Up until twenty years ago, most parents in Taiwan dressed their children to clothe them; there was little need for an extensive wardrobe. Schools required non-descript, egalitarian uniforms. Special occasions like birthdays and Chinese New Year meant new clothes, but they were usually chosen for their durability, not their style. Parents expected to hand them down to younger brothers or sisters. The general attitude was that money should not be wasted on clothes for children because they outgrew them too fast.
No longer. Today, children rarely have to wait for a special celebration to receive new clothes. Economic affluence has given parents more money to spend, and children have been acquiring rather astounding wardrobes compared to years past. Children have also become aware of fashion and style, just as their parents have. As a result, more and more working mothers are packing their toddlers off in coordinated designer out-fits for day care or nursery school.
Primary school dress codes also began changing a decade ago. They started to allow children to shun their usual school uniform on one or two school days a week, usually Wednesday or Saturday, and wear something more comfortable, colorful, even fashionable. After-school activities, such as gymnastics, private music lessons, or English language classes, have also become opportunities for children to express their sense of style, or at least that of their parents.
Statistics for 1988 show that children aged below fifteen account for 5.5 million or 28 percent of Taiwan's total population. As children's apparel manufacturers already recognize, this represents a handsome share of the clothing market, one estimated to be worth over US$700 million a year. Children's apparel manufacturers currently make up 50 percent of Taiwan's garment industry, and they are growing in number as fast as their clientele is growing in inches. They are also working overtime on their sketch-boards to meet the demands of wealthier, more discerning parents and their increasingly style-conscious offspring.
Ko Wan-ju, a thirty-four-year-old mother, says her two sons, aged six and eighteen months, have so many clothes that their drawers are crammed full. The contents change each season, the rest she packs away in a chest. It is mothers like Ko who bring joy and financial happiness to owners of Taiwan's growing number of children's clothing boutiques. Bright colors, intricate designs, and the latest styles crowd the racks for every age group. And the attractiveness and sophistication of the designs are difficult for a loving parent to resist.
Much to the irritation of boutique owners and other legitimate sales outlets, the most popular designs are quickly copied and sold on the streets and in the markets by illegal vendors, sometimes at almost half the cost of the real thing. Ko says that she takes advantage of these bargains herself: "Friends and relatives give my children clothes as gifts, so I don't spend too much on everyday clothes. I prefer shopping at the night markets and sometimes, if there are sales, in department stores or children's boutiques. "
The first and perhaps the best-known children's boutique in Taiwan is Les Enphants. It was set up by Eric Lin after he finished his undergraduate degree in psychology in California. Lin had been impressed by the convenience of shopping for his friends' kids in children's boutiques in the U.S., and he thought the idea would be worth trying in Taipei. In 1971, with a staff of three and one designer, Lin opened his first store on Nanking East Road, one of Taipei's fastest-growing commercial areas. Four branches followed in the next five years. Today, Les Enphants has an islandwide network of about sixty retail outlets with around seven hundred employees, and it has taken an estimated 7 percent share of the children's apparel market.
In addition to selling their own designs, Les Enphants carries designer brands from France, Italy, Japan, and Hong Kong. But, as Lin indicates, fashion-conscious mothers are not easy to please. "Manufacturing isn't enough, and neither is giving them a wide choice," he says. "But sophisticated marketing will sell children's clothes even when the economy is down."
As president of Les Enphants, Lin designed a company style very distinct from the hard-sell character of his competitors. The image is based on pleasant service, and the message to customers is: "Enjoy our store." Les Enphants sales personnel are courteous and helpful. Lin says: "They'll help customers find what they need, tie children's shoelaces, fix a broken handbag, but they don't recommend or promote a particular item. The customers will decide for themselves, and they will buy only what they want."
Les Enphants finds out what its clientele wants to purchase through its membership club of over sixty thousand customers. A receipt for purchases worth US$200 entitles a customer to membership in the chain's Golden Elephant Club and to a 10-percent discount on every purchase. Purchases by members from any outlet are recorded daily and transmitted to headquarters through a computer network. This information helps Lin determine the demand and purchasing patterns of his customers, and greatly influences designs and production plans for the coming seasons.
