Metersbonwe: Brand is Nuclear Power for Virtual Operation

If not for a business trip, Zhou Chengjian will run 7,000 meters every morning.

Running for Zhou Chengjian, president of Metersbonwe Group, brought not only vitality and health, but also brought him perseverance and focus. In just 11 years, Zhou Chengjian developed Metersbonwe from nothing and grew into a casual apparel brand with annual sales of nearly 4 billion yuan.

The brand is almost all about Zhou Chengjian's industry. Because this is a clothing company that does not have its own factory and does not have its own sales force. Since 1995, Zhou Chengjian has used "virtual management" to rely on "fishing chicken eggs and fishing nets" between OEMs and franchisees. , In the highly competitive apparel industry, open up a new road.

Long-distance running is boring, but Zhou Chengjian said that this is the moment of endurance. Metersbonwe has positioned itself as a “hundred-year brand” in its internal propaganda. Obviously, in Zhou Chengjian's mind, the road to this brand has, to date, only reached one-tenth.

Virtual Business

Into Zhou Jianjian's office, looked up is a display, always playing the latest fashion show in Europe and America, whenever Zhou Chengjian looked up, Europe and the United States the latest fashion will be a panoramic view.

When Zhou Chengjian introduced himself as the president of the company, he sometimes joked a long tone to say "president ... sewing." From junior high school, Zhou Chengjian's father sent him to learn tailors. Zhou Chengjian was "clothing," but he had come out of an unusual way.

Prior to the establishment of the Metersbonwe brand, Zhou Chengjian had "learned" at the Miaogu Temple clothing market in Wenzhou. The experience of this period not only provided Zhou Chengjian with the first pot of gold, but also made Zhou Chengjian realize the truth: “Create a brand of your own”.

He said: "Miaoguo Temple clothing market is the same kind of clothing, and I need an independent 'face'."

In 1994, Zhou Chengjian began to focus on creating his own brand. But how easy is it to create a brand? This means hundreds of millions of investments—designing R&D centers, management centers, marketing networks, production bases, and so on. Limited funds become the biggest bottleneck. However, Zhou Chengjian found in the investigation that many domestic garment enterprises have advanced and complete equipment, but the products can not find the market, resulting in a large number of idle machines. Since it is so idle, why can't they be run for me?

Zhou Chengjian decided to use external forces to achieve his own leap-forward development. The first is to adopt a brand-name production strategy in the upstream; at the same time, a franchise model is adopted downstream. The latest data is that Metersbonwe has more than 1,700 chain stores.

This "virtual management" model, the most important thing is the brand. Zhou Chengjian took the name "Metersbonwe" with great pains. This seemingly foreign name, in fact, has a very localized interpretation: to create beautiful and unique corporate products, corporate image, corporate brand, corporate culture, the glory of the old state, the prestige of Yang Zhonghua.

But name is just the beginning. How to successfully operate this brand is the key to the problem. When Metersbonwe opened its first branded store in Wenzhou in 1995, Zhou Chengjian began to build momentum: He spent tens of thousands of yuan on the red carpet in Wuma Street in Wenzhou; he used giant wind and snow clothes to attract customers; he bought out Wenzhou. Five double-decker buses have the right to advertise the body.

In doing so, it has achieved good results in Wenzhou, but Zhou Chengjian said, "You can't do it that old, and you have to fight for creativity, strength, and connotation."

After investigation and analysis, Metersbonwe’s target consumers are locked in young men and women aged 18-25, taking “young vitality and fashion” as their brand appeal. At the same time, the company also began to establish a team of designers.

In 1998, Zhou Chengjian made an important decision: go to Shanghai. Since then, Metersbonwe has gradually moved its operations management center and R&D center to Shanghai. Today, Shanghai has become Metersbonwe's national headquarters.

The road to the future

However, Metersbonwe's brand road is doomed to be uneven.

"The entire apparel industry, from the brand point of view we have a big gap with Europe; from a cost perspective, China may not occupy an absolute advantage."

Zhou Chengjian believes that brand connotation should be innovative from the three dimensions of technology, culture, and art. The technical force is to guarantee the brand's value from the management technology and production technology; the cultural force is to reflect the brand's cultural charm from the perspective of the combination of Eastern culture and Western culture; the artistic force is based on the characteristics of black eyes, dark hair and yellow skin. , tap the brand's artistic expression.

In design and development, Metersbonwe has cultivated a team of designers with international standards and has long-term cooperation with famous designers in France, Italy, and Hong Kong.

In terms of production management, the Group has formulated a series of procedures and standards for examining and selecting manufacturers and inspecting apparel product quality.

In store management, we pay attention to the construction of terminals. We will strengthen the standardization and optimization of investment promotion, strengthen the management and training of stores, and implement the “brand image store strategy”.

In brand promotion, several stars have been hired to serve as spokesmen for the image.

Metersbonwe is currently in the "second entrepreneurial" stage, and Zhou Chengjian hopes that Metersbonwe can transition from fast to steady, from large to strong, and to achieve the goal of "a hundred billion enterprises and a hundred-year brand."

It is said that several well-known foreign investment banks, such as Carlyle and JPMorgan Chase, have been maintaining close contact with Metersbonwe. Whether this is true or not, Zhou Chengjian does not answer with a smile. However, Zhou Chengjian, who currently holds a 95% stake in Metersbonwe, admits that plans for capital structure innovation have been written into timetables.