Salesforce Disclosed statistics show that during the 2023 Amazon Black Friday promotion, the top three discount categories were clothing, home furnishings, and beauty. Among them, the clothing category topped the list with a discount of up to 31.3%. According to a survey report by GoodsFox, the crown of the number of advertisements placed on independent stations worldwide also fell to the clothing category.
Faced with such a fierce competition in the clothing market, ordinary overseas merchants are reluctant to take risks. If they are not careful, they will be annihilated in the whirlpool of cruel competition such as price wars and homogeneity. But this is also a huge market with great potential for gold mining. According to a research report by Statista, global clothing demand will rebound strongly in 2023, and the market size is expected to be 1.74 trillion US dollars. For this reason, there has never been a shortage of overseas brands rushing into the red ocean of clothing on the cross-border battlefield. However, if they want to carve out a path out of it, they have to compete with the brand wisdom that integrates the supply, sales and traffic ends. Selling Savi Times With its own system of replicating hits, it has over 60 brands with revenues exceeding 10 million yuan, and many clothing brands have broken out of the red ocean and become leaders in various subcategories. Ekouaer, which has been deeply involved in the homewares market, is one of the best.
Ekouaer was founded in 2015 and broke the sales mark of 10 million in the second year of its establishment. In 2022, Ekouaer achieved a sales report of 917 million, ranking second in the entire brand matrix of Savi. Together with another clothing brand Coofandy, it is the right-hand man of Savi. In the fierce competition among big brands in the clothing industry, how did Ekouaer successfully break through and achieve a gorgeous transformation into a billion-dollar brand? Following Ekouaer's overseas expansion trajectory, the answer is obvious. Many experts in overseas clothing industry gather, including SHEIN Such comprehensive old giants with deep supply chain skills are not without rising stars like Cider who have worked hard to cultivate traffic. For Ekouaer, the first step in going overseas is to avoid direct collisions with the advantage tracks of various masters and form a differentiated and unique school. Ekouaer introduces itself like this: It focuses on the collision of classics and fashion, creating wardrobe essentials that are both home leisure and pajamas. Specifically, Ekouaer mainly deals in home wear, and its product series covers underwear, pajamas, swimwear, sportswear, etc. It pursues the design concept of simplicity, nature and personalization, aiming to create comfortable, durable, comfortable and beautiful home wear for target consumers. One of the secrets of Ekouaer's success in the fierce competition is its keen insight into consumers . Relevant data shows that more than 80% of American consumers regard comfort as the primary factor affecting their purchasing decisions. Especially for intimate consumer products such as home clothes, a comfortable wearing experience is often more likely to impress consumers than an exquisite appearance design. To this end, Ekouaer launched the slogan "Define your comfort" and is committed to creating cost-effective, high-quality clothing for consumers that is "like a hug". During the production process, Ekouaer continuously upgrades its textile technology and innovative design capabilities, and ensures the breathability and comfort of its products by testing a combination of various high-quality fabrics such as environmentally friendly recycled fibers. From the market research data, Ekouaer has successfully implanted this image brand into the minds of consumers: in its customer feedback and product reviews, "comfort" is the most mentioned keyword. On the other hand, clothing belongs to the fashion industry and needs to respond to consumers' popular demands for personalization and fast fashion. In particular, overseas brands are facing a more complex and changeable overseas market. Therefore, how to understand the consumption characteristics of different markets and adjust strategies in a targeted manner to avoid the misunderstanding of acclimatization is a common pain point for most clothing brands going overseas. Looking at Ekouaer's main business base, the United States, the "top market" of the global apparel industry, is also the country with the most dispersed ethnic groups in the world. The rich and diverse cultural atmosphere makes the needs of local consumers more complex. For example, there are many differences in size issues with Asian consumers. Ekouaer’s solution to this is to build a digital information database . On the one hand, Ekouaer has developed its own fashion trend system to accurately analyze global fashion trends and consumer preference information, and then establish a continuously iterative fashion element library. On the other hand, it has built a pattern database of more than 17,000 styles, which effectively improves pattern design efficiency, product quality and consumer satisfaction by providing multi-dimensional information such as fabric stretch and clothing pattern. Relying on the efficient response capabilities of the digital information database, Ekouaer uses a flexible supply chain to complete rapid product iterations, successfully solving problems such as size differentiation in the U.S. market and other demand stratification issues, and successfully achieving several times the sales volume of its products. Relying on digital operations and a sales strategy that caters to each individual customer, Ekouaer is able to empower product development by accurately exploring consumer needs, easily overcome cultural differences and language gaps in different consumer markets, and create a home furnishing brand synonymous with "comfort."
