After experiencing rapid growth, Bananain does not want to be a simple new consumer brand | Conversation with the Vice President of Bananain.

Text | Li Xiaoxia

The starting point of business often stems from a common yet overlooked detail.

Just as a person has an ID card, clothes also have their own identity labels - care labels, which record the composition, washing method, size, etc. of the clothes. They have the characteristics of durability, but also have defects such as pricking and discomfort.

In 2016, Bananain, which captured this pain point, was born and launched the "tagless no-label underwear", forcibly squeezing a path in the saturated underwear market. With the support of the popular no-label underwear, Bananain entered a fast development track, and its sales achieved more than 100% growth for consecutive years from 2017 to 2019.

Not intending to be limited to just an underwear brand, Bananain's reach has continuously extended to socks, bras, and ready-to-wear. In 2020, it put forward the brand concept of "redesigning basic items" and began to build a product matrix focused on body comfort.

"We are committed to becoming a body comfort company, redesigning basic items around a person's 24 hours. We do not position ourselves as an underwear company, a home furnishing company, or a clothing company. As long as it is a clothing product related to the body sense, it is an area that we will research and develop." said Zang Lei, Vice President of Bananain.

The following is a conversation between 36Kr and Zang Lei, Vice President of Bananain:

36Kr: A few years ago, Bananain established a certain degree of recognition with no-label underwear. After such a long time, has there been a product that can be comparable to no-label underwear?

Zang Lei: First of all, I want to emphasize a point. Some people say that we are an underwear brand or a home furnishing brand, but both of these statements are not accurate. We prefer to call ourselves a body comfort company. We believe that the ultimate problem in life is discomfort. To make life happy, we have to solve the problem of discomfort.

At present, our main product lines are underwear and ready-to-wear, and the overall product range has exceeded 10 categories, including body-sensing scientific series products such as "-℃ Cool Leather", "+℃ Warm Leather", "Ag+ Silver Leather", "O₂ Oxygen", and "H₂ Hydrogen". Among them, the "+℃ Warm Leather" series is one of the product lines that has received more recognition from consumers. Since its launch in 2016 until this year's Double 11, our "+℃ Warm Leather" series is still one of the industry-leading popular products.

36Kr: When consumers are tight-fisted, have you considered developing some products for price-sensitive users?

Zang Lei: Currently, we will not develop products specifically for price-sensitive people alone. The core is to develop products based on the pain points of users. If we can really help them solve the uncomfortable problems in life, we believe that users are still willing to pay for good products.

For Bananain, I think the most important thing is to rethink how to create value for users, how to make product innovations, and how to continuously provide users with good products that are comfortable to the body. Especially in a situation where products in the market are highly homogeneous, we have to put a lot of effort into thinking about what the unique value point will be, what the decisive moment when the product works will be like, and how users understand it.

36Kr: What is the internal logic for Bananain to expand from underwear to the entire category? Was this direction determined from the beginning?

Zang Lei: As mentioned before, we are committed to becoming a body comfort company, redesigning basic items around a person's 24 hours. We do not position ourselves as an underwear company, a home furnishing company, or a clothing company. As long as it is a clothing product related to the body sense, it is an area that we will research and develop.

In 2016, Bananain started with no-sense-label underwear, focusing on products in the categories of underwear and thermal underwear. In 2017, it entered the sock category. In 2018, it made bras. Since 2019, it has gradually explored ready-to-wear. In 2020, we reorganized the brand's mission, vision, and values, and put forward the brand concept of "redesigning basic items". We began to build a product matrix focused on body comfort and expand the product categories. This is a gradual development process.

Now our brand has nearly 50% market recognition, which means that one out of every two consumers in China knows us. We are not the brand that spends the most in this market. Much of this is due to the communication between us and users.

36Kr: Why did the brand start repositioning in 2020?

Zang Lei: Since its establishment, we have mainly developed on the Tmall platform. In a few years, we have developed from the top 30 on Tmall to the top 5 in the category on Tmall. Therefore, we are faced with the question of where to develop next, whether to be a Taobao brand on Tmall or to develop as a more visionary domestic or even international excellent brand. At that time, the internal team specifically sorted out the brand to clarify the future positioning.

This is a major project. At that time, during the team discussion, we believed that this was the key point for the next strategic transformation of the enterprise. We considered Bananain's brand concept and user feedback, hoping that Bananain is not just a simple e-commerce company, but to become an excellent international new consumer brand.

36Kr: From a Taobao brand to wanting to become a truly recognized brand, the challenge should be quite big.

