The Gap, which is participating in Double 11 for the 6th time, plans to play this year

Tmall brings together 90% of the world's fast fashion brands, and every Double 11 is the time for them to confront each other head-on. This year's "war" began a little earlier, and the Tmall Global Trend Ceremony held on October 23 undoubtedly advanced the "festive atmosphere" of Double 11. The trend festival will have more than 80 brands participating, and the 8-hour show-and-buy model will ignite the pre-sale of Double 11. Therefore, American fashion clothing brand Gap also wants to use this to fight a beautiful battle to attract consumers and win favorability.

Gap Group, the first of its own brand specialty retailer model and once household name, is undergoing a series of business strategy adjustments around the world, including product design innovation, and reevaluation and arrangement of resources and business allocations for each brand in the global market.

Its September financial report showed that the decline in same-store sales in that month (3%) was lower than expected, and its stock price rose by 15% for a time, which was seen as a sign of recovery by the outside world. Gap Group officially stated that if it weren't for the fire in the group's New York transfer center that caused a large amount of inventory losses, sales in September might be the same as the year-on-year decline last year. The media have speculated that this may be a rebound for Gap Group.

Although some adjustments have been made globally, especially unlike some international brands that first physically and then e-commerce, Gap's business model in China adopts a method of giving equal importance to both physical and e-commerce, which is related to its global strategy of placing e-commerce and physical stores on an equally important position. Gap CEO Art Peck once said that in the future, Gap will focus on developing a series of omni-channel sales capabilities such as e-commerce and mobile possession, and enter the 3.0 retail model.

It seems that humans can no longer stop Gap from developing e-commerce. Gap, which just announced its entry into Indian fashion e-commerce in October, has long-term in-depth cooperation with Tmall in the Chinese market. It has opened up all channels during this year's 618 promotion, and is ready to fight Double 11 and brings American casual lifestyle to the trendy ceremony as the "first cannon" of Double 11.

As soon as the Double 11 ended last year, I started preparing for this year

"This year is Gap's sixth year of participating in Double 11. After 5 years, it is considered an international brand with rich experience." Cherry Zhu, director of Gap's e-commerce market and channel, told E-commerce Online reporters that from the early days of focusing on selling products, to now through Tmall as a brand promotion channel, brands can communicate with more target consumers and convey American leisure spirit and characteristics.

She introduced that after last year's Double 11, Gap immediately invested in preparation for Double 11 this year, and the goods for Double 11 were also ready 9 months ago. "Double 11 is a line. Although it only takes one day to sell, all brands have been preparing for it. The more brands invest, the greater the degree to which consumers can be attracted and then buy it."

Investment in e-commerce is related to corporate genes. "Gap is a very strong platform for e-commerce in the United States. The official website and physical stores in the United States share the same status." Cherry said that unlike some brands simply regard online as a way to reduce inventory pressure or as a growth point, Gap supports common development at the same time through both online and offline channels.

The development of e-commerce also benefits from its attention to its development strategy. As early as 1997, Gap founded the online mall with the website of gap.com, bringing more convenient shopping methods to American customers. In 2010, Gap entered China to open a brand flagship store and also set up an official website, and logged on to Tmall as the first batch of merchants in March 2011. Its sub-brand Old Navy also entered Tmall when it opened a store in the Chinese market in March 2014, and its high-end brand Banana Republic has not yet entered China. Although it is inconvenient to disclose specific numbers, Cherry said that Tmall's growth was very strong every year from 2011 to 2013 and was higher than industry growth.

The adjustment of personnel structure has also added fuel to its importance to e-commerce. In October 2014, current CEO Art Peck took on the important task from former CEO Glenn Murphy, and Murphy spent a lot of effort to transform. Peck, who has been with the company for 11 years, comes from a Boston consulting company in the field of digital and consulting, and is responsible for the Gap Group's $2 billion e-commerce business in more than 80 countries between 2012 and 2015. It is understood that in addition to the internal team, the Chinese e-commerce department also has a team of third-party agency operations companies, and the structure of the entire Greater China region is also divided into two parallel operation teams online and offline, plus basic support departments such as personnel and finance.

Celebrities, live broadcasts, discounts, omni-channels...all-round efforts online and offline

In recent years, Gap and Tmall have become more and more diverse in cooperation. Cherry said that this year's Double 11 will make comprehensive efforts online and offline. For the preheating of Double 11, including stores and outdoor advertising, "As long as it can reflect Double 11, including marketing content in the same period of time, it will be connected." Gap's relevant departments are fully committed to offline activities, such as trend festivals, and online preparations for Double 11.

As one of the main merchants of this year's trendy ceremony, Gap will participate in a 7-minute show, 8 sets of winter key combinations, and star Fang Datong will come to sing songs live. There are also American brand displays of autumn and winter fashion styles in the entire trendy ceremony... Cherry Zhu, director of e-commerce market and channel, revealed in advance the gameplay at the trendy ceremony when he was interviewed by e-commerce online reporters.

The trend festival is not only a brand education for international brands, but also can also receive consumer experience and feedback by releasing new products on site. Cherry revealed that Gap will display the 2016 winter series pre-sale new products with multi-colored colors and comfortable materials as the main features. During the model show, consumers can "see" the ceremony on their mobile phones and computers, and book new products in Gap 2016 winter series show in advance at the discounted Double 11 price. In addition to performing, star Fang Datong will also interact with consumers in the exhibition area.

In addition, Gap is also actively trying live streaming. From July, as the first batch of participating merchants to participate in the daydream live broadcast of Men's Clothing Group Day, to September, participating in the first launch of GQ men's limited-edition products for offline stores to cooperate with Tmall live broadcast, Taiwanese stylist Chen Sunhua was invited to introduce the latest men's clothing matching. At this trendy ceremony, the in-house booth will also be live-streamed with consumers.

