The sector
China fashion market is rapidly growing, becoming the largest fashion market in the world. China’s impact will be particularly deep because its consumers are big spenders in so many industry segments and price points.
Many Chinese shoppers have typically viewed foreign brands as superior to home-grown labels. Even if the local brands are starting to grow, the mindset of buying an international brand and having an international lifestyle is still in trend.
This environment brings two opportunities for the fashion market :
SITUATION 1
Chinese are big consumers, western brands want to implant themselves in China.
Problem: The Chinese market is really different from the western one, foreign brands have difficulties in taking care of the administrative and social media part in China.
Opportunity: We can become a bridge between East/West for them. Those past few years the showroom industry flourished. More and more showrooms are selling themselves as Chinese business consultants, helping western brands enter the Chinese market.
SITUATION 2
The growth of local designer.
-A lot of Chinese people are studying aboard in international fashion schools and came back home to start their own brand. Chinese consumers are starting to buy more local brands.
-At the same time, with the help of social media, westerners are also getting interested in Asian designers.
Problem: Implanting an Asian brand in a western country.
It may seem easier to enter the western market but it is harder to sustain. Chinese brands are still struggling with the « made in China » label.
Opportunity: To be a successful brand, communication and network are essential. Showrooms need to know both Chinese and western market and build their network in both continent, in order to develop a brand in a foreign country.
The competition
Most showroom's selling point is being international and introducing western brands to China. The major services they provide is space renting during the fashion weeks, allowing them to have exposure during those events.
Weakness: fashion weeks only occurs twice a year, making their business limited. Few of them have a concept shop but none gives a full complete circle of production services. VIA will take that opportunity and sell itself as both a showroom and a fashion brand accelerator.
Our website and other promotional materials have to focus on this strength: VIA’s resources and services.
VIA HUB is divided into VIA showroom for partners and VIA prime for customers :
- VIA Showroom is a fashion business accelerator platform that help fashion brands establish and strengthen their position in China.
- VIA Prime is a trendy lifestyle platform devoted to the customer experience, helping their customers discover and explore their values via an East-meets-West lifestyle.
The services
VIA Showroom delivers business operations and provides a comprehensive chain of services to help brands grow their business.
VIA Prime holds themed events, pop-ups and immersive experiences to customers.
I defined personas for VIA’s main groups of users: brands and customers.
Analysing the company’s image
VIA needed a clean and professional image. We decided to take inspiration from consulting company's website and position ourself as a fashion business consultant. Our target clients are not looking for a fashion platform, what they really need is business support and guidance to develop their fashion business.
We chose a classy, modern design that shows our positioning and knowledge of the industry.
Name : VIA Hub
Description : Showroom / Art, Fashion, Lifestyle Hub
Specificity : An international, diverse and creative team in China
Function : Fashion Business Accelerator
Mission : Strike to help designer develop their brand faster
Color palette
Text guide
For the font, I choose to use Helvetica. Helvetica had been created in 1989, giving the font a clean and timeless image, perfect for our brand. The company had been created 10 years ago and is now wanting to update their image.
We are creating a showcase site that allows us to have a presence on the web. VIA website will present informations about the company, its products, and services. The research for the website map will be mostly based on the content of each page and the user flow: what the user is looking for, where can he find the information?
Our target client : VIA showroom's business partners, here is the results:
We will mainly sell ourselves as a trustworthy corporate company specialised in fashion business.
Selling points: years of experiences, a big network, an in house provision, services, mentors, and success stories.
VIA prime is our customer entry, we will focus more on the experience. ex: big images for an immersive experience and keywords to sell out philosophy. Both VIA showroom and prime are under VIA HUB, a fashion lifestyle platform.
At the first high fidelity prototype of the product, we proceeded to user testing (guerilla testing and unmoderated remote usability testing) to collect some feedbacks and solve eventual issues.
Some of their major findings:
FINDING 1
Problem: On the mobile version, when we clicked on « brands » a list will first appear, the users need to click on the brand's name to open the description. This added a step and there is a chance of not enter the page at all.
Change: we need to display pictures directly at the opening of the brand page.
FINDING 2
Problem: For partners: it will be convenient to see where their product will be displayed. It needs a picture of the space and how our localization is a strategic position for fashion.
Change: we will add a « Our Space » page (low impact: can also have a virtual-navigation function).
FINDING 3
Problem: it’s hard to navigate between VIA Prime and VIA showroom. Option 1 is to have two different websites and option 2 is to keep both in sub-sections.
Proposition: I suggested to fuse both on one website. Brands will visit the website to get informations about the partnership but client may not if there is no specific reason (ex: shop). Both VIA Prime and VIA showroom can bring a bonus to each other: partners can observe VIA's customer service and a sales, while customers can acknowledge what the company does. Option 2 seems to work better in this case.
Fallowing the first prototype testing, the problems have been adjusted. The mobile version is directly linked to the official WeChat account.
What I learned
For this project, I worked with the same developers team that I had formed for my previous project. The difference this time was that I was the project manager. I had to constantly keep an eye on the advancement, while still giving feedbacks to my client. I had more responsibility to carry as I had to make sure that my remote team will fallow the planning and produce everything within the deadline. This was my personal challenge.
Something that I will do differently
Empathy for the users is a basic rule in design thinking but empathy within the team is also really important. My mistake here is to not understand my team enough. I went on my regular working method: planning, deadlines, and PDF files with detailed explanations. I thought that having everything structured would have helped the project process faster. BUT, I missed one important point: understanding how my teammates work. To give more context, Chinese working culture is different from the western one. What may seem right here, may be wrong in another place. I studied the Chinese market but my mistake was to foresee the Chinese working culture. As a project manager, this is what I should improve. Understand how my teams work and ask the good questions. In the same way as knowing your client, you also also need to know your team's needs and how they work. Turn out detailed folders make them confused, more visuals and sketches were easier for them to work with. This is just a small detail that vary from each people but it is an important focus point if you want to successfully manage a team.
