Gao Shengping and His independent Brand

It is the right time for China's apparel manufacturers to restructure.

Jiangsu Boshiman Group Co., Ltd, located in Jintan city, is famous for its independent brand. Its CEO Gao Shengping has his own foresight about China's independent apparel branding understanding.

On August. 26, 2009, I had the chance to interview Gao Shengping in his Boshiman Group. Co., Ltd. It is also an opportunity for me to understand his new branding understanding.

Q: Why do you think independent brand is important?

A: Brand, in our mind, is an intangible concept. But it plays a vital role in business operation and management field. Without creating brand, you will lose your business reputation. In China, a strange phenomenon appeared in textile and apparel industry. Many enterprisers focused on OME, on the contrary, only a small quantity of enterprisers paid their attention to creating independent brands. OME may bring the short-term financial benefits to enterprises, however, the shortage will appeared when global economic climate changed.

Q: With what purpose you created your own brand?

A: Many small and middle apparel manufactories were bankrupted during the economic downturn, because they relied on OEM heavily. As the current market is very competitive, therefore, companies must consider how to retain their customers by offering value-added products or services to satisfy their needs and wants so that they can stay ahead of the competition. Hence, we focused on independent brand creation. The independent brand was considered as a channel to add value to your products. I created my own brand with the pure purpose of enhancing my company's reputation. At the beginning of my business, I concentrated on exploiting domestic market. In my opinion, China's apparel market is still potential. I think if Boshiman can seize China's market tightly, we can stay ahead of the competition.

Q: You mentioned brand creating, and Boshiman implemented branding concept all the time. So what kinds of benefits you received and provided, I mean after implementing branding strategy?

A: The benefits that we provide to our customers fall into three categories which are functional, process and relationships. However, many people value the process and relationship benefits at least as highly as they do to functional ones. For Boshiman, functional benefits are easy to imitate, but to enhance the process and relationship benefits is necessary to create more differentiation from our competitors.

Q: You mentioned three benefits above, however, many people confused about process and relationship benefits. Can you explain your understanding about the rest two benefits in detail?

A: No longer are such functional benefits easy to imitate, so today we must also emphasize process benefits (making transactions easier, quicker, cheaper, and more pleasant) and relationship benefits (rewarding the willingness of consumers to reveal their purchasing behaviors). It also can increase our brand equity. From companies' perspective, the key factor for them to be successful is that they must consider providing these three benefits equally in order to build a strong brand. Companies can benefit from strong brands such as an increase of consumer loyalty, profit margins and less sensitivity to market changes.

Q: How do you implement branding strategy in your Boshiman?

A: In Boshiman, we put branding implementation at front line. On the functional aspect, our designers try their best to design best products in order to satisfy our customers' needs. We have a series of styles that can satisfy different customer groups. With this effort, our products spread over the whole country. In other words, Boshiman was renewed for its market range. On the process benefits aspect, our transaction turnover is much quick. Through paying attention to quickening transaction speed, we acquired a good reputation from customers and suppliers. At last, we also enhance the relationship with customers and suppliers.

I should mention that companies should consider using the relationship benefits to enhance their brand equity by building a good relationship with customers that is referred to 'brand relationship' or 'consumer-brand relationship.

Q: How do you strengthen the relationship with your customers in your branding strategy?

A: Boshiman invested in developing the lifetime value of existing customers. Relationship benefits are those that accrue to the customer from entering into mutually beneficial relationship with the seller. On the one hand, customers' emotion that connects to the brand can acquire the both tangible and intangible benefits from a company. By the way, the repeated purchase is necessary for enterprises, this kind of behavior is considered as necessary conditions for brand loyalty followed by perceived value, satisfaction and brand trust. To be successful, brands must create a relationship with key audiences by meeting both functional and emotional expectations at all points of interaction.

Q: Do you have any suggestion about how to create brand? As you know, many apparel manufactories may face restructuration after the economic downturn.

A: Firstly, I should mention that we should build our own brand in spite of difficulties. I propose that some large size enterprises try to focus on branding creation. Secondly, I think some enterprises that already have the independent brands can concentrate on developing process and relationship benefits with their customers. Because the companies only focusing on functional benefits regardless of process and customer oriented value may face some problems such as a narrow market positioning and a hard brand extension.

Source form China Textile Magazine

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