“Believe in the power of brand”, this is the trump card theme slogan of CCTV-1 advertising department. The short 7 words show the brand’s strong influence in the market competition. Since its establishment in 1991, Jiangsu Hengyuanxiang Garment Co., Ltd. has firmly grasped the brand influence of “Hengyuanxiang” to open up the territory, and has embarked on a unique new path of development of the traditional clothing industry, that is, Hengyuanxiang Group concentrates on maintaining and enhancing the brand, while Hengyuanxiang Garment concentrates on producing products that can meet consumer needs and meet brand requirements.
Brand Affiliation originated from an encounter in Shanghai
The predecessor of Hengyuanxiang clothing is Jiangyin Velvet Factory, which was founded in 1991. At the beginning of its establishment, the company was processing for others, there was no sales market, and the profit was very low. In order to find a way out, the pile thread factory had to go to Shanghai to look for opportunities, and thus met Shanghai Hengyuanxiang Group, which was still in the early stage of development.
Founded in 1927, Hengyuanxiang is a time-honored brand originating in Shanghai, and the three characters “Hengyuanxiang” were taken from a pair of spring couplings “Hengluo Department Store, Origin Qianxiang” by its founder Mr. Shen Laizhou. In the first contact, Hengyuanxiang talked to the pile thread factory about the idea of brand alliance, that is, Hengyuanxiang is responsible for advertising, branding and other marketing work, while the plant, workers, machines, etc. are responsible for the pile factory, and the final money earned is one and a half for both parties.
At that time, as a small enterprise in Jiangyin township, the velvet factory had no concept of the brand and the operation of the brand, but instinctively full of hope for the joint operation model proposed by Hengyuanxiang. In 1993, Hengyuanxiang highly recognized its factory management and product quality after inspecting the pile factory. In August of that year, the pile thread factory officially joined Hengyuanxiang, mainly producing “Xiaoyan” brand pile thread.
In the remaining less than 5 months of 1993, the pile yarn factory produced more than 130 tons of pile yarn, with sales of more than 10 million yuan and a profit of nearly 2 million yuan. Nancaozhuang Village, where the enterprise is located, was lifted out of poverty that year, which caused a great shock in the local area; In 1994, the pile thread factory produced more than 700 tons of pile yarn, with sales of more than 60 million yuan, and soon, the old plant was expanded, and a complete set of new equipment was introduced and installed; In 1996, Nancaozhuang Village, famous for its poverty, became an economic demonstration village in Wuxi. The power of the brand, sharp as sly.
In 1998, feeling the limitations of the pile thread market capacity, the pile thread factory had the idea of transformation and upgrading. In that year, the pile thread factory cooperated with Hengyuanxiang Group to jointly invest in the establishment of Jiangsu Hengyuanxiang Garment Co., Ltd., specializing in the production of “Hengyuanxiang” shirts, jackets, T-shirts, underwear, trousers, casual pants and other business men’s wear. Up to now, taking advantage of the east wind of the “Hengyuanxiang” brand, Hengyuanxiang apparel has developed more than 1,000 retail terminals across the country, and set up general agents in 32 provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions, and the sales network has spread all over the country, becoming a star enterprise in Wuxi City and a key backbone enterprise in Jiangyin City.
Once, many people have raised questions about Hengyuanxiang clothing: after the company’s products are sold, the money earned will be given to Hengyuanxiang Group as a brand royalty, why not use this money to create your own brand and grasp all the profits in your own hands? In fact, after witnessing the history of Hengyuanxiang Group’s brand operation, enterprises deeply realize that to create a brand, especially to be able to operate sustainably, not only requires strong funds, but also the wisdom and ability to operate the brand, however, not every enterprise has these conditions.
Therefore, for Hengyuanxiang clothing, today’s business model is the most suitable. Hengyuanxiang Group concentrates on maintaining and enhancing the brand, while Hengyuanxiang clothing is responsible for concentrating on the production of products that meet the brand requirements, both sides take advantage of their strengths and avoid their weaknesses, and both do their strengths to the extreme, such a division of labor, high efficiency, good benefits, and low risks. In addition, because the production is brand products, Hengyuanxiang clothing products not only sell more extensively, but also have strong market bargaining power and anti-risk ability.
Climb high and strengthen and share the brand dividend
Brand is the wealth of Hengyuanxiang Group. Mr. Milton Kotler, the world marketing guru, and Mr. Francis McGuire, vice chairman of the International Brand Alliance and chief consultant of Coca-Cola, all spoke highly of the Hengyuanxiang brand and praised Hengyuanxiang as China’s “Coca-Cola”! In recent years, in the process of accelerating brand development, Hengyuanxiang Group has actively forged ahead, organized and participated in a series of international large-scale activities, and accelerated the realization of the mission of “Hengyuanxiang brand becomes part of history”, thereby giving Hengyuanxiang clothing and other franchised factories more product premiums and bringing more brand dividends.
