Opinion: 3 Lessons China's Tech Boom Can Teach Fashion Brands

Like Peter Thiel advised in From Zero to One, "Pass on any company whose founders dressed up for pitch meetings." So in the age of Google and Amazon, or Tencent and Alibaba in China, for that matter, the power of the tech brands is bringing change to the luxury and fashion business The ROI-driven approach which is common among tech enterprise has also been adopted by fashion brands-tech startups rarely use the expensive components like celebrity endorsement and offline events in their traditional marketing sense, digital information enables them to quantify the impact of every penny they spend It is gradually acknowledged by fashion brands as well-in key sales occasions luxury and fashion brands have started to re-target existing consumers/brand VIPs with exclusive discounts/purchase with gifts.

Luxury brands trying to crack/grow in China market have started to develop partnerships with tech and e-commerce platforms lately From Audemars Piguet's partnership with JD.com, offering technical support to watchmaker's e-store on WeChat, to Farfetch's acquisition of CuriosityChina, a digital technology solution agency, the trend is clear-in order to be successful in China's social commerce digital environment, brands need a much closer integration of commerce, marketing, and technology capabilities These tech brands have brought major user journey changes-whether it is "See Now, Buy Now" or "Social Commerce," the idea behind the buzzword is to eliminate the obstacles for immediate conversion.

Technology may be just a buzzword for now, but the underlying need for luxury brands and agencies to restructure themselves for a much more advanced China digital ecosystem will persist in years to come. . Source