Benoît Heilbrunn is a philosopher and professor of marketing at ESCP Europe. Author of several books on marketing, his latest book, Can we consume better? (First) was published in 2020.
LEFIGARO. - After Pimkie, Camaïeu, Kookaï or Burton, the Fast Retailing France group (Comptoir des Cotonniers, Tam Tam ...) announced on Monday that it was considering the closure of 55 stores out of 136 in France of these two clothing brands, as well as the elimination of 304 positions. Why are these clothing brands in trouble?
Benoit HEILBRUNN. - They are doomed to disappear by not understanding the evolution of the structure of the clothing market and especially by not taking sufficient care of their brand. Many textile products brands still operate according to a logic of merchants which consists in aligning unusual products and resorting massively to promotion. The textile market is no longer really a fashion market, there is practically more talk of style, creation, rupture, technological innovation at a time when injunctions to buy less structure the social discourse. These brands spend most of their time trying to sniff trends that hardly exist anymore and especially to copy each other. However, if a brand does not have a real posture, a real vision and especially salient points of difference, it has no chance of surviving in a universe that has become that of promotion because the product no longer counts.
See alsoCamaïeu, Pimkie, Burton... The endless curtain fall on ready-to-wear brands
Think of brands as different from Uniqlo with its iconic products made in Japan, Desigual with its colorful patterns allowing anyone not to go unnoticed or Jacquemus with the strength of the creator's personal storytelling; So many examples that show how to make a so-called fashion brand exist in a crowded market. What is a brand, if not a value proposition. But what do you find in these stores that you can't find elsewhere? What these brands lack is the strength of a brand capable of telling a story to script products that are ultimately standard. This was done very well in its time by Comptoir des Cotonniers with a story of intergenerational transmission that made sense. How do you expect a brand that does not offer any salient stylistic elements, is embodied by no charismatic person, does not carry any discourse on society other than the ambient bullshit, and does not script its offer, Can survive in this hypercompetitive market subject to a downward trend in price? And this is only the beginning of a hecatomb that will engulf most of these brand brands that are ultimately meaningless in a society subject to very strong constraints of access to resources and recyclability. And to recycle, you need quality fiber, which is often not the case with the mid-range.
Is competition from online sales solely responsible for this decline?
I think this is an alibi put forward by companies that have neglected their brand strategy, letting themselves be swallowed up by the systematic use of benchmarks that nip in the bud any idea of creativity. The other factor is obviously the generalization of a logic of price war that ravages the textile market as much as the planet. But the price is precisely what we brandish when we have nothing more to say about our brand. And a brand that has nothing to say, nothing to offer has no reason to exist.
The textile market is no longer governed by fashion but by the idea of permanent excitement, more linked to images (because everything happens online) rather than by products whose role is limited to being pretexts.
Benedict Heilbrunn
For a young generation bottled to permanent renewal, at prices always very attractive, have these brands become cheesy?
It is clear that these brands have not been able to adapt to the digitalization of purchasing behavior in a market where it was thought a priori that visiting the store and touching products were obligatory points of passage of purchasing behavior. New entrants have managed to dynamite the psychology of the clothing buyer with sites that are full of calls to action. From the moment when the idea of fashion is absent from the medium and low-end textile market, it is for these actors to reinforce a market impulse and finally the product has little place in this story. This textile market is no longer governed by fashion but by the idea of permanent excitement, more linked to images (because everything happens online) rather than by products whose role is limited to being pretexts... The search for deadweight has become the rule because we hardly talk about clothing, technical innovation, material. From the moment it is possible to buy pants for 2 €, this means that nothing has value and that in this generalized loss of meaning, only simulacra remain, that is to say cheap clothes that have the sole function of satisfying market impulses. This symbolizes the paradox of our commodity society, namely that the quest for useless products has become a dominant activity while we are enjoined to sustainability, recyclability and sobriety. Besides, it is not only penniless individuals who buy on Shein because it can become a game, a bit like going to the casino legally.
In addition to textiles, is the mid-range doomed to its France? What do you think this says about the evolution of our mentalities?
I do think that the mid-range is not a viable option in the long term, regardless of the sector. No more than the low-end. But low-cost players feed on an ideology of access for all to all products, an idea that is at the foundation of our consumerist culture. These low-cost textile brands finally claim a political posture which is to be able to dress everyone at the lowest possible price, in the same way that mass distribution has prided itself since the 60s to feed the French at low cost. This low-cost offer will actually contribute to the disappearance of the mid-range because it is ultimately part of the dominant ideology: inclusivity declined in its consumerist form. There is therefore a major political issue here because the deployment of such a supply system is not compatible with the environmental challenges we face. That's why I believe in the future of stronger, more durable and therefore more qualitative clothing. We must rethink clothing in terms of investment, use, transmission, circularity and no longer as an object of junk. It is precisely this story that a brand like Comptoir des Cotonniers could reactivate if it gave itself the means.
