Did Virgil Really Attract More Young Fans To LV?

The first series of Virgil Abloh's entry into Louis Vuitton has landed in the world's major LV stores last week. I believe many of our friends have already started their favorite products. Although many fashion media have reservations about this series of earthquake series, they still can not keep up with the current hot selling situation.

Just in the doorway of Pop-up in Tokyo, Japan, there are more than 1000 people queuing up to become the first batch of customers to wear the new quarter of LV in the world. In a series of two days, the sales volume is 30% more than that of the 2017 Supreme series.

From the perspective of "opening trend", Virgil has actually promoted a wave of performance besides social media.

Since 18 this month, we have opened a series of Pop-up stores in various parts of the world, including Beijing and Shanghai, attracting many consumers who want to get up first time. According to our observations, we have included many young people.

From the dynamic trend of fashion in recent years, we can easily find that many traditional fashion houses are upgrading, including Louis Vuitton, trying to focus on younger markets to snipe the future main consumer group: the millennial generation.

Whether it was in the debut of spring and summer in Virgil Abloh, or in the 2019 autumn and winter show that just ended a few days ago, we all saw a more consistent LV with young tastes.

As the most popular designer among young people, LV has chosen Virgil to lead the brand to a younger age.

We all understand the purpose of LV's search for Virgil, but in the real market environment, is LV really getting closer to their potential consumers? The answer seems to be through a fieldwork process. For this result, we made an investigation in Shanghai's Pop-Up stores and the Internet, and you will see the answer at the end of the article.

Before publishing the results, let's briefly review what changes Virgil has brought to LV's younger age.

What changes did Virgil bring to LV?

First of all, for products, the most important thing is design (but Virgil once admitted that he was not a designer).

In our impressions, the image of Louis Vuitton has always been a kind of elitism. Every model on the T platform makes people feel like celebrities.

"Street oriented" should be an invisible high wall for a luxury brand.

But as people step into the era of social networking, information dissemination has become more developed and convenient. The pmission and fermentation process of aesthetics has been compressed more and more short. We can publish and talk about fashion and street views in the same cyberspace.

The trend of fashion and street differentiation brought by the past physical environment, magazines and even the social class is no longer obvious. Although the class concept still exists in the real society, the "aesthetic pleasure" from different strata has been completely opened up by the Internet world, and the new generation of young people's aesthetic appreciation is rooted in such an environment.

The changes brought about by Virgil for LV are closely related to this diversified young aesthetic pleasure.

Although Louis Vuitton has been launching all kinds of bags in the past, there are many styles to choose from Sneaker category, but the design can be called "jump out of the traditional fashion house aesthetic system".

In the past, we may have been able to perceive this feeling only in some special cooperation series, such as Kanye West or Murakami Takashi cooperation series, which you and I are familiar with. Therefore, friends who like street fashion will pay special attention.

Therefore, whether it is a bag with neon chains, Hi-Top shoes or towel Pullover, for a traditional fashion house, the design of these breakthroughs is clearly tending to the taste of young people, and even shows some street feeling in detail, forming a new situation of high and low integration, so as to correspond to the aesthetic taste of young consumers.

Luxury brands have always been looking for celebrities as a facade, but you know, not all stars are suitable, usually to meet certain celebrity characteristics, at least in identity image, they need to be compelling.

But with the change of the new generation's aesthetic interest in all aspects of life, this rule is gradually changing.

With Virgil's strong Street resources, it is also different for LV's "star of the platform". The first show includes celebrities such as Kanye West, A$AP Rocky, TravisScott and Edison Chan, who are influential celebrities in the streets or social media.

However, even the runway models are not "supernatural" supermodels. PALACE's professional skater Blondey McCoy, Lucien Clarke and singer Kid Cudi, Playboi Carti, and even Internet Celebrities, Ian Connor, and so on, these celebrities on behalf of the streets are not always socially superior, but their relationship has kept them close to the new generation of young people.

Another point is, I believe you seldom see Louis Vuitton crazy about social media. But in the social age, if we give up social networking, we almost destroy our future.

Virgil, which has 350 Instagram fans, will undoubtedly bring the highest social benefits to LV.

Literally, 350 Wan is not half as high as the first stars in China. But a picture shared by him may be enough to make the global traffic big enough to praise or even forward. In a few minutes, the picture may have circled the earth several times.

