auth. Paul Fang Founder of Fashion Exchange

With an old map, it's impossible to find a new world.

In the past 3 years, a devastating pandemic swept across the globe, accompanied by frequent black swan events. This has led to an upheaval of the world, rendering it unrecognizable to our familiar one. In China, as well, the consumer market has seen unprecedented changes and adjustments, marked by the apparent confidence downturn, consumption sluggishness, and heavy pressure on enterprises in an uncertain environment. More importantly, Chinese consumers have shown increasingly diversified consumption demand and psychology. As China puts forward the goal of "high-quality development," there will be irreversible structural changes to the development patterns and growth modes we have been accustomed to. As a result, enterprises must make high-quality supplies available. The external environment, policies, and changes in demand and supply have a direct impact on the consumer market. The year 2022 may be a turning point of China's consumption landscape.

With the release of the annual Fashion IP 100 list and Global Fashion IP White Paper, we aim to provide valuable insights and food for thought by delving deeper into fashion IPs, allowing readers to see the bigger picture of the rapidly changing Chinese consumer market through individual cases.

There are abundant highlights to share from this year's list, which reveal the current or upcoming trends and changes.

1. YEEZY (No. 3 in 2019, No. 1 in both 2020 and 2021) and SURPREME (No. 1 in 2019, No. 2 in 2020 and No. 3 in 2021), which had dominated the Top 3 seats for 3 consecutive years, both dropped out of the top 10 rankings this year. YEEZY was not included in the ranking for various reasons, while SURPREME fell to 13th place in the overall list. Nothing good lasts forever. Having enjoyed years of enthusiasm, street trends are indeed on the wane.

2. By region and country, this year's Fashion IP 100 list has 33 fashion IPs from the Americas, 46 from Asia and 21 from Europe. This is the first time that Asia outnumbers the Americas in fashion IPs. Specifically, there are 31 from the US, 24 from China, 15 from Japan, 12 from France, 7 from South Korea and 3 from the UK. Together, China and the US have 55 fashion IPs, contributing to over half of the list. If added with Japan, the sum amounts to 70. If further added with France and South Korea, the quantity reaches 89, accounting for nearly 90% of the list. As evidenced by the above figures, the fashion IPs have a very high concentration.

3. China's fashion IPs on the list grew from 8 in 2019 to 12 in 2021, and then doubled to 24 in 2022. This shows that Chinese originality and designs have indeed been thriving in recent years, and Chinese brands and new China-made goods have become more popular among Chinese consumers, especially Gen Z. In contrast, the US saw a year-by-year decline in the number of fashion IPs from 47 in 2019 to 31 in 2022. Emerging design talents from China, South Korea, Japan, France, etc. are on the rise, constantly diluting the once dominant share.

More details will be covered in the 2022 Fashion IP White Paper. The FASHION IP 100 list serves, in a way, as somewhat of an annual physical examination report of fashion IPs. It presents a thorough evaluation of fashion IPs in the Chinese market in the past year. The outcome includes the brand power and product power of each fashion IP in the Chinese market and their popularity with consumers, thus providing an insight into the commercial and social value of such fashion IPs in the Chinese market. Furthermore, it acts as a data reference and a decision-making guide for various industries and brands seeking fashion collaboration and co-branding. The list and the White Paper will enable readers to get an initial understanding of fashion IPs in general, regardless of how well industry insiders know the designers and artists. We also feel extremely confident and encouraged by the growing number of entrepreneurs, executives, and those in charge of product development, brand marketing, new retail and e-commerce who are using the list and the White Paper as tools.

This year's White Paper features discussions on the particularly hot topics in 2022, such as metaverse, virtual fashion, NFT, AIGC, etc. As our theme this year “THE FUTURE: FASHION MATTERS” suggests, technology is shaping industries like clothing, food, housing and transportation, as well as the way people live at an extraordinary speed. From the world's first Metaverse Fashion Week held in March 2022 to the launch of the world's first metaverse city “METAVERSE SEOUL” by the Seoul government in January 2023, and from NFT to AIGC (AI-generated content), as well as ChatGPT that became a global phenomenon at the beginning of this year, technology has sparked everyone's attention and thoughts. How to treat AIGC phenomenal apps like MIDJOURNEY? Will Generative AI replace fashion IPs? These questions will be addressed in Chapter IV of the White Paper. The future has come.

We also spotlight some interesting business changes in Chapter IV. In addition to the traditional luxury fashion groups, a number of small brand groups, creative units and independent brands have also grown rapidly over the past few years. These include OTB Group, NGG Group, brands affiliated to VANGUARDS, brands like GANNI, JACQUEMUS, etc., and many have made it into the FASHION IP 100 list. We've also dug into the topic of "design power" and "culture power". The past few years have witnessed a growing image of brand owners and designers as "cultural curators", with "cultural narrative ability" becoming an increasingly vital element for brands to compete for consumers and attention in the face of fierce market competition.

As the saying goes, “A stone taken from another mountain may serve as a tool to polish the local jade.” In Chapter II, we present 10 best global collaboration for the year selected from the 43 best global collaboration of Fashion Exchange in 2022. The 10 projects cover industries of sports, outdoors, trends, home life, 3C electronics, automotive, watches, food and beverage, etc., which have performed outstandingly in product concept, value creation, marketing and promotion, sales results realization and users’ emotional experience. They have unique value highlights and action logic worth learning from in different dimensions such as strategy formulation, IP selection, promotion, sales, etc. We hope this can provide reference for your fashion collaboration planning. Facts have proved that high-quality collaborations and brand partnerships remain the most effective method with high return on investment for brands to launch new products, create viral products, acquire new customers, promote conversion, enhance repurchases, and improve brand awareness. This approach has been commonly applied industries such as fashion and luxury goods, automotive, beauty and skincare, sports and outdoors, 3C electronics, food and beverage, home furnishings, and fast fashion.

That is not all though. I believe that the most valuable and attractive aspect of high-quality fashion collaborations and brand partnerships lies in the opportunity to engage in professional exchange and intellectual collision with exceptional fashion IPs from different fields. This intellectual stimulation and crossing of industry perspectives enables business leaders and decision-makers to break out of information silos and self-imposed limits, constantly broaden their horizons and enhance their cognitive capabilities.“Insight is more important than knowledge. Embrace openness and engage with the world. Enjoy a cup of coffee to absorb the energy of the universe,”said Ren Zhengfei, founder of Huawei. The message advocates for open communication and intellectual collision. From this point of view, Fashion Exchange is like a café that connects brands, users, and creators. In this café, various brands and creators of fashion IPs on the Fashion Exchange platform collaborate on user needs. Meanwhile, our list and White Paper are the annual treat that the café offers to all industry players.

The just-concluded "Two Sessions" of China coincide with a critical period for striving for national economic growth in 2023, as emphasized in the Report to the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, which advocates for high-quality development. High-quality development requires high-quality growth first, rather than the low-quality and inefficient growth in the past that relied on traffic and price wars. High-quality growth calls for upgrading product design, quality, price, store experience to meet people’s growing demand for a better life. It is clear that high-quality brand cooperation is also essential for this endeavor.

Welcome to Fashion Exchange Café. Join us for a coffee break to exchange and discuss the ways to achieve high-quality development and collaboration, to spot China’s new consumption frontier in 2023.