So far, Ekouaer's market has expanded to more than 180 countries and regions. In the process of market development, in addition to adopting a localized operation strategy in accordance with local conditions, leveraging diversified sales channels is also the key to the rapid development of the brand. To this end, Ekouaer implements a dual-track model of third-party platform + independent station in parallel, and reaches consumers from different circles through multi-channel intensive cultivation. Amazon is currently Ekouaer's largest sales channel. Specifically, Ekouaer's Amazon store focuses on a pan-SKU strategy, covering multiple categories such as pajamas, underwear, swimwear, sportswear, etc., with a wide variety of product styles and quantities. Backed by Savi's strong brand building capabilities, Ekouaer continues to occupy the top link position advantage and realize the logic of rapid replication of hot products. After entering the market with its core product line of pajamas, Ekouaer further expanded and extended its diversified categories, relying on the superimposed advantages of its flagship products to drive the growth of sub-categories and fully meet the consumption needs of different types of customers. On the other hand, high cost-performance is also a trump card for Ekouaer to stand out from the fierce competition in the category. Relevant data shows that more than 90% of Ekouaer's products are priced below US$40, of which the price range of US$20 to US$30 accounts for 50%. With the support of the sales strategy of universal SKU + high cost performance, Ekouaer has been able to occupy the top of Amazon's homewear category and firmly occupy the market share. Data is the most intuitive feedback: currently many of its products have monthly sales of over 10,000, occupying the TOP10 of the Best Seller list in various subcategories. In addition to taking root on Amazon's third-party platform, Ekouaer has also built an official independent brand website, but it is still in the initial development stage and the website traffic is relatively low. Data shows that the total visits to its independent website in the past month were less than 5,000, of which 32.49% of the traffic came from the US market. Overall, most of Ekouaer's product sales rely on the Amazon platform. However, in the current environment where the industry is constantly changing and upgrading, over-reliance on a single market poses certain risks. Therefore, Ekouaer has chosen to extend its brand tentacles to more diversified channels while deepening its presence on Amazon, in order to maximize opportunities to engage with different consumer groups.
The apparel industry faces pain points such as high inventory pressure, unstable traffic and changing consumer sentiment. Therefore, if Chinese brands want to take root overseas, in addition to relying on strong product strength, they also need differentiated marketing strategies that are adapted to local conditions. Looking at Ekouaer's marketing route, social media + KOL traffic is its way to expand the audience circle and accumulate private domain traffic. At present , its social media matrix has covered a large number of mainstream social platforms such as TikTok, Insgram, Youtube, and X. Ekouaer's brand positioning is to create fashionable, comfortable and cost-effective products. Its target consumers are mainly the middle class who pursue quality life. Therefore, its traffic promotion strategy mainly conducts precise marketing for this group to fully demonstrate the product features and brand tone. On social media such as Instagram and X, Ekouaer actively carries out marketing activities. By publishing content related to fashion, life, and dressing, it establishes connections with potential customers and showcases their product lines, attracting consumers' attention and interaction, thereby increasing brand awareness. On short video platforms like TikTok, Ekouaer follows the fashion trend and embraces a diversified and inclusive promotion route. The videos posted on TikTok mainly cover communication and sharing, product display, expert evaluation, etc., and the models have great differences in body shape and skin color, fully catering to the needs of different audiences. In addition, Ekouaer attaches great importance to teaming up with various overseas Internet celebrities and bloggers. Through various forms of cooperation such as unboxing, fitting, evaluation, lookbook, etc., it uses the influence of Internet celebrities to emphasize brand narrative and further increase brand exposure and conversion rate. Overall, Ekouaer's marketing strategy focuses on interaction and communication with consumers, enhancing brand awareness and reputation through the linkage of multiple channels, thereby promoting sales growth. Ekouaer has carved out a path for itself in the clothing industry. The secret to its success lies in its three trump cards: a digital supply chain that allows for small orders and quick response, a marketing strategy that caters to each individual customer, and multi-channel traffic reach. It is not difficult to see from the success story of Ekouaer that the overseas expansion of Chinese brands is an arduous battle, an all-round competition integrating supply chain, product strength, operation model and marketing strategy. Whether it is to stand out from the fierce competition in the red ocean or to seize new growth points in the potential blue ocean, it is inseparable from the construction of differentiated competitive barriers.
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