LV behind the second explosion sneakers

As an emerging category, luxury sneakers have almost become a "prism" for the current luxury industry.

Following the launch of the Archlight sneakers fire in February last year, Louis Vuitton launched five sneakers LV Trainer again in the rhythm, and sold it in the domestic WeChat app "LVTrainer show sneakers limited time store". It is between RMB 8850 and RMB 12,500 and supports various payment methods such as bank transfer, Alipay and WeChat.

Taking the sneakers as a breakthrough to create the latest men's wear series, robbing the Chinese online market and young consumers, the side proves the strategic position of sports shoes in the brand's current market strategy. This time, the pursuit of victory has also made the popular opinion on the bursting of the luxury sports shoes bubble in the industry a question mark.

Unlike the Archlight shoes that first appeared in the 2018 spring and summer women's show, this year's LV Trainer was created by Louis Vuitton's men's creative director and trend brand Off-White founder Virgil Abloh, who was also the first 2019 spring and summer men's wear after taking office. As part of the series, the current range of ready-to-wear and accessories products are also officially available for sale at designated stores.

In contrast, Archlight was infused with Louis Vuitton's creative director Nicolas Ghesquière in the 1990s on the basis of basketball shoes, reflecting the designer's long-standing obsession with futurism and architectural structure. The new LV Trainer is relatively simple and straightforward. It is highly re-enacted in the 90s professional basketball shoes, pointing to the young culture of mainstream shoes represented by Air Jordan.

If Nicolas Ghesquière's eye-catching streamlined design in Archlight is a typical visually oriented design language, then LV Trainer reflects Virgil Abloh's consistent preference for coding languages ​​such as text and numbers. It is reported that the number "54" after the shoe refers to the brand was born in 1854, the shoe side number "408" refers to the birthday of founder Louis Vuitton, and the shoe side gold brand name is written by Virgil Abloh. It is worth mentioning that Archlight supports both men and women, and LV Trainer currently only offers men's models with 39 and above shoe size options.

The reason for comparing the two sneakers launched one year apart is to see the changes that have taken place in Louis Vuitton through the "prism" of the sneakers. With the trend and the dramatic changes in the market, how to better connect the millennial generation to become one of the biggest challenges facing luxury brands. Now sneakers are starting to take on this role. In the past year, the addition of Virgil Abloh is considered to be the most disruptive personnel change in the history of Louis Vuitton, and this move undoubtedly affects the brand's future design language and market business decisions.

Maybe Louis Vuitton is still a newcomer in the field of sports shoes, but this area has long been familiar to Virgil Abloh. The Off-White he founded was a Parisian fashion week with a mix of high fashion and street style, and he has been working with Nike since 2017 to launch the “THE TEN” series and continues to spark consumer rush. 31 color matching shoes, rated as the best-selling shoes for several consecutive quarters. At the end of 2018, Virgil Abloh announced the end of the series on Instagram, which caused consumers to buy.

There is no doubt that Archlight has been a success for Louis Vuitton's first strategic attempt on sneakers. Then, the brand will definitely be more empowered to Virgil Abloh, who is more familiar with the explosive manufacturing and professional sports shoes, with more intentional cards. Young consumer.

Whether it is Virgil Abloh or luxury sports shoes, they have become a special presence in the entire luxury industry. The forces that motivate them to move to the center of the stage are the same trend of street sports style and the rise of young people's spending power, as well as the interweaving of traditional luxury attributes and democratization.

As early as 20 years ago, sports shoes have appeared on the runway. In 1996, Prada became the first luxury brand to introduce sports shoes. In 2002, Yohji Yamamoto and Jeremy Scott became partners of adidas and have been acquired by Fosun International. The luxury brand Lanvin also launched sports shoes in 2005.

In 2014, in Chanel's feminist themed haute couture fashion show, the high heels at the foot of the model that walked down the Grand Palace ladder were replaced by custom sneakers. Creative director Karl Lagerfeld put the sneakers on the stage for the first time, causing the industry to attention. It is reported that the 64 pairs of sneakers launched by Chanel were provided by the high-end custom shoemaker Masaro. Each pair of shoes takes about 30 hours of manual work, and it still relies on scarcity to attract consumers.

