track also focus on scene marketing, such as initial warm underwear in wind-cold environments that resist strong winds, medium warm underwear in rain-cold environments, and high-warm underwear in snow-cold environments.

In the underwear track, Banana not only focuses on the "warm" function, but also emphasizes the functionality of the overall product system, through the marketing of functional features such as sweat absorption, quick drying, warmth, wind resistance, etc., so that consumers can match clothing that responds to seasonal changes and temperature changes, and at the same time meets various scenarios such as switching commuting and outdoor activities.

In contrast, Banana pays more attention to the update and marketing of the "thermal underwear" itself. Whether it is focusing on the improvement of underwear fabrics, or the ingenuity of replacing the sewing labels of underwear with the printing process, Banana is firmly focused on the competitiveness of "underwear" itself.

After using "experience technology" to the extreme and creating the ace product of "non-inductive underwear" in the industry, Banana has also put a lot of effort into product marketing.

Bananai built the Tmall platform as the first online station, enhanced the conversion of core users through various "coupon" activities, and then deepened potential consumers' awareness of the brand with the help of Xiaohongshu, Douyin and other **note planting and implantation, so as to continue to supplement core users.

In addition, Bananai further caters to the preferences of young consumers, and joins hands with Wang Yibo to further promote Bananai's popularity among young users with star effect.

Who is more brilliant in the banana that pays attention to "system building" and the banana that pays attention to "single product"? Perhaps the sales figures for the next big sale can tell us the answer.

1][2] are all quoted from searches.

When it comes to thermal underwear, you can't avoid the national brand of "three guns". But few people know that Yaya, who has counterattacked and turned over in the past three years, also has thermal underwear products.

It's the same old brand, but the experience is different.

Born in 1937, the Three Guns are a sentiment in the hearts of many consumers. But the more classic the brand, the more afraid it is of change, except for the three guns.

In 2011, when e-commerce had not yet emerged, this traditional old domestic brand boldly sought change, started the strategic transformation of the brand, and built an e-commerce platform from scratch. Sangun can capture a larger market share through new retail, and its core lies in the "three modernizations" principle of quality, rejuvenation and digitalization.

Quality has always been the bottom line of Sangun. A brand that has experienced changes in consumer preferences for more than 80 years, Three Guns is constantly improving product quality and brand aesthetics to meet the new needs of consumers. According to statistics, Sangun develops more than 800 new varieties of fabrics every year, and on average, a high-tech product that innovates industry standards will be developed every 3 years.

Digitalization is the key to the success of the three guns. In 2011, Sangun began to enter e-commerce, and by the following year's Double 11, Sangun's e-commerce sales exceeded 30 million, which was equivalent to half a month's sales of the store at that time. In 2016, three shots won the first place in the sales of Tmall underwear. Tmall, Weibo, Xiaohongshu, Douyin. None of the three guns were left behind, which is really rare for an old brand.

Rejuvenation is a three-gun continuous strategy. In order to ensure that each generation of consumers loves Sangun, Sangun must embrace the needs of young consumers. In recent years, taking advantage of the trend of the return of the national tide, Sangun has continued to conform to the trend of fashion, and through various forms such as cross-border cooperation of palace culture "Da Nei Master", fashion week, scene building, etc., it has broken the circle again and again, and successfully entered the circle of young consumers, integrating fashion and brand quality manufacturing, giving the brand more sustainable vitality.

Compared with the smooth sailing three guns, the duck duck, which is also an old domestic brand, is more bumpy.

Although in the past three years, Yaya has successfully completed the transformation through the first live broadcast and other methods, but its products are still focused on the "down jacket" single product track, although many products have been launched in the thermal underwear track, but its product promotion and platform marketing are far less than the strength of "down jacket", and only the "trace" of "thermal underwear" can be found from the comment area from the daily publicity.

is also a "warm product", Duck Duck's "conservative" in thermal underwear is really incredible, or maybe its brand is planning another "turn and counterattack"?

Although domestic brands have long regarded "technical fabrics" as the core of competition in thermal underwear, it is the "Uniqlo" from Japan that implants the concept of "technical fabrics" in people's hearts.

Best-selling black technology for 20 years, UNIQLO HEATTECH Magic Thermal Underwear", UNIQLO has achieved the ultimate in market mental education through a series of hard-core "fabric experiments".

On this basis, UNIQLO has played the marketing slogan of "thin and warm" and "hygroscopic and hot", and has formed three classic underwear series of light and warm, multi-comfortable and high warm with three types of heattech fabrics to meet the differentiated environmental needs.

However, Cat People, who also focus on fabric research and development and have "scientific and technological genes", once fell into a state of loss because of their overly aggressive expansion of casual wear categories and problems such as strategic loss of focus.

In 2009, Catman refocused on the underwear industry and opened a large store chain model, but then the rapid rise of e-commerce brought a huge impact to Catman's offline entities, and its brand products suffered another setback.

In 2022, based on the judgment of user insights and industry trends, Catman will re-establish its brand positioning as "technical underwear". In fact, in the thermal underwear industry at that time, there were many brands focusing on "technology", and Uniqlo and the above-mentioned banana were all keywords around "technology".

To this end, Cat Man once again focused on the two dimensions of safety and comfort in "scientific and technological underwear", broke through antibacterial and breathable technology respectively, solved the two biggest pain points of consumers' daily life, made fabric technology more accurately match user needs, and continuously launched new products. By September 2023, the popular "Hot Octave" series under the Cat Man brand has been updated to 3Version 0.

Subsequently, Cat Man shifted its marketing strategy from the B-end based on TV advertising and ladder media to the C-end content marketing of platforms such as Xiaohongshu, Douyin, and **hao, so as to realize the traffic after the transformation of e-commerce.

According to public information, during the "Double 11" in 2023, Cat People will rank among the top three in the underwear industry list on major e-commerce platforms such as Tmall, Vipshop, Douyin, and JD.com, and rank first in the underwear category of the peak brand list of the "Double 11" Good Things Festival on Douyin, with a year-on-year increase of 60% in online and offline omni-channel transaction value.

Cat Man has not yet defeated Uniqlo, but he has completed his "redemption" transformation.

Whether it is the upgrading of fabrics, or the refinement of labels, or even the change of "underwear worn outside", in the thermal underwear industry, no matter what "play" used by new and old brands, fashion and functionality will be the two major trends in the future development of thermal underwear.

Whether it is a new brand or an old brand, while recognizing the development trend of the industry, focusing on the differences and highlights of its own brand, and realizing brand breaking and market mind seizure, is the "only magic weapon" in the future of this thermal underwear "Jianghu".

Who will be able to "be one step ahead and dominate the rivers and lakes" in the future? Let's wait and see what kind of development this subdivision will usher in.

Related Pages