Virgil also knows that young people are the main consumer groups, so "Millennials (Millenium generation)" is the focus of Virgil and LV from the beginning.

After taking the lead in LV, Virgil invited 1500 students and the prime minister to the show. This disruptive approach was also rare, and it also raised a topic on the social network.

After the first show, Virgil even made a statement on Instagram: "You can do it too..."

Try to inspire young people's sympathy through their own experience (to know that an African American black sitting in such a position is really unprecedented), so that young fans can have a sense of belonging.

In fact, people do not know whether Virgil has brought more young consumers to Louis Vuitton.

So, this time we sent a questionnaire to online shoppers and offline shoppers of Pop-Up (a total of 104 valid questionnaires were answered, online 74, offline 30), from age, consumption, style and so on to see whether they have completed their goals.

Questionnaire results

Among the 104 samples extracted, the proportion of people who consumed the Louis Vuitton 2019 spring and summer series accounted for about 42%, most of them were 90, followed by 80, and the proportion after 70 was the lowest.

However, in the Pop-Up sampling, the proportion of post-90s is less than that of the 80s. I wonder if it is because young people prefer online shopping.

And because Shanghai Pop-Up does not have huge art installations such as Beijing, Tokyo and New York, young people with a "punch card" mentality may be less.

In view of the high price of LV, the consumers who bought the spring and summer series are all spending.

But the most popular ones are some small pieces, and 57% of the consumers bought 5000 single products. After all, not everyone can reckless Shopping.

For example, the Keepall price tag, Pop-Up also has several strength players on the first day.

In the survey results, which is more suitable for our expectation, among these consumers, Virgil was only more concerned about LV after the 90s and 00, while the consumers after 80 and 70 did not get their special attention to Virgil.

In this part of the older consumers, there are many people who don't even know Virgil Abloh. Their behavior can be said to be an "inertia consumption" and is not too affected by the changes in the fashion industry.

For this part of consumers, the entry of Virgil does not affect their desire to buy, LV is still the original pronoun of "luxury".

In the consumer samples for the spring summer series, a small proportion of 90% said they had never bought luxuries.

In addition, in the 104 samples, about 65% of the total number of people said that the Virgil owners would be more concerned about LV, and 62% of them had bought the products of Nike THE TEN and Off-White. It seemed that they had some knowledge of Virgil and even experienced the products they had designed. Fans would follow the designer to shift their spending power to the new owners, forming a situation similar to that of mobile network operators.

For example, NikeLab's THE TEN series, and IKEA's joint home series are all the continuation of the sticky consumption of fans after Off-White's explosion. After entering LV, it naturally brings many such traffic.

But the undisputed point is that most people think that Virgil's LV debut is pretty good.

Of the 104 samples, nearly 68% thought that the most attractive aspect of the series was because they were "good-looking".

But the two words of "good-looking" are not enough to form the reason for buying. "Luxury brand identity" also accounts for a very important factor. After all, there are only tens of thousands of beautiful clothes, called LV.

For the Greater China region, Louis Vuitton has signed the "cargo king" Wu Yifan as spokesperson, and overseas influential celebrities such as Kanye West have attracted some new fans for the brand. Nearly 15% of the people expressed concern about the "celebrity effect".

A few days ago, Virgil handed over second assignments in LV career. About 65% people said they had concerns. But when interviewed at the scene, one of the consumers said, "occasionally such a street is quite fresh, but if LV has been in this style, she will not like it very much."

It may be recalled that LV's joint name with Supreme in 2017 has brought fresh feelings to the market, and the Virgil's fanaticism of the joint name (let's guess how many Virgil related cooperation in a year).

We will probably see more similar names in the future.

The joint names of industry giants may receive special attention. 61% respondents said they would be willing to spend more money on such a joint series.

The luxury brands that are now turning to the streets are not just LV, but traditional fashion houses such as Dior and Burberry are on the streets.

Now that we want to be younger, we are doomed to lose some of our old customers. In view of the majority of the young people who are interviewed, the proportion of luxury brands going to the streets has reached 82%.

The question raised by a former interviewee seems to be a bit of a hit. Although Virgil is helping LV get close to the aesthetic tastes of young consumers, at the same time, the tastes of young consumers are changing all the time. The same kind of operation may only work in one phase, and really respond to that remark. Only change is eternal.

This is what some people wonder about the Louis Vuitton under the Virgil Abloh knife: is the luxury brand really suitable for the street? Or how far can it go on this road?