On the 1st of this month, the national apparel brand Semir Clothing released its annual report for 2024. The data shows that its total operating revenue reached 14.626 billion yuan, an increase of 7.06% year-on-year, with online e-commerce sales revenue being 6.672 billion yuan, up 7.1%, continuing to demonstrate a steady upward trend.
In fact, behind this seemingly stable development lies the many difficulties faced by the Semir brand.
In 2023, Semir, a national brand that started with casual clothing for young people, is determined to initiate a strategic transformation: shifting from a single casual clothing brand to a family consumption ecosystem.In less than two years, Semir quickly achieved a comprehensive upgrade from product matrix to ecological operations.
Image Source: Semir Official Weibo
In 2021, Zhiyi established a deep cooperation with Semir in the field of data, accompanying Semir in its transformation and upgrading through a series of products such as Zhiyi, Douyi, Zhikuang, and Overseas Exploration.This article will review Semir's transformation journey, deeply analyze the data-driven forces behind this transformation, and reveal the digital methodology for traditional clothing brands to break through growth dilemmas.
Reconstructing the business ecosystem
From 'Young People's Wardrobe' to 'Family Lifestyle'
Founded on casual clothing, Semir has always focused on the young generation pursuing trends and fashion. However, with fast fashion giants like UR and ZARA capturing the market, traditional casual clothing brands that were once considered the 'kings of pedestrian streets' have faced significant impacts.
2024 Taobao Men's Clothing Category Red and Blue Ocean Analysis Source: Zhiyi
Taking the men's clothing category as an example,In 2024, among the men's clothing category in the whole year of Taobao e-commerce, only the down jacket subcategory is still showing a year-on-year positive growth in sales volume and sales revenue.. Other categories have shown a decline in year-over-year sales trend. Among them, the most widely consumed categories such as T-shirts and casual pants have seen their sales drop by over 20% year-on-year.
2024 Taobao Men's Clothing Category Growth List Data Source: Zhiyi
This decline is not an 'accident' of the year 2024, but rather a predicament that the clothing industry has been facing continuously since 2020. Moreover, alongside the sluggish growth rate, there is an increasing diversity in clothing choices among the post-95 generation of consumers. The massive emergence of fast fashion brands, sports giants, and small to medium-sized trendy brands has led to a general decline in brand loyalty among young people who already tend to embrace change, and the repurchase rate for individual brands is also continuously decreasing.
In the face of such market conditions,Semir quickly realized that the leisurewear of the younger generation has officially entered a competitive red ocean, making it difficult to continue providing stable and long-lasting growth for the group.。
The trigger for the transformation originates from such key data insights.Semir decided to embark on a new journey in 2023, officially transitioning from 'the wardrobe of young people' to 'the wardrobe for the whole family.'
To broaden the brand, the first problem to solve is how to meet the needs of consumers from more age groups.Semir has expanded its product system from a single line of casual wear to cover eight major mental products for all age groups. With the consumer feedback evaluation data collected through Zhiyi big data, Semir can quickly gain insights into the main demands and concerns of consumers across different age groups regarding their products.
The consumer volume ratio dimension of a women's clothing T-shirt product. Data source: Zhiyi.
Taking the 'Cooling T' series as an example, a comprehensive survey of consumer feedback on various best-selling and highly rated competing products reveals that the audience for these products particularly cares about quality and sizing.
Semir can use big data on clothing styles and designs to empower and optimize product design. While pursuing a cooling upgrade that exceeds the national standard of 66.7%, and AAA-level effective antibacterial properties in R&D technology, it will also launch comfortable & loose dual styles and various collar designs, as well as neutral color designs, striving to achieve "one product suitable for people aged 18 to 50."
According to Zhiyi data, Semir's product achieved an excellent daily sales figure of nearly 5,000 pieces in a single store during the 2024 618 event, accounting for 35% of the store's sales in the same category.
Semir Tmall official flagship hot-selling T-shirt sales situation Data source: Zhiyi
Triggered by consumer demand, relying on big data to assist in product planning, not only highlights Semir's commitment to product quality but also showcases a brand image that is more approachable and gentle.Semir no longer strives to meet the young consumers' understanding of trend 'uniqueness', but rather focuses on the high demand for quality versatile clothing from families of all age groups.
Targeting the family apparel shopping scene, Semir is also committed to leveraging the strong relational bonds within families to drive the shift from individual consumption to family purchases, reshaping high brand loyalty and high repurchase rates, and exploring growth opportunities in family apparel consumption.
Investment in the children's clothing sector
From the second curve to the core growth engine
According to the 2024 annual report, Semir's children's clothing line generated revenue of 10.27 billion yuan this year, with a gross profit margin rising to 47.3%, accounting for 70.21% of total revenue. The revenue from children's clothing has exceeded 70%, which seems to be unexpected for many friends who are not familiar with Semir.
In fact, over the past four years, the revenue share of Semir Children's Clothing has been increasing year by year, with the revenue shares for children's clothing from 2021 to 2024 being 66.62%, 67.01%, 68.61%, and 70.21%, respectively.The children's clothing line represented by the 'Balabala' sub-brand has clearly become Senma's core growth engine today.。
The explosive growth of Semir's children's clothing business is also inseparable from the support of big data in the clothing industry. Through the industry insight function of Zhiyi, it can be seen that the online sales of children's clothing in 2024 continue to rise, with both year-on-year and month-on-month growth exceeding 10%, showing a good growth trend.
