[Picki] To sell before it sells. Create a brand that sublimates stories into experiences with influencers

"Direct to Consumer (hereinafter" DTC ")", which is no longer rare in Japan (edited note: There seems to be no consensus-defining definition yet, but in this article we take DTC in a broad sense and clarify the concept, Brand)).

Recently, Emi Suzuki joined Amazon's influencer fashion brand project `` THE DROP ''​ ​Join​ ​And Haruna Kojima is a fashion brand​ ​Her lip to​ ​And celebrities create original brands.

Nevertheless, celebrities and celebrities well-known in the mass media, such as television, have created brands for a long time and are not uncommon. If they were as influential as they could be, they could make fashion brands, but it was difficult for less influential influencers to have a brand. Yes, until now.

What has changed in recent years is that, although not as famous as celebrities, there are enthusiastic fans in certain segments and influential "influencers" are creating the (DTC) brand. But they are not necessarily brand or fashion specialists. Can such a brand sell? You may be wondering, but there are some examples that sell. For example​ ​Amy Istoire​ ​And​ ​Ameri Vintage​ ​Are reported to exceed 3 billion yen annually.

In October 2019, when signs of the rise of such influencer brands began to appear, five fashion brands by popular influencers​ ​picki Co., Ltd.​ ​(Hereinafter "picki")​ ​Released​ ​. picki is a fashion D2C platform that creates brands of influencers who are not fashion professionals while unraveling the influencer's original experience.

"I want to create a new influencer brand role model, and thus a new creator culture," said picki representative Suzuki.

Influencers take positions

When talking about picki's service, it is important to understand Suzuki's background.

Suzuki has lived abroad in Korea, the United States, and China for about ten years since graduating from high school. Her mother was a Korean citizen and ran an OEM / ODM apparel. It was contracted by an apparel company in Japan for OEM and ODM production. Although the company was doing well at first, the company was dissolved due to macroeconomic circumstances associated with Japan-South Korea relations. Next, I decided to start a business in Japan. But before that, Mr. Suzuki said, "Because my strength is global," I will travel to 50 countries in a year and a half in search of business seeds in 50 countries, especially Silicon Valley, New York, Tel Aviv, Paris, Berlin and other countries with strong IT business. Comes out.

At the time when Suzuki was traveling, Japanese startups were in the heyday of curation and other media businesses. Mr. Suzuki was also thinking of starting a business in the media, but looking at the situation overseas, he rethinks that "the people who create content are important in the future." At the same time, so-called DTCs such as Warby Parker and Everlane began to gain popularity in the United States. After visiting DTC, Suzuki finds doubt and hope.

Because DTC is popular, I went to the store and looked at the products. At first, I felt, "I don't have much trouble" because I was making things (laughs). But customers are coming all the time. Looking at the situation, apparently nobody buys it because it is DTC. What the customer was buying was the experience. I thought I was coming to buy UX. I've always been interested in personal empowerment, so it would be interesting to combine that with experience. This idea became the prototype of picki. (Suzuki, the same applies hereinafter)

What you can't miss out on personal empowerment is the so-called "influencers" such as YouTuber and Instagramer. Around the same time that the word DTC began to appear, influencers were beginning to take the spotlight.

According to Suzuki, influencers are characterized by "taking a position." Conversely, Suzuki says that ordinary people cannot take positions. In today's age where you can connect to your friends on SNS with a smartphone from your childhood, your behavior and behavior will be absent. Extreme remarks and prominent behavior become an irreversible past and become entrenched in individuals, with the result that many take no risk and those who take extreme positions catch the eyes of people, both good and bad.

Conversely, it may be that the structure of the modern community is that people gather around those who take risks and say it. And those who can take a position and say, "I like this" or "I think this is cool" have come to be called influencers.

Influencers at the center of the community created around “likes” make and sell things. I thought that such a composition would work.

Now, as influencers become more influential, they will increasingly challenge monetization. The best way to do this is with a PR post. Influencers receive and receive money from the company instead of advertising the company's products. Of course, it is a legitimate act in itself, but it is necessary to belong to the office, such as PR notation and stema issues, that there are not always cases that can be introduced (even influencers do not introduce anything). If you have to deal with the case yourself, you will see some limitations.