Fashion critic Suzy Menkes wrote in a commentary after the show, "The sneakers in Chanel's Spring/Summer 2014 collection clearly make the audience feel overwhelmed, which is beyond the usual impression of Chanel." "It is affirmation of Chanel's series, and it believes that it has created a new style for the luxury industry and liberated the models' feet. It is not only a small step for luxury brands in the field of footwear, but also a feminist aspect. A big step.

However, as a creative attempt of individual brands, the sneakers on the show floor provided inspiration and imagination for the fashionable sneakers. However, for a long time, it has not become the focus of luxury brand marketing. Really become an independent category.

Until 2014, the fashion circle began to set off an athleisure sports and leisure trend, which refers to people wearing sports and leisure wear in addition to fitness venues, while the Wall Street Journal data shows that the athleisure market was 35 billion US dollars, which is expected by 2020. A market will grow by 40%.

At first, the popular center was the shoes from professional sports brands, but Stan Smith, who was fired by former creative director Phoebe Philo, helped the German sports brand adidas to counterattack, making “Little White Shoes” occupy the world for a long time. The fashion media reported that it has become a classic item that is widely recognized as a "small black dress."

In 2015, rapper Kanye West and adidas launched the Yeezy coconut shoes to bring this trend to a new level, when 9000 pairs of Yeezy sold out in 10 minutes. The emergence of Yeezy not only makes hunger marketing a popular form of marketing in the future, but more importantly, it puts sports shoes on the trend label, creating a product category between sports and fashion.

At the same time, dressing methods for dressing up and leisure have spread throughout society in recent years. According to the British Independent, First Direct, after investigating two thousand employees, found that only one in ten employees said they would wear formal attire at work. 70% of the respondents said they would feel more comfortable wearing casual clothes, and 43% of the respondents thought that formal dressing is no longer a must for work. On the contrary, wearing formal dresses in the office is considered to be incompatible with the crowd.

According to CBNData's "Life, Sports-Online Sports Shoes Related Consumer Series" released in August last year, from 2016 to 2018, sales of online sports shoes in China continued to rise, with running shoes contributing the highest for two consecutive years. The sales volume of shoes, shoes and casual shoes increased most significantly. Men were the mainstay of online sports shoes consumption, and the number of consumers and consumption were higher than women.

According to a report released by the market research institute NPD, the overall sales of sports shoes in the United States increased by 37% in 2017, while sales of high-heeled shoes fell by 11% year-on-year. Beth Goldstein, managing director of NPD and a fashion footwear and accessories industry analyst, said that this is related to the busy work of modern women. Compared with good looks, comfort and convenience have become the primary needs of the group when buying shoes.

It is worth noting that, according to Quartzy, North Korean local producers are drawing inspiration from well-known brands including Nike, Adidas, and Asics to produce sports shoes like Air Jordan to fill the gap in the manufacture of sports shoes. Some analysts pointed out that North Korea has shown interest in improving manufacturing, especially footwear manufacturing, and intends to use it to promote economic growth, which also confirms the huge potential of the sports shoe economy market.

As the trend became more and more fierce, fashionable sneakers finally returned to the luxury brand's runway from the street, completing the commercial closed loop of the trend. That is to say, haute couture has influenced the fashion of sneakers, but before the sneakers were included as a sales target, they went through Stan Smith to Yeezy, then to Louis Vuitton Archlight and Balenciaga Triple S. The step-like "luxury" process.

In April of last year, the French department store in Paris, Balenciaga launched the "old shoes" Triple S triggered a queue of enthusiasm. The Chinese consumers who were lined up were surrounded by many foreign jumpers. The security guards did not impose sanctions on the queues. The new shoes, Balenciaga clerk also loudly screamed at the Chinese who lined up the rules: get out and never buy shoes again. The upload of the event video to social media triggered a large-scale boycott of Chinese consumers, bringing unprecedented public relations crisis to the brand, prompting Balenciaga to issue two apologies.

From a business point of view, sneakers are indeed a business that luxury brands can't miss, and they are the medium to activate the young people's market. In July last year, the website The Blast quoted people close to Kanye West as saying that Yeezy got a $1.5 billion valuation. And received numerous investment and acquisition invitations, adidas CEO Kasper Rorsted also said in a conference call that adidas will increase the production of Yeezy sneakers. The consideration behind this may be that after gaining high attention and brand value through the Yeezy series, it is necessary to make money from this series from the hunger marketing stage to the large-scale income stage.

