A report in the 1,516th issue of Business Weekly points out that there has been a great withdrawal of Taiwan brands from mainland China. Tokichoi, an electronic commerce (EC) brand that specializes in women’s wear and once boasted yearly revenue of up to NT$2 billion (US$64.66 million), announced its withdrawal from mainland China in 2015.
But we now discover that a Taiwan EC company that had cultivated its clothes brand long and hard for nine years in mainland China found its niche in a market where other compatriot competitors lost their footing. And it did so by dealing with big-size men.
Jsmix was launched in mainland China in 2012 and in the same year became one of Taobao’s top 10 internet-native menswear brands. In 2015, its yearly revenue reached 100 million renminbi (NT$470 million), driving the growth of the big-size menswear sales and serving as a case of business success for Taobao and Tmall to convince other companies to direct their focus from the mass market to the niche market.
Selling Korean-style clothes turned the surplus into deficit
“[In 2012] we saw Jsmix start its big-size clothes brand … bringing a positive trend to the market. When we first set foot in this market, Jsmix was the only company that was relatively competitive. It was the leader of the industry,” said Liu Jing-wang in an interview by this magazine. Liu is the chief operating officer of Panmax, a Shanghai-based EC company that also specializes in big-size men’s clothes.
The man behind Jsmix’s success is the company’s general manager Guo Xiang-yi. Guo, weighing over 90 kilograms, is himself a “big” man. He had already dabbled in online auction business using Yahoo’s service 13 years ago. In 2007, he left Taiwan to build a business in Canton and, from a big man’s perspective, created clothes that best fit big-size men.
But he did not lay his eyes on the big-size menswear market at first, focusing instead on selling Korean-style menswear. Harboring a dream of creating a clothes brand, he decided to try his luck in mainland China. Unfortunately, in less than two years, his luck ran out, and the company went from surplus to deficit. Most of the 50 something designers and pattern cutters were made redundant, and only nine of them stayed. Guo even had to resort to the parent company in Taiwan for financial support.
Then, Guo was approached by Taobao’s product manager, who suggested that he not confront face-to-face a physical brand running an EC business but refocus on a niche market.
Launching a big-size clothing business and turning into a trendy brand in the big men’s world
Guo discovered that the big-size menswear on the market was unfashionable and expensive, and yet customers were buying them. It only took him a little more than a month before making up his mind to launch into the market.
He now wears Korean-style skinny jogger pants, a Korean-style slim shirt, and a pair of silver-ornamented earrings. Every piece of the clothing he puts on himself is designed by his own company, exuding a fashionable ambiance and totally unlike the stereotypical loose and monotonous big-size clothes. In front of cameras, he looks completely at ease, for he used to be among the first big-size models for his own brand.
“Fight for the fatty men,” “I know how you are different,” “The world exists for you,” these gang-jargon-like slogans are what Jsmix uses to attract customers. “What we have been emphasizing is a sense of identity and brotherhood with fat guys … Our brand is feelings-oriented. What we are doing is a sense of identity with this group of people,” said Guo.
Guo knows too well what makes it painful for the big men’s group to go window shopping, so he adopted particularly different strategies for customer service and marketing. According to his reasoning, “It is not that fat guys don’t go window shopping. But rather they come across too many obstacles, not finding a size that fits, so they quit window shopping.” Large people are often discriminated against or laughed upon by the public, and as a result seem lacking in confidence. Therefore, Jsmix focuses on creating an impression that large people, too, can become fashionable and confident through clothing, and that Jismix knows about these people more than any other company.
For example, all the service personnel call their customers “pals” or “bros,” and refer to themselves with cute code names for large guys, like “bear 1” or “bear 2,” so as to bring them closer to their customers. Every year, Jsmix holds a flash-mob-like “brotherhood meeting” activity in 12 cities in mainland China, calling upon big-size men around the country to come to their shops and try on clothes while playing games. When the activity was first held in Beijing without any advertisement, in six days there were as many as 600 participants.
Jsmix also held big-size models contests for two consecutive years. From the 700 contestants that registered online, 10 were selected as the most fashionable big-size amateurs and treated to a photo shoot in Canton. The entire photo shoot cost several hundred thousand renminbi and was equivalent in scale to a Korean following-shot reality show. All the amateurs enjoyed a dignified sense that even large people can succeed.
In order to penetrate into the big-size people group, even Guo was personally involved and served as the product endorser for his own brand. Little did he foresee that this later made him an instant star. People on the street would ask to take a picture with him. And there was this customer who called the customer service for three consecutive days, just to say “thank you” to Guo.
Linking with physical stores and reaching a 90-percent clutch rate
Because it understands how big-size people think, Jsmix boasts a 70-percent repurchase rate. Now, it owns 11 physical stores, 10 in Taiwan and one in mainland China. The clutch rate (the percentage of customers who actually make purchases after entering a store) for these stores reaches 90 percent. The per-customer transaction amounts to over NT$2,000, twice as much as Handu, mainland China’s biggest online clothes brand.
According to Chen Hong-xin, secretary-general of Taiwan E-commerce & Startup Association (TESA), the reason Jsmix is able to secure a footing lies in the company being clearly positioned and deeply rooted in the local market. Furthermore, it holds on to both the design and the manufacturing processes and is thus able to guarantee the quality of its products.
Taiwan brands may have lost the advantage of being forerunners in mainland China. But Jsmix found its niche market and, equipped with the delicate maneuvering of Taiwan brands, still succeeds in this wave of Taiwan withdrawal and establishes a stage of its own.
[By Lee Hsin-yi/Translated by Hsieh Meng-tsung]