Science And Technology Promote Outdoor Children'S Functional Brands With Sports+As The Core

The core point of this category of clothing industry is the inventory crisis. So you can often see the continuous discount storm in the clothing industry chain, especially in the women's clothing category with the trend and fashion as the core selling points.

And children's wear, especially the children's wear industry chain of CUHK, also faces the inventory risk of products after falling behind the trend. Therefore, when the trend of new functionalization of adult clothing blows to the children's clothing industry chain, it will also drive the functionalization of the children's clothing industry, and the application of some new technologies will change the current situation of the industry's product structure.

For example, Heybetter, which focuses on the function of solving user pain points, uses cross industry technology or material solutions for many product improvements. For example, the fabric of underwear is used on children's hats, so that children's hats are not easy to fall off, which is a way to use interdisciplinary thinking to make products, More detailed thinking on children's functional clothing will be put in the second part of the following content.

Our research on this industry also found that at present, most of the price bands of children's clothing racetracks cover less than 300 yuan, and in addition to several cutting-edge children's clothing brands such as Youlan, most of the brands with relatively upward brand power are still in the homogenized price roll function 1.0.

In order to get out of the pure price war zone, we must change the product concept of price driven thinking. It is based on the perspective of user needs, and the trend of new generation Z parents toward quality price ratio, to replace cost performance ratio with quality price ratio. Let the quality and product value be in front of the price, rather than going to all products, only in the price trend of a certain platform volume.

Behind the quality price ratio is actually the improvement of the ability of children's wear brand enterprises. It is from price orientation, factory orientation, to design aesthetics, to brand aesthetics, to integration of trade, industry and technology. It has both the ability to communicate with users and the ability to design products. It is more important to work towards the value chain of the main industry, compete for the pricing power of its own products, and not to develop new technologies, Without taking the road of functionality, the low-end price war of children's clothing will have no future.

Definition of functional children's clothing.

First, define what is functional children's clothing. Functional children's clothing refers to children's clothing that not only has the basic functions of traditional children's clothing (such as body covering, warmth preservation, comfort, etc.), but also combines special function design. These functional designs often take into account children's needs for daily activities, health, safety and environmental adaptation, aiming to improve the wearing experience and adapt to the needs of different occasions. Common functional children have the following common characteristics:

Comfort: breathable, soft and non irritating fabrics are used to ensure comfort and non irritating when wearing, taking into account the sensitivity of children's skin.

Antibacterial and deodorant: some functional children's clothes use fabrics or processing technologies with antibacterial and deodorant functions to reduce bacteria breeding and keep clothes fresh.

Moisture permeable, waterproof and sunscreen: Children's clothes especially suitable for outdoor activities, such as waterproof, windproof and sunscreen jackets, can cope with rainy and snowy weather or outdoor adventure.

Adjust body temperature: For example, some clothes use intelligent fabrics, which can adjust the temperature of clothes according to the external environment to ensure children's comfort under different temperatures.

Multi functional design: some children's clothes have detachable parts or deformable design, which can be converted into clothes of different styles or functions according to needs. For example, in recent years, the down jacket, which is very popular in Tmall, is sold exclusively in Neidan.

Sweat wicking and quick drying: the same special fabric is used to solve the problem of children's sweating. For example, the domestic blue elephant has created the category of children's sweat wicking underwear with this as the core selling point.

The realization of the above functions mainly depends on the application of five types of technologies:

Smart fabrics: such as temperature controlled fabrics, moisture conductive fabrics, antibacterial and odor resistant fabrics, etc. These materials improve the comfort as well as the functionality of clothing.

Environmentally friendly materials: With the increasing awareness of environmental protection, more and more brands begin to use sustainable and environmentally friendly fabrics, such as organic cotton, recycled fabrics, etc.

UV resistant material: When children are outdoors, UV resistant clothing can effectively protect their skin from UV damage.

Waterproof and windproof technology: analyze the application of waterproof and windproof technology in children's outerwear, sportswear and other products, such as GORE-TEX fabric, PTFE coating, etc.

Intelligent wearable technology: Through integrated sensors, intelligent children's clothing can monitor children's temperature, heart rate and other physiological data, and even has temperature control function.

Children's functional clothing segmentation trend scanning.

Children's functional clothing is already a relatively subdivided industry category. According to relevant data of Tmall, the online functional children's clothing category is only about 500 million market scale at present. But if you add some brands with offline channels as the main part, it will certainly be more than such a small market, as a trend category, We believe that there are several most important trends in the current functional clothing market.

Trend 1: High dimension, low latitude and cross-border solution thinking.

For example: Little Blue Elephant sweating underwear.

As a basic personal clothing, underwear cannot be ignored, and must be a necessary category for every child. It is difficult to create new categories in the category without adopting some new technologies, new play methods, and even insight into some specific strong needs.

Sweating is a pain point opportunity visible to the naked eye. Due to the special physiological characteristics of children and their natural love of play and sports, sweating and inability to sweat in time become a special pain point. If children do not sweat for a long time, it is easy to lead to children's colds and coughs.

As the pioneer of this category, Little Blue Elephant Underwear has occupied a favorable user's mind in this category. It was founded in 2012 as the pioneer of this category, but mostly covers children aged 0 to 6 years old. It is a typical product that focuses on one kind of mind for single function development.

Behind this is the breakthrough of the Little Blue Elephant's own technical research. According to the public data, the reason why the Little Blue Elephant's sweat wicking underwear can target this specific category is the breakthrough of its own technical system. It has developed a kind of sweat wicking yarn that can effectively sweat.

