In this issue of Overseas Exploration TALK, we invited a practitioner8 yearstargetAmazon Clothing Designer, share your experience in popular design.
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Linda：Senior designer of a cross-border clothing company in Shenzhen, the company is mainly engaged in Amazon's European, American mid-to-high-end women's clothing, with a team size of 50 people and an annual development of more than 300 styles. He has been in the industry for 8 years, moving from clothing to cross-border, leading the design of styles has experienced inventory backlog, and has also developed a number of women's clothing items with monthly sales of 5,000 pieces in the first month.
In her sixth year in the industry, Linda's company has reached a cooperation with overseas funding to empower design daily life with big data.
The following is a compilation of a conversation with Linda.
6 years in the industry
I understand how to catch the trend
Q: What do you think is the biggest difference between moving to cross-border clothing compared to domestic clothing before?
A: The first problem we encountered wasIt is impossible to grasp the preferences of overseas clothing consumers.Domestic consumers are closer to designers, and even designers themselves are one of the consumers, and we also have the need to buy beautiful clothes. So we know very well where domestic consumers will look for clothes, look at outfits, and what kind of popular elements they like.
When I first started working on Amazon, although I knew that I had to look at Amazon's popular products and refer to the outfits of bloggers such as INS and Pinterest, because the oriental aesthetics in my bones were already very heavy, I always subjectively thought that certain styles and design elements were better and easier to sell. Even unconsciously copying domestic styles and versions overseas, the result is not in line with the preferences of European and American people at all, either they cannot be sold, or the return rate is huge.
Q: How did you solve it later?
A: For a long time, I relied on frantically brushing overseas styles to revise my design thinking. For a while, I often brushed INS until midnight after work, thinking about lace, flowers, and square collars every day...... Which design card to bet on? Because the sales data of new products during that period has not been very good, the pressure on the leadership and operation team is also very high.
But even if you brush the INS for 50-60 hours a month, the style screenshot folder is piled up into a maze, and the success rate of product selection has not been particularly significantly improved - after all, there are too many styles and design details, and it is not realistic to rely on the designer himself to manually sort out and analyze the common trend law. Even if it is done, it may not be correct.
Q: Some leading cross-border companies will purchase third-party trend reports, or have their own buyers and operation teams to assist in product selection.
A: We will cooperate with the operation and refer to the reports produced by some institutions. However, most of the clothing reports on the market are still aimed at domestic or shows, and there are very few cross-border ones. I have to praise it hereOverseas fundraising, there are a large number of expert reports dedicated to cross-border clothing, targetedIndividual attributes such as color, style, fabric, etcThe analysis is also very meticulous, and there is alsoInsights for brands and items, many dimensions, fast production, and very good quality.
Q: In addition to reporting, do you judge market trends in other ways?
A: Our design director often emphasizes to us,The interpretation of fashion trends is the result of a two-pronged approach of artificial data.In addition to the accumulation and judgment of our in-house designers、In addition to referring to trend reports、Market analysis function for overseas fundraisingIt is also a high-frequency function that our designers and operation students will use.
For example, insideAttribute analysisandDesign trendsfunction, I often use it to analyze the distribution of popular design elements in different categories of sites in various countries, such as which color is more popular than the same period last year, which sleeve type sells better this year, etc. More rational determination of colors, styles and fabrics for the categories to be developed.
This is a key tool that is easy to use for the clothing industry, which can help designers save a lot of manual analysis time. And the feedback of the data will not be deceiving and will not be influenced by the subjectivity of the designer.
"Finding money" was once a bald nightmare
Q: What is the general pace of your company's payment?
A: The annual number of payments in our company is basically about 300, and there is no particularly distinct off-peak season, and the average is almost 20 pieces per month. The pace is still fast.
Q: Many of the clients we work with have reported that the workload of finding money is huge and cumbersome, have you encountered similar problems?
A: That's right. In the past, weThe traditional way of finding money is very labor-intensiveWhether it's looking at BSR, New Releases, Movers & Shakers lists or searching for keywords on the site, or searching for social media (INS, TK, Pinterest) and supply chain (AliExpress supplier new product library, 1688...... ）
On the one hand, the workload is large, and it is impossible to quickly and accurately find the type of style you want to refer to, and you have to manually sort out the good style, save the picture, make a table, and mark the design details that can be referenced inside.