On December 22, 2005, Hengyuanxiang Group officially became the sponsor of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games, which is the first non-sports textile and apparel enterprise sponsor in the history of the Olympic Games; On November 30, 2008, Hengyuanxiang became the first partner of the Chinese Olympic Committee; In 2010, Hengyuanxiang became a licensed manufacturer and retailer of Shanghai World Expo; On November 20, 2012, Hengyuanxiang continued to be a sponsor of the 2013-2016 Chinese Olympic Committee. At the Beijing Olympic Games, the Chinese sports delegation carefully created by Hengyuanxiang costumes attracted the attention of the world as soon as its image of “tomato scrambled eggs” debuted, and the classic red and yellow styles and exquisite tailoring were unanimously praised by the Olympic Committee and athletes.
Since then, Hengyuanxiang clothing, as a partner of the Chinese Olympic Committee, has always insisted on tailoring for the official representatives and athletes of the Chinese sports delegation, providing them with high-quality and professional services, in the 2009 Canadian Winter Olympics, East Asian Games, 2010 Guangzhou Asian Games, Shanghai World Expo, 2012 London Olympic Games, 2013 Incheon Asian Games and many other international events, Hengyuanxiang clothing have done their best, concentrated advantages to use professional teams, The entire process of design, production and distribution of clothing is carried out in an orderly manner. Through these international projects, Hengyuanxiang clothing shows the Hengyuanxiang brand on the world stage, so that Hengyuanxiang clothing has established a certain authority in the professional field of clothing.
Enjoy the dividends of the brand, climb the high-end of the market, and develop at a higher level, and also put forward higher requirements for Hengyuanxiang clothing. The company has always been consumer-oriented, to meet the market demand to the greatest extent, using high-quality fabrics, the latest style design, fine craftsmanship, first-class product quality, first-class service and management level and the majority of consumers to make progress together. In recent years, with the improvement of the quality system of Hengyuanxiang factory, Hengyuanxiang Garment has also carried out strict quality inspection and achieved excellent results. In the quality inspection of the shirt industry, the company has been awarded the title of “Excellent Quality Enterprise” for more than 10 consecutive years.
Advance into the multi-latitude market of gold nuggets at the network end
While making full use of the “Hengyuanxiang” brand resources, in recent years, Hengyuanxiang clothing has also been tirelessly exploring the sales model. In view of the new changes and new models of today’s market sales, enterprises began to lay out online and offline markets as early as a few years ago, and found new market growth points.
In order to strengthen the sales capacity of downstream physical dealers and physical stores, and stabilize the offline market. Hengyuanxiang apparel conducts unified training for offline physical stores, and employs dozens of professional lecturers to conduct professional training for thousands of store managers and sales customers, covering store selection, store layout, product display, terminal sales and shopping guides. After unified training and guidance for downstream terminal stores, the company’s terminal stores have been steadily maintained at more than 1,000, which has greatly stabilized the company’s overall offline channels.
With the general trend of online sales, enterprises realize that online sales can expand channels that cannot be covered offline, and will become the focus of future development of enterprises. Since 2014, Hengyuanxiang apparel began to adjust the development ideas for e-commerce, strengthened the support for e-commerce, reformed from the production capacity, so that the enterprise has the ability to respond to the rapid production of large-scale orders within 7 days, and supported the return of product orders and sales and the capital credit line of e-commerce customers.
The clothing in the e-commerce model has a completely different operation strategy from the previous offline model, and the online price of e-commerce is more transparent, which is very easy to cause vicious competition between e-commerce companies selling the same products. Therefore, Hengyuanxiang clothing pays special attention to the product development of e-commerce, first, product differentiation, online products and offline products distinguish different varieties and different products; Second, the product promotion points are different, the company guides different e-commerce companies to carry out different product key promotions, for example, A e-commerce sells shirts and jackets, B e-commerce sells jackets, then in the variety of jackets, the company will carry out different promotions on A and B in jacket products; The third is to properly unify the sales price of e-commerce products, and ensure the sustainable development of e-commerce with a control rate of 1.9 times.
At present, the operation and production system of Hengyuanxiang clothing is order-based production, consisting of deposit, delivery payment, and final payment, and the enterprise itself does not carry out inventory preparation, so the capital requirements for customers are extremely high, and the operational characteristics of e-commerce make e-commerce pre-stocking pressure is great, capital demand is also very high and risky, and it is easy to overstock inventory. In order to support the development of e-commerce, Hengyuanxiang Garments has made a “compromise”, conducted special detailed interviews and exchanges with franchised e-commerce, and launched an e-commerce credit limit system for e-commerce, allowing some goods to be shipped first and then settled according to the different circumstances of each e-commerce customer. This initiative has greatly improved the competitiveness of online sales. At present, Hengyuanxiang clothing’s underwear products have achieved 50% of online and offline sales.
Reporter’s comments
Business is changeable, survival of the fittest. From a small velvet factory to the “Hengyuanxiang” with a history of nearly 100 years, the development of Jiangsu Hengyuanxiang clothing has a very typical significance in Jiangyin’s overwhelming textile and garment enterprises. Traditional enterprises, how to get out of the quagmire of homogeneous and low-end competition, Hengyuanxiang clothing to join famous brands, develop the market with the brand, and force their own development of the successful practice, undoubtedly has a very strong learning and reference.