This is where the influencers launch their own brand. Influencers who have a commitment to take a position originally are often not satisfied with existing fashion, and are interested in making original brands.

For brands, it is necessary to express the world view of influencers with items such as apparel. However, influencers are not apparel professionals. Even if you want to make your own apparel, Sekinoyama makes items like class T-shirts. "Then, it's a brand or fan goods. A brand should have a clearer concept and express it" (Suzuki). That's where the "fashion D2C platform" like pickki comes in.

Story from original experience, UX from story

picki is a D2C platform service for influencers active in the fashion field to launch original brands. Making full use of apparel production know-how that picki has cultivated through OEMs and other services, picki will provide total support from the launch of influencer brands to product planning, production, sales, and logistics.​ ​Making items with picki is an influencer who has a strong commitment and has a world view.

(image: picki)

When making an item, it is a plan. Manufacturing apparel requires patterns, fabrics, specifications, etc., but it starts with the designer shaping the influencer's worldview. Shaping the worldview means making items out of products, not markets.

The fashion industry as a whole is sluggish, as represented by forever21 filing for bankruptcy. Meanwhile, fashion companies have been referring to “selling products” in order to create “selling products”, and as a result, have created a situation where only similar products are sold in the streets. By becoming a market-in mind, fashion commoditization is progressing. However, picki has a step in the flow.

picki takes a lot of man-hours when starting to build a brand and asks influencers for their original experience. Dive deeper into why you want to make the clothes. Beginning with "What was your first memory of your birth?" From that point on, all influencers go through the process of solidifying the concept of the brand and thus creating a brand like this. In other words, they are exposing themselves to express their identity.

Once the project is over, the next step is production. Picki brand influencers have tens of thousands of followers, so they don't have a mass economic sphere. For this reason, the number of lots for one garment is about several hundred. If craftsmen make them individually, the cost will go up.

On the other hand, the scale of 200,000 yen for 100 products made at a cost of 2,000 yen is too small for a factory to be a good deal. Even if each brand individually negotiates with a factory, it is difficult to find a factory to undertake. In that regard, picki can be manufactured at the factory.

As mentioned above, Suzuki originally runs an OEM company. This business is continuing at picki. Received an order for a large project as an OEM and requested manufacturing at an overseas factory. The gap is sewn to produce influencer brand products. Because a large number of projects are included in a set, the factory can also produce "in addition". Although picki currently only handles a few brands, it will be easier for factories to take orders as the number of brands increases in the future.

Once the product is ready, it's sales and logistics. Logistics is managed using services such as OPENLOGI. Because of DTC, the direct sales method is in-house EC, but the characteristic is the creation of content from the flow from planning to manufacturing.

Existing clothing has been evaluated not for its experience but for its quality. There are values of “cute / not cute” and “high / cheap”. However, recent DTC brands emphasize “experience”. It takes care of the process and the story.

Your favorite influencers talk about the original experience, then spin up projects and produce clothes. Of course, we want the product itself, but knowing the process of making it is an irreplaceable experience for users.

So at picki, we make the production process into a story, and expose it as articles and videos. The process itself becomes content and entertainment, involving the user. That's why influencer brands sell before they sell.

The content creation of products is consistent with the context that only influencers with the above-mentioned commitment will appear on picki. If you say in the story that you want to sell but have no view of the world and say "I made it because it seems to sell," it would not work as content.

Content is posted on the owned media on picki, and at the same time a brand SNS account is created and information is disseminated. Communicate interactively with fans, involve them, set stories and connect them to product sales.

(image: picki)

In order to make a story sublime to UX, it is necessary to see the target of the story at a stretch. But over the years, the fashion industry has been highly specialized in the process (of course not bad). Therefore, it was difficult to introduce one brand through the horizontal axis. However, picki has a variety of human resources, including designers, MDs, production management, writers, and video creators, and is responsible for the production process and information distribution to create UX.

Create an influencer brand role model

picki will release five influencer brands in October 2019​ ​Announcement​ ​did.