In terms of discount strength, in addition to continuing the annual 50% off activity benefits and giving consumers exact expectations, this Double 11 Gap also has some additional incentives for pre-sale products, which are in line with the gifts to consumers. The 0-point flash sale part will give consumers additional rewards to promote sales.

After the front-end is fully prepared, the omni-channel system is fully improved on the back-end. The company has opened up omni-channels in the mid-618 major promotion this year, so this will be the first Double 11 to be put into use through omni-channel. The omni-channel goods have been opened up, the inventory sharing and terminal system have been optimized, and through the establishment of social logistics and services, the incremental inventory has been breakthrough to promote sales, shortening the time of inventory-sales ratio, and the proportion of store delivery orders has increased.

Like some fashion clothing retail brands, Gap is a brand with a large number of models, low inventory of single-store single-models, and high cost-effectiveness. Faced with the rapid sales out of major promotions, the problem of missing colors and breaking codes is often easy and frequently. Open up all channels and use stores as social warehouses to solve the logistics and customer service pressure brought by the big promotion, and artificially increase store inventory as the logistics end. In this way, the inventory of individual products has increased, solving the problem of rapid sales out during the event period; and through daily code scanning, it can solve the problem of frequent color-deficiency and code breakage offline. In this way, the ability to set up front in each store can become a socialized ability to improve the turnover rate of goods.

In June this year, Tmall launched a store delivery service during the "Summer Sale", and during Double 11, Gap will continue to store delivery and offline QR code purchases. Cherry explained that among more than 100 stores, more than half of the stores will participate in the shipment this Double 11 this year. She said that on the one hand, the choice of stores requires additional capabilities for large-scale shipments on Double 11, and will choose one with more complete delivery capabilities and inventory and larger work space.

The online and offline part is that as long as the product store has inventory, it will show how many stores also sell this product. Through Taobao LBS positioning on mobile phones, stores that are closer to consumers can appear first. Through this service, consumers can also check nearby stores on the web page and try on and purchase them in person to complete traffic.

"Overall channels can help us make greater use of store inventory, thereby helping us to supplement and improve the color and code break rate online, and can also help stores clear up some inventory and reduce inventory pressure." Cherry analyzed that another advantage is that it allows more consumers to understand that the products sold by the official flagship store are the same as those sold by offline stores, or even the same model worldwide, so that the popularity allows consumers to understand that the Tmall official flagship store sells authentic products from 100% official channels.

Can children's clothing become the last trump card?

"In the 1970s, Gap was a must-visit store. For millennials, it was a place to buy things for their kids and their family," said Kevin Meany, CEO of consulting firm BFG.

In the event rankings during this year's Tmall Mall's "Summer Sales" period, Gap's sales ranked among the top ten, while children's clothing ranked first. In the pre-sale rankings of Double 11 last year, children's clothing ranked second.

Despite the strong market competition, customers' consumption habits have been changing. Gap believes that winning consumer favorability is the key to winning. In fact, after all, the focus is on product and brand positioning, and Gap is trying this. Among them, it is worth noting about its children's clothing section and its sub-brand Old Navy.

In the context of the growth of the demographic dividend brought by the second-child policy, Gap's children's clothing part includes babyGap and Gap Kids, and the sales share in the overall proportion has gradually increased. Obviously the group has noticed this.

It is understood that this year, the headquarters designer specially developed a children's clothing product for China, the surrounding clothing of the upcoming American DreamWorks animated film "Trolls". Cherry introduced that this is the second IP project won through Aliyu after Van Gogh's cooperation in July. Choosing this IP, on the one hand, the cartoon image trolls is a household name in the United States, which can attract attention; on the other hand, it is related to its release date just before Double 11, which can cooperate with theater promotions." She said that Gap has a strong growth momentum in boys and girls' clothing, and such product cooperation is also a demonstration of confidence in children's clothing products. It is understood that consumers are accustomed to buying children's clothing in full sets as gifts, and before Double 11, they will provide online gift box packaging that stores have already provided.

"The headquarters has a strict overall planning for the product. This is a special project specially made for China, which shows the importance attached to China and Tmall." According to Cherry, all Gap's products are globally unified, and the same model on Tmall is also globally, so it is rare to develop products for China alone.

In addition to children's clothing, another growth point of the Gap brand lies in the younger age positioning and price positioning of the sub-brand Old Navy. Taking women's clothing as an example, Gap's age range is between 25 and 35, while Old Navy covers younger people, between 20 and 35 years old. Although the group is very optimistic about Old Navy, the two brands Gap and Old Navy on Tmall are still in the state of "big brother leading younger brothers". In terms of scale, the number of offline stores of Old Navy is currently 16, which is still much different from the hundreds of stores in Gap. Big data shows that young mothers are currently the main customer base of Old Navy, and the proportion of boys and girls they buy is close to that of boys and girls. Cherry analyzed the reasons: "Young customers are willing to try, and mothers need to buy it for the whole family, and Old Navy's attempt is very low." In terms of omni-channel development, Old Navy has not yet been opened, but the possibility of entering next year is not ruled out.

"Gap's pricing is mid-range and high. I hope everyone can wear their own style and show their personality through exquisite American casual products. Old Navy hopes to allow consumers to buy fashionable items at approachable prices," Cherry revealed that Old Navy is a well-known brand in the Gap Group. After three years of development in China, its annual growth rate is higher than Gap's growth rate, and the group is also optimistic about Old Navy's potential in China.