Lin has gone beyond dressing children to teaching them. He plans to set up Taiwan's largest chain of educational centers for preschoolers and schoolchildren, one for each Les Enphants branch. There are already ten such centers, eight of them in the stores themselves. They offer a wide choice of classes and activities, from abacus to English, from singing to composition writing. The centers could very well be a training ground for aspiring child models as well. Les Enphants invites children from these centers to model in their fashion shows, and finds that the trials of teaching children to walk up and down the ramp bring ample rewards. "It takes time and money," Lin says, "but it brings Les Enphants closer to its customers and encourages them to come back to the centers."
The bane of legitimate businesses— illegal street vendors sell copies, pay no taxes, and grab 50 percent of the market.
The production process begins six to twelve months before the fashion shows, which are usually held in March and September each year. Current domestic and international trends in children's clothing determine the theme the eleven designers follow in creating their own designs. The workshop produces the samples, and the marketing staff chooses the designs they think will sell best. Approximately one thousand pieces are produced from each design and distributed to Les Enphants stores.
European and American trends dominate the children's apparel industry throughout the world, says Lan Tsai-ju, vice managing director of Les Enphants's design department. "We take the global view and do not express our Chineseness except in the details. For example, we use small cloth-covered buttons, which is very characteristic of Chinese style."
Les Enphants designers are determined to dress kids like kids, and develop design ideas by spending time in kindergartens watching their lively clientele. "Children will have the chance to dress as adults when they grow up," Lan says. "Why don't we just let children be themselves?" She emphasizes the balance the designers must achieve between fashion and the kids' active lifestyle. The target customers are children (infants to young adolescents) from urban families with high incomes. Les Enphants stresses high-quality clothes of creative design, good fabric, and fine workmanship. The clothes are by no means easily affordable.
"But our market share tells us that we haven't priced ourselves out of the market," says Lan. "About twenty years ago, two Les Enphants in Taiwan would have been enough; now we have over sixty. Our society is no longer hungry; there's more money now and more optimism about the future."
Buy this, buy that—a new breed of consumer prompts concern about shifts in values.
But the children's apparel industry is not too optimistic about overcoming one particularly distasteful group of competitors: illegal street vendors. They do not pay taxes, sell copies at low prices, and end up with a market share of roughly 50 percent. Les Enphants keeps producing new designs, hoping this will discourage pirates and encourage consumers to shop at Les Enphants for in-vogue styles. Yet Wanhua in western Taipei remains a major shopping district for bargain buys, and even the nighttime sidewalks of the city's fashionable east side are invariably crammed with illegal salespeople making quick money from illegal copies, and avoiding the overhead of running a regular store.
Continually coming up with new designs for a small market such as Taiwan does not make good business sense. Copying foreign designs is a much more practical and profitable venture for a growing number of manufacturers. "This is very frustrating for companies who respect the law and who try hard to develop their own brands," Lan says. A popular alternative is to acquire a franchise, but not only does this require substantive capital and personnel, it also means that someone else is the boss, an arrangement that is anathema to local entrepreneurs.
An alternative is to cultivate a larger market. Eric Lin is doing this with Les Enphants by moving into overseas markets. "It's our future direction, and will be our major effort," he says. Les Enphants already has a Hong Kong subsidiary, three branches in Thailand, and two in San Francisco. The first California store opened in 1987, and the company anticipates taking a loss in the first few years. But Lin, ever the entrepreneur, says: "There's potential for franchising there."
Another innovation in marketing children's clothes is Children's Gallery, a collection of sixteen manufacturers who have gathered together sales operations under one roof to draw in customers. Managed by Sunrise, a Taipei department store recognized as the pacesetter for the rich chic, the gallery has a display area for each manufacturer. But they all send a similar message: wear a different outfit for every occasion. "Parents can buy anything they need to dress their children here," says Belinda Chen, the gallery's supervisor. "We spend a lot on our designs, and we continue to look for the most comfortable fabrics for children and then add our own fashionable touches."