For example, Yuri Nakagawa said,​ ​bpm150​ ​”Brand. She is an influencer who has also appeared on the romantic reality show "Bachelor Japan" distributed on Amazon Prime Video. He is a fashion enthusiast who puts a tattoo on his finger with "FASHION", and he has a strong commitment and is a "person who can take positions and risks", so he is the perfect person to decorate the appearance of picki. By the way, "bpm150" refers to a heart rate of 150 (about a little tight exercise), and it has the intent of "creating a brand that raises the chest by raising the BPM to 150 just by putting on". Nakagawa's process of making BPM150 items​ ​Here​ ​Published in.

And when it comes to influencers, fashion-related influencers aren't the only ones who make items. Sasaki Noka is an influencer with a core fan who is a writer and thinks, "I want to express sentences other than sentences,"​ ​you​ ​It is said that it came to make.

(image: picki)

Picki seems to have a strong desire to create role models for influencers who make and earn brands from the five brands that appeared in the first installment and the following brands.

One reason YouTubers are making money by making videos is the appearance of famous YouTubers. Because they became role models and expanded their base, subsequent YouTubers were born one after another. In the same way, if a role model of an influencer who makes and earns a brand is born, it will be normal for an influencer to create a brand, and there may be people who will be an influencer to create a brand .

In fact, you can also see the germination of roll models born from picki. Ayumi Seto, a model belonging to the ASOBISYSTEM office where Kyary Pamyu Pamyu and others belong, as well as the five brands mentioned above (Instagram has 280,000 followers), picki​ ​Sisterhood Tokyo​ ​"Announced the start of production of the brand. We are currently preparing for the spring 2020 release. When launching the brand, `` The new brand will be launched with a new company called 'picki Co., Ltd.' ''​ ​Profession​ ​. It seems that picki is not just a contractor who makes clothes.

She has launched a brand before, and announces the closing and launch of a new brand at the same time. It seems that dozens of eager and long messages have come to Instagram comments (more than 100 DMs have come).

(Pilot boat created from Seto's Instagram)

If an influencer like her makes items with picki and becomes famous and becomes a role model, it is quite possible that other influencers will follow.

Seto publishes a blog to launch a new brand with picki. This is not a direct picki content, but it tells the story of the brand and the fans are responding very warmly to it. Simply creating a brand does not have this response. Looking at this, I felt that what picki was doing was definitely correct, and my desire to help as a role model grew stronger.

Clothes are overflowing in modern times. The closet is full of clothes, and you can find most clothes by visiting ZOZOTOWN and the EC of each company.

This does not mean that the needs of consumers are met. Consumer fashion has been developed by major apparel products that mimic “sellable products”, but on the contrary, it has created a need for “I want clothes that are different from people”.

If influencers could create brands with their own worldview, they would meet consumers' expectations. Followers who sympathize with the influencer will become more sympathetic with the content where the influencer's feelings are revealed, and will be more interested in the items made.

Since its inception, picki has stated that he wants to create what creators want to create, and to create places and culture where people who want to buy can gather.

To create a culture, I think it is good to have a goal. For example, an artist aims at Budokan. Fashion comes to mind the Tokyo Collection and the Tokyo Girls Collection, but it's a bit far. I would like to do a picki to a more familiar “target”. For that purpose, I want to succeed one by one from the brands that exist at picki.

—

Mr. Suzuki says that it is not difficult to make a brand with an annual sales of 50 million yen to 100 million yen, as billions of yen can be known for apparel brands. But if you can monetize a few percent from that, it's a huge revenue stream for influencers.

However, creating a brand without know-how for influencers entails risks. An influencer buys from overseas without making an original product. It was a problem that the brand name had been changed and sold, which led to a fiery fuss. Even if you don't go that far, you need some knowledge to make original items. This is where the opportunity for a DTC platform like picki comes in.

Without fear of misunderstanding, picki repeats several sets of influencer brands, from planning to sales. Even if the concept and content differ depending on the brand, the same thing is done behind the scenes. In other words, the more brands are accumulated, the more know-how accumulated and the more efficient the business. More production could lead to volume discounts and more efficient logistics. Collecting data could help attract customers between brands, and might make it easier to predict product sales. Such knowledge becomes an asset that can be returned to the brand.

New brands will appear in picki in the future. We want you to create a cycle in which the role model that creates and earns brands emerges, and the number of brands increases.