Example 2: Likeuu size free underwear.

It is a children's underwear brand under the famous no size underwear brand ubars. It also uses no size underwear to focus on the pain points of children aged 7-18. Founded in 2021, it is a new product based on the extension of one product technology to the product line.

Example 3: heybetter ultra light roll cap.

Launched by the new brand heybetter, the main concept is light, the core is to correspond to the pain point of the heavy and easy to drop hat for children. The product is innovatively made of underwear materials, and the product publicity calls it the weight of only one egg.

The three examples mentioned above not only find the pain points of children themselves, but also make use of technological innovation. But it should be noted that when we talk about technology here, we do not talk about how innovative the technology itself is, but their technological innovation should be based on two kinds of thinking

The first kind of thinking: the thinking of high dimension versus low dimension.

What is called "high dimension playing low dimension" is to take the more advanced technology from other technology tracks and use our own less advanced technology track. For example, the application of chip intelligent sensing technology to the clothing track is a typical way of playing with high dimensions and low dimensions.

The second kind of thinking: technology cross-border.

Here, for example, heybetter's popular hats are used to apply materials and technologies in the field of underwear to the track of children's hats. This is to apply track A technology to solve the problem of track B. Such thinking will become a way of breakthrough and innovation in children's functional clothing track.

Trend 2: outdoor aestheticism, combination of function and aesthetics.

Case: moodytiger。

Moody tiger is Moody International Limited Its children's life sportswear brand. moodytiger It is a high-end sportswear brand specially developed for children. It provides sports functional shoes, clothing and accessories for children aged 4-16 years old to wear in multiple scenes. Its product line covers a number of sports scenes, including tennis, swimming, dance, surfing, cycling, skiing, skating, etc., and has opened independent stores in the business circles of Hong Kong International Financial Center IFC, Shanghai Port Huihenglong, Beijing Blue Harbor, etc, After raising three children, Zoe, the founder of the brand, deeply realized that children are actually a very "moody" group. They are lively, curious and willing to try new things; At the same time, they are independent and independent, free personality, and brave to express their own opinions. In 2018, moodytiger was born.

This is its official introduction. Moodytiger pays attention to both aesthetics and function, and advances to the upstream of functional clothing brands.

In many cases, many designers tend to oppose aesthetics and function, and choosing an appropriate way to present function and aesthetics is the real ability of designers themselves. This just further confirms what I said earlier, that is, consumers who need both.

So many people here may ask how we should judge the so-called beauty. In fact, beauty is a basic consensus of society. Part of it comes from social guidance, and part of it comes from some common unified symbols, such as lattices and lace, which are common aesthetic symbols in human beings.

Trend 3: under the concept of super parenting, specialize in subdivision demandism.

Specialism is the concept of functional product manufacturing based on a new parenting concept. For the new generation of parents who have mastered more scientific parenting knowledge, functional products are increasingly selected from the perspective of material itself and professionalism.

More generally, it is more and more difficult for consumers to be confused by the IQ tax or products that cannot find technical reference. With the rise of a new generation of highly knowledgeable consumers, professionalism will become the most important trend.

Specifically, the specialization of professionalism refers to the trend of specialization of functional children's wear products, such as selecting products with different adaptations for children at different stages of their development. For example, care clothing based on different categories and materials in infancy, such as baby belly pockets, professional baby eye care, and more subdivided clothes for sensitive babies.

Another example is baby shoes designed based on age hierarchy, as well as sunscreen and waterproof shoes based on specific functions.

The trend behind this is that the professionalism of the new generation of parents is derived from the equal rights of Internet information and the insight of short videos into the subdivision of small scenes, which will focus children's big needs on different scenes and categories. Even a lot of implicit requirements are captured and judged to generate different types of products.

In fact, more generally speaking, it is the result of high-quality volumes. The previous thinking of coarse grained products has become increasingly difficult to adapt to today's consumers. We have defined for a long time that our consumer goods company is not a company selling products. In fact, it sells solutions to problems and knowledge.

The new generation of parents' self-learning and exploration ability, as well as the maturity of the new refined parenting concept, will make new children's consumer goods companies have to force themselves to learn new knowledge. If your insight is not stronger than today's consumers, it will be difficult for you to impress consumers with your products.

In such a trend, consumers' needs, as well as their own professionalism may exceed yours.

Trend 4: Outdoor and light sports style has also spread to children's function track.

The children's track is not only an extension of the adult track, but also different from the adult track. In terms of basic functions and materials, the material characteristics of the original category can be reused, but the characteristics and needs of children need to be combined.

The main scene of children's sports is completely different from that of adults. The main scene of children's sports is on campus. It focuses on the needs of sports with physical education as the core, supplemented by extramural interests. According to the white paper data of Tmall Children's Wear and Shoes Trend Insight, on the basis of regular sports, there are also many outdoor sports, fitness and entertainment.

It is particularly noteworthy that new outdoor related sports are showing explosive rapid growth. For example, tennis and skiing related outdoor equipment are gradually driving a group of new sports groups and users of sports equipment along with the robust growth of these events in China.

The core demand is that the same user may consume and purchase repeatedly based on different scenarios of fragmentation. In addition, sports and outdoor activities can be participated by one family at the same time, which can form a very good habit of joint purchase.

The outdoor children's functional brand takes sports+as the core, constantly overlaying new aesthetics and new technology, and constantly upgrading children's functional clothing with sports scenes and attribute needs.