Bosideng Costumes: The "Premium" of Common Sense

09/10 Clothing Conference

If you are a venture capitalist, you should not be willing to invest in such a company: traditional industries, a single business area, and asset-oriented. And if you are a value investor, you will certainly be interested in such a business: the management period is more than 30 years, the management experience is rich; the main business has maintained the market first place for more than 10 years, the scale of the world's top three; Leading technology and design capabilities, the business has a good growth and profitability.

When these conditions coincide with the same company, perhaps every company struggling with typical anxiety in China would want to know: How does it do it all?

Bosideng has been cherishing the ideal of a "world brand" since he started his business, and is stepping closer to this seemingly unattainable goal. In this process, every important strategic choice it makes is accompanied by a hard-to-desire style: Bosideng always picks the hard, stagnant, slow-response paths that they It is so painful that everyone knows it is correct, but it is always lacking.

According to Bosideng and its leader, Gao Dekang, in a traditional industry such as clothing, “how can we become a world brand” is originally clear: If we insist on advancing according to industry common sense, we will continue to approach our goals. It was only those wise people who always thought of taking shortcuts and created a misunderstanding and trap for themselves.

Farewell to the comfort zone

In fact, the crisis created by China today is nothing more than a "premature future." This has caused many Chinese manufacturing companies to fall into the category of low brand premiums and their profits are being expropriated. This has both historical burdens and is the result of choices made by most companies. When OEM orders come in and out, are companies willing to stay away from this comfort zone that makes money simple and easy, and embark on the difficult road of self-built brands? This is the difference between most companies that are still struggling on the basic line of profits and a firm that has firmly grasped their own future.

In 1976, Bosideng, which started from 11 sewing machines at 11 in Haicang Village, Baiju Township, Changshu City, Jiangsu Province, was regarded as one of the earliest township enterprises in China. In the early period of reform and opening up, Shansong Village Garment Factory produced for Shanghai Tiangong Garment Factory. Down jacket. That is the era of the most brilliant sales of Chinese down apparel. Even in Shanghai, it is necessary to queue up tickets to buy one. The products are in demand. This is the most beautiful memory of most companies that experienced the blowout market during the initial period of reform and opening up.

However, Gao Dekang, the founder of Bosideng Group, who enjoyed the same market dividend at the time, put forward: “We must regard quality as the foundation of our company, and when quality and production costs are in conflict, we would rather increase costs and never decrease quality”. The “commercial value” of this quality concept was indeed questionable when the market was in short supply. However, the “social effect” was quite remarkable: there was a curiosity between Hawthorn Garments Factory and Tiangong Down Garment Factory. In the "upside down", agents from all over the country first came to the foothills to request goods, and when they were in short supply, they went to the main plant.

Although high-quality products do not generate more revenue for Bosideng, this phenomenon shows the brand value of the scarce times. Regardless of how insufficient supply and excess demand are shown in the industrial economic data, consumers will still prefer the company whose product quality consistently performs better.

This also gave high German confidence. When the business development momentum of Shanwei Village Garment Factory is booming, Gao Dekang, which has become the first batch of multi-millionaires in the 1990s, has made a bold decision to completely match with the former Tiangong Garment Factory. The factory decoupled itself, ended the history of OEM processing, and went all out to promote its own brand, Bosideng.

If Gao Dekang's factory has been contentedly busy with a steady stream of orders, it will not be possible to see the industry’s number one brand “Bosideng” today. In the apparel industry, many companies that have experienced the foundry era have always used the foundry business as an unquestionable survival tool. Many of these companies have disappeared into the history of fierce market competition, and some still struggle with it today. The bottom of the value chain of the garment industry was almost pushed to the brink of despair by the global economic crisis.

Bosideng did not wait until it turned too late before it began to transition to build its own brand, because it has been holding the apprentice mentality from the beginning to undertake the foundry business as a necessary learning process, waiting for fullness. It is necessary to create its own business independently.