Even if you find a popular product that can be referenced, it is difficult to evaluate whether it sells because of which design element is done well, or because of the marketing and advertising is good, or which color and SKU sell better.
These have caused me a lot of trouble. I have to say that finding money used to make me very bald.
Q: After the company introduced the overseas fund exploration tool, has the efficiency and effect of product selection and money finding changed significantly?
A: The change is obvious. Traditionally, you need to jump to various platforms to find money, but now you canOne-stop overseas exploration to see the styles of Amazon, independent stations, INS and other social media, and it is much more convenient to avoid climbing over the wall.
Focusing on Amazon's on-site model selection, in the past, we wanted to find accurate styles, which may only be found by searching for keywords. Now through overseas exploration, weIt broadens the way of selection.
For example, inCommodity libraryThere are quite a few of themClothing labels, such as color, style, fabric, sleeve shape, silhouette, etc. For example, if I want to do a sports style, I can filter it in the style; For example, I only do plus size and filter in body type; Some more detailed design elements such as fabrics, patterns, sleeve lengths, collar shapes, etc., can be screened, saving a lot of manual screening time.
And the filtered styles can be selected multiple timesOne-click export, not only has style maps, but also sales and evaluation data, etc., which is very convenient and helps a lot to improve the efficiency of finding money.
Q: After finding a style you are interested in, how do you generally judge and choose its popular genes?
A: For example, at the end of last year, we were going to open a new jacket. I used the label combination of overseas scouting products to find an Italian suede stand-up collar coat, with a design texture comparable to that of a high-end brand, priced at only $39.9, selling hundreds of pieces per month, which caught my eye at the time.
Check out overseas fundraisingProduct detail pageI discovered the mystery: its store is a new small seller with only 3 products, and there is no investment in marketing and advertising. It shows that the product itself is very in line with market demand and has been verified by the market without advertising.
I brought it with me from overseas scouts"One-click image search"I searched for the functionThe same similar model on the whole networkThe same model is sold on 15 independent stations, but Amazon only has 2 imitations and the shape is out of shape - it can almost be confirmed that it is a blue ocean potential product that has not yet opened sales on Amazon, and is immediately marked as a priority development model.
In addition, it passesCommentary analysis of overseas fundraisingI found that the high-frequency words in the praise are mainly focused on the version and fabric, and the negative reviews are relatively focused on the quality and neckline design. These have also become the key points to be retained and improved when I do the facelift later.
In addition, it passesSKU analysis, and even directly refer to the color and size of the main recommendation.
Q: How did this model sell after it was finally put on the shelves?
A: In the first month, more than 3,000 pieces were sold in the United States, and the results were good, and there were also continuous long-tail sales later. Later, other merchants soon imitated our model, but fortunately, we seized the opportunity and ate the first wave of traffic before the homogenization was serious.
Q: Do you focus on competing styles when choosing models?
A: Definitely. Many designers, including me, should use competing products as a priority source when selecting models. We will also use this part of the workMonitoring console function for overseas money exploration。 What makes it special is what it offersCategory-store-commodity three-dimensional monitoringFor a single key category, monitoring the entire category is more efficient than monitoring a single commodity.
We can directly see the hot-selling products and new products of the entire category directly on the monitoring platform, and the sales and evaluation data are very transparent, which is very convenient and fast. Not only our designers, but also the company's operating partners often use this function to analyze categories and competitive stores.
epilogue
Q: Last question, what experience can you share with your fellow young designers after 8 years in the industry?
A: I used to think that the designer's battlefield was on the drawing board, but now I know that the real battlefield is in the data. Until the sixth year of practice, our companyIntroduce data tools represented by overseas fundraisingAfter that, I slowly found a more efficient and scientific oneTrend insight - product selection - facelift designThe methodology finally does not have to choose between plagiarism and slow salage.
Our design ability and aesthetic experience are the basics, but relying on personal experience and subjective intuition to select and open products is almost equivalent to relying on luck.
To some extent, actively embracing and making good use of data tools will bring a "second pair of eyes" to designers.
