The Opportunities and Challenges of the 2016 Apparel Industry under the “Internet Plus” Model

Some economists predict that 2015-2017 will be the most difficult winter in China's economy. In the past year, as far as the apparel industry was concerned, there was a constant turmoil in the "off-store tide" of sports brands and menswear companies, and the market was bleak. However, in 2015, it was also the biggest year for traditional clothing retailers to change. A series of internet terms followed: “Internet +”, “Internet 4.0”, “Home Service” and so on.

In 2015, there were many traditional enterprises that had touched the Internet under the “temptation” of the Internet. However, if it was 10 years ago when Chinese consumers were never netizens and became “professionals,” companies were still doing e-commerce. Can enjoy the dividends brought online, but when consumers pay more and more attention to quality and pay more attention to the shopping experience, how should our traditional retail enterprises develop?

Zhang Yong, CEO of Alibaba, mentioned that e-commerce is now developing very rapidly, and that development in the next few years will require innovation. It also proposed the three major battles of Ali E-commerce in 2016: globalization, rural areas, big data, and cloud computing. If we say that in this battlefield of the Internet, what Ali wants to do is to seize the internationalization, seize the countryside, and seize the future. So what traditional clothing retail companies do is how to seize traffic, seize VIP, seize big data and services, and improve user experience and stickiness.

Traditional retailers are most familiar with the model of picking a good location, doing a good job of fitting, displaying good products, and waiting for customers to come to the door. This model has been greatly affected by e-commerce and micro-business, and it is not suitable for the current situation and future trends. The "Internet +" model is precisely the need for companies to take the initiative to attack the network, the most important thing is to "reach" the eye of the customer, is a good customer's "fan economy", "community economy", is a business model. Therefore, traditional clothing retailers need to change their thinking, act now, and seize the opportunity to successfully transform.