Zang Lei: Its challenges are mainly divided into two parts. From an internal perspective, it involves more the rapid iteration and expansion of the organization, which requires a relatively high level of management. When the team expands to three headquarters in Shenzhen, Shanghai, and Wuhan, the management difficulty comes from the collision of the concepts and working methods of outstanding enterprise personnel from different backgrounds. As the organization grows, it is a test for management efficiency.

From an external perspective, we are more concerned about whether we can continuously make good products. Yesterday's success does not mean that future success is guaranteed. If what was done well before is simply copied over, it is easy to have problems. Within our team, we always like to constantly discover problems or reflect on ourselves. Everyone often reflects on whether the past success can still be achieved in the future, what problems have been made now, and what needs to be adjusted and rapidly iterated. This is the method we have been using to face challenges, that is, continuous self-subversion, self-reflection, and continuous acceptance of new challenges.

36Kr: Is the current online sales still mainly on Tmall?

Zang Lei: Bananain is currently developing in an omni-channel manner. Tmall is our main battlefield, and the development of channels such as JD.com and Douyin is also good. Our channel strategy is user-oriented, that is, where the users are and where their purchasing habits are, we build online channels around the purchasing habits of core users.

36Kr: How is the offline progress now?

Zang Lei: Bananain's offline store expansion project "Landing Plan" started with the first store in Shenzhen One Fangcheng. Currently, Bananain has more than 40 offline stores in Shenzhen, Shanghai, Beijing, Wuhan, Hangzhou, Chengdu, Xi'an, Qingdao, Tianjin, Shijiazhuang and other places.

On October 1 this year, we "landed" the second store in Chengdu with the theme of "Sichuan Stay", which is also the first S+ level store in Chengdu. We are willing to go deeper into the offline market to allow consumers to personally experience body comfort. In the future, we will continue to open offline stores in different cities, and the proportion of online and offline will continue to be adjusted. Bananain is not a company that mainly focuses on the online channel.

36Kr: What is the ideal state of online and offline?

Zang Lei: What online brings to users is convenience, while the offline users' personal experience is also very important. Therefore, we have been increasing the expansion of offline stores in the past two years. Bananain's "Landing Plan" is not mainly based on scale, but more focused on user experience and store design sense.

We hope to create a user interaction place different from the traditional underwear store or ready-to-wear store. In the past two years, this model has indeed been the correct direction. Currently, many offline traditional brands are also discussing the localization and personalized design issues in different cities. We initially explored offline stores in this way.

36Kr: During the years of Bananain's ultra-high-speed growth, the traffic-playing method was also prevalent. Now the entire market environment is different from before. Has your strategy also been adjusted?

Zang Lei: As mentioned earlier, we are one of the first batch of companies on Taobao to do e-commerce with a brand thinking. The company is almost sparing no cost in polishing our visual materials and e-commerce materials. We have created a very special style, especially the style of the copywriting, such as "You have a pair of nice shoes and need a pair of nice socks", "Sexiness is given by lace, and breathability is also given by lace", avoiding writing some boring selling points. It seems that our brand has provided an emotional value from the beginning, rather than simply selling products to users nakedly.

We believe that the most important thing for a brand is to convey value. Therefore, everyone pays more attention to the polishing of the basic skills, which is the thing that the team spends the most effort on. If these things are done well, the traffic problem will be easily solved.

36Kr: Not long ago, Bananain launched a down jacket series product, and this year the down jacket market is also quite competitive.

Zang Lei: Down jackets are more inclined to fashion, not entirely functional scenarios. And the fashion category is diversified. For the same down jacket, in addition to meeting the warmth function, there are many additional functional requirements. Therefore, I think in this track, the market is still quite broad. The key is whether everyone can find their own positioning.

36Kr: It was mentioned before that Bananain had several hundred percent growth. How about in the past two years?

Zang Lei: The growth in the past two years has shown a good trend. From the analysis of the current overall volume, we can still maintain a growth of 30% every year. If the underlying basic problems, management problems, quality stability problems, and the ability to maintain a high-standard product research and development cannot be solved, and only the growth multiple and numbers are pursued, then this is not healthy.

36Kr: In the current environment, it should not be easy to maintain this growth rate.

We are still a very young company that has experienced rapid development in just 8 years. The young brand still has a lot of imagination space. For us, maintaining the desire to explore, innovate, and change, and perhaps being willing to take risks, constantly discovering body comfort problems, and accepting the possibilities brought by innovation.

We are also good at solving problems. We are willing to tackle difficult problems, not lie down, and are willing to accept new challenges. There are always people discovering problems, and among them, the determination to face and solve problems is the most important.