Part of the gallery's fashionable touch is to experiment with new colors. Baby pink and light yellow, once avoided by customers because they dirtied easily, are now hot favorites. And so are what Chinese mothers have traditionally considered "mournful white" and "ominous black." Chen says: "We also chose coffee brown, so seldom used for children's clothes, and the market was surprisingly good. But what really makes us different from other children's stores is the layout and personality of our shop."
The whole gallery is united by a single decorative theme. But Chen has taken tare to emphasize the differences in character among the brands, for example, separating sportswear from the country look, and having a special section for more classic styles. The idea has paid off. "I'm happy that many children can name the brand when they see the clothes," she says.
Originally, the gallery had expected a rather exclusive, upper-class clientele. Instead, middle-class parents are clearing the racks and cleaning out the shelves. Some customers were at first intimidated by the spacious layout and the artistic displays, which usually portend high prices, but at the Children's Gallery the price tags are not much different from those in other children's boutiques.
The gallery, according to Chen's statistics, has cornered 30 percent of the market share in eastern Taipei, but it is still straining to make ends meet. Rent on fashionable Chunghsiao East Road is quite high, especially since real estate prices have soared in the past two or three years. Salaries for a staff of forty also drive up overhead. Although the gallery owners plan to open more branches, it is increasingly difficult to find—and afford—good sites in congested Taipei.
At present, the Children's Gallery has two stores in Taipei and one in the city of Hsinchu. Like Les Enphants, the Children's Gallery is feeling threatened by pirates. "It takes only ten days to steal a design and produce it in volume," Chen says. "So our strategy is to come up with new designs as fast as possible and to control the volume."
While mothers may appreciate the quality fashions in department stores and children's boutiques, a large number of them still continue to buy from markets and the street stands. It makes financial sense. Why spend a lot of money on the latest clothes when children will outgrow them in a few months? A summer shirt or skirt costs an average of US$20 and a dress US$60. Double that for winter wear. "The quality and creative designs make them worth the price," says Chen Hsien-hua, mother of a four-year-old girl and a sixteen-month-old baby boy. But Chen adds that she only buys during sales or goes to special retail outlets where clothes from past seasons are sold at a substantial discount.
Wu Hsiu-pi, mother of a six-year-old girl, still prefers to shop in the streets. "The boutiques sell their clothes at prices several times higher than the street vendors, and sometimes there isn't much difference in quality," she says. That often-heard comment leads to the question: Why is it that children's clothes in boutiques can cost even more than clothes for adults?
Manufacturers argue that children's clothes require three times the capital needed for adult clothes. One-size-fits-all will not work. Children's clothing is divided into four categories based on age: babies (0-1 year), small (1-6 years), medium (7-12 years), and large (13-16 years). Each category is further divided into sizes, and it is rare for a manufacturer to produce all categories. Besides, simplicity is not the hallmark of children's clothes. To attract and to sell, their designs involve more complicated details like patchwork, embroidery, and smocking, which also mean higher production costs. Volume control, overstock pressure, and short-lived trends are just some of the difficulties that add to the risks and costs constantly faced by manufacturers of children's clothes.
Despite these difficulties, manufacturers predict that the demand for top quality and creative designs will only continue to grow. Children themselves are helping build the market because they are now more conscious of style. Sales personnel have noticed that children are developing their own preferences and sense of fashion; they walk into a shop and point out what they want.
Parents still know best, however, and they are the ones paying for the clothes. In fact, parental attitudes toward clothes generally find expression in their children's appearance. The big selling styles tend to be classic, comfortable, and durable. Because fashionable parents tend to have fashionably dressed kids, children's clothes often reflect the life-style of their parents. The casual and dress-up categories have been joined in recent years by sportswear, adult styles, and evening wear. Some department stores and children's boutiques even carry grownup affectations such as evening gowns, tails, and fur coats. Shoppers in these departments rarely have to worry about the price tags.
Stylish clothes can make childhood, even parenthood, more imaginative and colorful. But many people are beginning to realize that the clothes people wear—even if they are children—have a tremendous impact on values. As parents continue buying the latest in children's fashions, they may have to pause and ask themselves a question that is already troubling parents and educators in other wealthy societies: What are these new clothes teaching our children, quality or vanity?