2024 sales trends of children's clothing category on Taobao Source: Zhiyi
Among them, children's pants and T-shirts are the subcategories with the highest overall proportion, gradually showing high proportion and low growth performance in the segmented categories. In contrast, the children's down jacket category has shown a high growth rate for several consecutive years, with sales in 2024 rising by 26% year-on-year.
In the face of such a category with tremendous growth potential, Semir can keenly capture opportunities through big data and launch a large number of children's down products.
Know Your Clothes - Attribute Analysis Filtering Tags
In the planning and selection of products, with the help of ZhiYi's attribute analysis feature, Semir can categorize all children's down jackets on the market based on attributes such as length, fabric, filling material, fluff content, style, and design. This allows them to conduct a comprehensive analysis to further research market saturation points and potential growth areas for children's down jackets, as well as monitor popular items under each attribute.
Analysis of down content attributes in children's down jackets. Data Source: Zhiyi.
At the same time,The brand under Zhiyi, Zhi Kuan, continues to produce a large number of category insight reports in the children's clothing field, providing forward-looking professional insights for children's clothing companies in terms of color, fabric, patterns, and other attributes to aid in product selection and design revisions.By leveraging the above tools, Semir has gained a deeper and more accurate insight into the children's clothing market, and has a more scientific and intuitive basis for discovering and iterating on hot-selling products.
Children's clothing industry trend report Source: Zhi Kuan
After occupying the leading position in the domestic market share of children's clothing, Semir does not stop at merely satisfying the present but instead leverages data insights to keenly capture growth opportunities in children's sports and lower-tier markets. It is starting to focus on the in-depth layout of its subsidiary brands such as ASICS Kids, the low-priced brand Semir Kids, and the mother-infant brand Mini Bala, replicating and innovating successful experiences.
The comprehensive coverage pattern of "mass professional vertical" children's clothing once again demonstrates Senma's grand strategic concept behind it.Continuing to strengthen its leading position in the domestic children's clothing sector.
Content Breaking the Circle
Xu Zhisheng and the data marketing behind 'Fluffy Disco'
On Double Eleven in 2024, a mesmerizing advertisement titled 'The Song of Fleece' went viral on social networks: Xu Zhisheng danced in a Semir down jacket doing the 'Fleece Disco', rapping '1000mm cleanliness, wearing it feels like a dandelion'. The result of this sensational marketing brought over 10 million in live sales to the Semir official flagship store during the promotional period. The brand exposure and impact it generated are beyond estimation.
The popular video of the song 'Fleece' Data source: Douyi
Fashion companies have always preferred to collaborate with young trendsetters. How did Semir distinguish itself by choosing to work with the stand-up comedian Xu Zhisheng, known for his self-deprecating humor and wit, and create this viral marketing event?
Similarly,Data insights have become the invisible driving force behind content marketing.。
By leveraging Douyin's big data, Semir can create in-depth portraits of the fans of its various Douyin stores, not only understanding the age range, gender, and geographic distribution of the fans but also capturing their interest distribution on the Douyin platform. Taking the Semir official flagship store with 3.8 million followers as an example, its fans' focus mainly lies in areas such as casual photography, fashion, and food, showing a greater interest in real-life scenes and content, while their attention to celebrities and film and television variety shows is relatively limited.
By analyzing the consumption evaluations of these types of consumers, it can be found thatThey pay more attention to quality and comfort when consuming clothing, rather than considering celebrity endorsements as an important reference for purchasing decisions.
Distribution of Fan Interests in Semir Official Flagship Store Source: Douyi
Under such fan insights, Semir chose down-to-earth and approachable stand-up comedians as their endorsement partners. The contrast between Xu Zhisheng's 'ugly and cute' persona and Semir's down jackets creates an appeal, winning the favor of the core demographic, namely women aged 18-30.
During the Double Eleven period, Semir launched a topic on Douyin titled 'Xu Zhisheng teaches you how to identify the quality of down jackets', leveraging the data insight capabilities of Douyin influencers to filter out popular terms like 'cutting a melon' and 'sharp-tongued Auntie'.High cost-performance entertainment million-level bloggers are engaging in content collaborations to leverage traffic, with topic view counts quickly exceeding hundreds of millions.。
Not only that, during the daily marketing activities in non-active periods, Semir is also continuously increasing its investment in collaborations with influencers. For example, by leveraging trending topics such as 'Summer First Love Outfit' and 'Come on, Cold Air', Semir promoted its Cool Feeling T-series T-shirts, achieving very favorable communication reach and boosting the product revenue of various brand stores on the Douyin platform.
Douyi - Senma High Praise Influencer Collaboration Video
By leveraging the detailed and rich dimensional filtering tags in the Douyin Influencer Database, brands can accurately identify the desired type of influencer. They can quantitatively assess value based on historical sales data, dissemination data, and influencer reputation, providing an accurate basis for influencer selection. Thanks to high-quality content marketing, Semir's revenue on the Douyin platform continues to rise.
Conclusion
“The future of the clothing industry is not in the factory workshops, but in every click and smile of the consumers.The direction that big data in fashion is committed to achieving is precisely how to understand every click and smile of the consumer.
When Semir transitioned from young trendy clothing to family consumption, embracing precise online marketing from offline stores, it once again demonstrated a truth: the rebirth of traditional brands requires not only the preservation of the core quality but also the embrace of data rationality.
In 2025, as Senma intensifies its overseas market expansion, Zhiyi also launched a new collaboration with Senma through overseas product exploration, looking forward to jointly discovering more possibilities in the fashion industry.
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