For luxury brands, sports shoes have more room for business returns. Like other luxury brands, luxury sneakers rely primarily on brand premiums generated by product value added. However, compared with traditional leather goods such as handbags, luxury sports shoes do not emphasize professional sports shoes, and the raw materials and development costs are actually lower. Low cost and brand premium make sports shoes have higher gross margins, which makes it possible for luxury sports shoes to become “cash cows”.

In recent years, there have been many structural changes in the global socio-economic and luxury goods industry. Luxury sports shoes, as a brand new product of the brand's reaction to the current trend, have also seen these changes. It is precisely because sports shoes have a higher consumption vitality and trend index in the hearts of young consumers, which has assumed a “higher mission” in the brand marketing strategy. There are even analyses that compare sports shoes to "new perfumes" that become luxury brands.

However, it is worth noting that a brand is not hot, it depends on its fakes, which also implies the subtle relationship between luxury brands and fakes. In addition, the market's concerns about luxury sports shoes foam began last year. It has already appeared.

In October last year, New York Times fashion director Vanessa Friedman pointed out in an article that since the spring and summer of 2018, some luxury brands have tried to sneak out on sports shoes, and brands like Balenciaga have begun to return to high-heeled shoes. She believes that the current luxury brand production of sports shoes has been transformed from production and production for the purpose of comfort and functionality, and consumers are gradually becoming aesthetically tired.

This kind of worry is not unreasonable. In the face of luxury sports shoes, the mentality of many luxury brands can be explained by the popular term FOMO (Fear of missing out). This “fear of missing” anxiety has prompted brands that have not launched sports shoes to rush into the market. Worried that the loss was discussed by young people and was marginalized. However, products launched under such anxious attitude are likely to deviate from the core of good products, thus missing the consumer's favorite.

Sports shoes resale platform StockX co-founder and CEO Josh Luber explained that people in almost all areas need sneakers, people can not follow Jay-Z to buy a jet or the same car, but can wear his same Shoes. However, he believes that the current over-purchase of sneakers by luxury brands in the industry is not a good thing. "For years, people have been asking me about the sneakers bubble. I think it is not yet broken, but the sneakers have been from its original. Out of the functional requirements, designers make more sneakers for the market, not for the brand itself or for consumers."

Neil Clifford, CEO of Kurt Geiger, a high-end footwear brand, admits, “At every merchandising conference, we are asking if we have enough sneakers, whether we should buy more sneakers, but now things have changed. The preferences of young consumers are always more fickle than they are supposed to be."

Beth Goldstein agrees with Neil Clifford that after the same thing becomes the mainstream of the market, the enthusiasm of consumers will slowly cool down. This does not mean that the shoes themselves will disappear, but in the trend culture, millennials, social media. Under the influence of emerging things, the fashion industry is in a stage of rapid reshuffle.

In the spring and summer of 2018 Paris fashion week in October last year, in addition to Balenciaga returning to the street fashion lovers are not optimistic about the dress shoes, Maison Margiela in the latest series of the main shoes also become pointed boots, with remodeling Celine Mission designer Hedi Slimane also did not include sneakers in the new collection.

Just after the Milan Men's Week, there are still many sports shoes. Jimmy Choo creative director Sandra Choi was inspired by the 1969 moon landing. In combination with the Japanese rock band and Texas culture in the 1960s, a platform sneaker was launched. Prada Church's released a retro sneaker called Ch873, and Santoni also released a new sneaker collection. Santoni CEO Giuseppe Santoni stressed that the trend of dress is indeed returning, but sports shoes are also an indispensable part.

Judging from the aforementioned market trends for several years, luxury sports shoes do not seem to be so easy to "dead". Moreover, the business logic of luxury sports shoes has gradually become solid and clear. Louis Vuitton and Balenciaga have benefited from the brand of explosive sports shoes. This has proved that the category has market potential, and some luxury brands selectively give up sports shoes. This is precisely the sports shoes. When the tide overheats and returns to rationality, it also means that the business is beginning to mature.