Maison Margiela’s Niche Appeal to Chinese Consumers & Marketing Strategy

Reprinted from: WWD International Fashion News

Original title: Focus | How does Maison Margiela accurately grasp the “niche” plot of Chinese consumers?

As the first major marketing node after the epidemic – 520 Valentine’s Day is an opportunity for many fashion and luxury brands to create marketing hotspots. On this year’s 520 Valentine’s Day, which is full of spring, Maison Margiela launched an exquisite avant-garde film at the right time with the theme of “Unlocking Love”.

In the film with changing light and shadow, the well-known model Xiang Yanjing appeared in a space with ambiguous light and shadow. Her monologue is a precious love poem that is confessing to others, and it is also a word of love for herself.

Under the dramatic mobilization of visual language, the duality of everyday elements and romantic feelings is broken, and they are intertwined, which seems to tell us the essence of intimate emotions, just like the source of inspiration for this Snatched origami bag. Everyday is also the most contagious romance.

In order to match the candy-colored Snatched bag series, Maison Margiela also specially packaged the facade of its flagship store in Shanghai Jicang Wenhua with jumping color blocks, so that passers-by can also feel the atmosphere of early summer. Good and sunny. The display space on the second floor of the store is built as a limited-time experience space for the 520 Snatched series. In the pure white space wrapped in Margiela-style white cloth, the colorful and naughty Snatched bags are also more vibrant.

Snatched, which means “grab”, pays tribute to the rebellious new generation represented by individuality and diversity. Inspired by Japanese origami, creative director Mr. John Galliano created a bag with asymmetrical and unique edges and corners: its sharp folds, flaps and practical handle grooves allude to Mr. Galliano’s “grasp “Understanding: Grab an object quickly to complete dressing in a haste. The brand’s iconic corner stitching and mirror elements are also vividly reflected in this avant-garde bag.

The Snatched series of 520 provides two styles of handbags and storage bags: sweet lemon yellow, watermelon red and fresh lake blue, peony pink, lavender purple, with an elegant and fresh summer atmosphere.

As one of the flagship brands of the “Pioneering Luxury Group” OTB, Maison Margiela’s popularity in China is no accident.

In the field of fashion, Maison Margiela has successfully identified a differentiated track with its distinctive personality and a more niche positioning than traditional luxury fashion brands. From the product level, the brand’s hot-selling items include men’s and women’s ready-to-wear, Tabi series shoes, Snatched and Glam Slam cloud bags, and Maison Margiela Café, which has long queues every day. It not only demonstrates the brand’s ability to frequently produce popular styles, It also gradually deepens the brand’s status as a “symbolic” product in the minds of consumers.

Another “killer weapon” that allows the brand to maintain its niche charm, or the halo of a luxury brand, is to test the brand’s ability to continue to “create dreams”.

The Artisanal Couture high-definition series created by Mr. Galliano after joining Maison Margiela continues the brand’s structure and the essence of recycling, and has also become a new high-definition product line recognized by the Paris Fashion Association.

The design elements of this series are often extended to the ready-to-wear series. In the latest co-ed 2023 autumn and winter series, Mr. Galliano not only continued the story of the gothic lovers in the haute couture series, but also continued to use his good at folding clothes, broken stitching and other techniques to create a dramatic fashion carnival.

The endless stream of inspirations and ideas, and the constantly iterative product series have reached the target consumer groups from different price ranges, allowing the brand to successfully cross circles, harvesting young consumers from different circles, and finally creating an orderly expansion, A highly recognizable brand product matrix.

Take the eye-catching “square stitch” design element that appeared on Snatched: it appeared in the classic elements of the brand’s spring summer and autumn winter series in 1997. The intentionally exposed four-corner mark shows the “unfinished” state of a single item, and also hides a small reminder. If consumers are rebellious enough, the first thing they do after buying home is to remove the white cloth four-corner mark .

The design of the four-corner logo originally expressed a concept of de-logo, but in the hands of Mr. Galliano, it evolved into the concept of “Recicla” in 2020.

In 2019, Maison Margiela finally regained profitability 17 years after being acquired by OTB, with sales increasing by 6.4% to 1.53 billion euros. All channels and global markets will achieve growth against the trend in 2020 when the epidemic is raging.

It is reported that Mr. Galliano doubled the revenue of the brand five years after he joined the brand. When the product line, brand tone, and management team have been adjusted in place, the breakthrough of Maison Margiela’s accelerated development is still reflected in the breakthrough of the retail end.

After opening the JC Wenhua global flagship store in the summer of 2022, Maison Margiela has also turned it into an important offline marketing center for the brand.

The Glam Slam immersive limited-time exhibition at the opening of each quarter, as well as the “Hellfire Cinema” at the end of the year, have quickly become popular in the city because of their excellent curated content. At the end of December last year, the brand transplanted the concept of a limited-time movie theater to Renhengcang Street in Suzhou, creating a pop-up store that lasted for two months.

Through continuous flash marketing activities, Maison Margiela not only fully presents the pioneering design concept of the brand, but also reaches more consumer groups, and provides more photo-taking materials for Xiaohongshu users. Further opened up the public awareness of the brand.

In just a few years, Maison Margiela has opened 22 boutiques in mainland China and Hong Kong, which shows the brand’s determination to accelerate its deployment in the Chinese market. Next, Maison Margiela also plans to go north to open the brand’s first official flagship store in the core business district of Beijing.

But the core of the brand’s real rapid development is still its rebellious, deconstructive and innovative spirit of “not forgetting the original intention”. WWD

Content planning by Daniela Gu, Huayi Tomorrow Fashion Content Center

Image source Brand official