Brand-driven or product-driven?

For the past year or so, because I've spent more time building our Enabler business, what I share has leaned towards marketplaces, marketing, AI and business models. But in reality, most of my day is still spent on ZUCCA's in-house brands. We are, after all, a company that started out in apparel.

So today, let's talk about clothing.

A popular brand suddenly shuts down

I just happened to see news about a Taiwanese fashion brand. It's a women's wear brand that has been running for more than ten years. It started online, then slowly moved offline, opening quite a few stores across Taiwan and going into department stores.

Around noon today, someone claiming to be an employee posted on Threads that the company had told staff that day, through its lawyers, that because of financial and operational problems it was definitely closing, and might not even be able to pay salaries. Soon after, much of the brand's website showed SOLD OUT, along with a notice that members could apply for refunds of their stored-value credit.

I'm not going to name the brand. For a business that has run for over ten years to end up here can't have been easy. As for what really happened, outsiders don't have the full financials, so it's hard to judge.

But what I found especially interesting is that this brand was actually very strong on social media. It had hundreds of thousands of followers, influencers and KOLs regularly wore its clothes, took photos and shared them, and brand awareness was high. From the outside, you'd think this was a fashion business doing pretty well.

And then today, this news.

Are we too used to judging whether a brand is successful by how it does on social media?

The introduction I dread most

Which brings me to this: do you know how I least like to be introduced?

If someone introduces me as handsome, I accept it calmly. 😂 If they talk about my abilities, what I do, or praise our brands, I'm happy too.

But what I dread most is being introduced as a fashion brand with more than a million followers.

Malaysia has just over 30 million people, and we have more than a million followers on TikTok, many of whom really are interested in clothing. Not to mention that our monthly impressions on social media are counted in the hundreds of millions.

Those numbers do sound impressive, but every time someone introduces us that way, I feel a little embarrassed.

Why?

Because I know very well that followers are one thing, and whether customers will pay for your products is another.

A million people following you doesn't mean a million people will buy from you. Hundreds of millions of impressions don't mean you have a business that can keep making money.

Take the two clothing brands Malaysians know best, Uniqlo and Padini.

I don't think many people buy something from Padini and post a photo on Instagram saying they're wearing Padini today. Few people buy a Uniqlo T-shirt and post a Story telling everyone they're wearing Uniqlo.

But both are very large apparel retailers. Padini alone does close to RM2 billion in revenue a year.

Why?

Because customers need their products.

Want a comfortable T-shirt? You think of Uniqlo. Need trousers for work? You can walk into Padini. There may be nothing particularly worth photographing and sharing, but customers keep coming back to buy again and again.

How many people share you on social media matters, of course. But in real life, how many people keep paying for your products is what really counts.

RM120-plus for this top?

When I saw the news, the first thing I did was discuss it with my co-founder, who is also my wife. She mainly leads our product development, design and merchandising.

She looked at the products and her first reaction was: "This top sells for RM120-plus?"

It's not that she thinks a RM120 top is necessarily expensive. People who do product habitually judge a garment by design, fabric, cutting, quality and price, to see whether customers will feel it's worth the money.

Of course people buy RM120 clothes, and RM300 and RM500 ones too. The question is what value you provide that makes customers willing to pay that price, especially in a fashion market this competitive, where customers have so many brands and products to choose from.

Of course, we can't conclude a brand's products or pricing were the problem just because it closed. But the discussion made me rethink one thing:

Do customers buy your product because they like your brand? Or do they come to love your brand because they like your product?

Brand-driven and product-driven

These are actually two different logics.

Brand-driven means customers first identify with the brand's image, values and positioning, and are then willing to buy its products.

Product-driven means customers first discover that the product is comfortable, suits them and is fairly priced. They're happy after buying, and only gradually build trust in the brand.

I don't think either direction is necessarily better. A successful fashion brand ultimately needs both.

But for businesses selling mass-market apparel, I believe product should be the growth engine, and brand is an asset built up slowly through good product experiences, time after time.

Because the product is what actually touches the customer and talks to them.

A customer might buy your clothes for the first time because of a KOL's video. But by the time she receives the parcel and puts it on, marketing has already done a big part of its job. What decides whether she comes back is the product itself.

Is it comfortable? Does the cut suit her? Does it lose its shape after a few washes? Is it worth the price? When the next collection drops, is there something she likes?

If she's satisfied after the first purchase, the second time she may not need a KOL to introduce it; she'll come back to look on her own. Over time she doesn't just like one piece of clothing, but starts to trust the products the brand puts out.

That's when product truly turns into brand value.

Scale and health are two different things

But there's another problem in building a brand that's easy to overlook: the size of a business and its health are completely different things.

Could a once-successful company slowly lose its original edge as it keeps expanding?

Especially in apparel, going from online to offline, opening the first store, the fifth, the tenth, sales may keep rising, but so do rent, manpower, renovation, inventory and all kinds of fixed costs.

One profitable store doesn't mean ten stores will make ten times as much. Higher revenue doesn't mean healthier cash flow.

Clothing has a life cycle. Once inventory sells slowly, cash gets locked up in the warehouse. Sometimes the bigger the company, the more cash it needs just to keep running. Even with a profit on paper, there may not be enough cash to cover what comes next.

How good a company looks and whether it can actually keep going really are two entirely different things.

Marketing should amplify demand, not hide a problem

So does marketing matter?

Of course it does.

Without marketing, even the best product might go unnoticed. Influencers, content, advertising and branding all have their value. Especially in today's fiercely competitive fashion market, these tools are even more needed to help products reach customers.

But I think marketing's value should be to amplify demand, not to use a marketing budget, over the long term, to cover up a product that lacks demand.

If a piece only sells when KOLs share it, only moves with heavy ad spend, or has to be discounted again and again to clear, then we need to think seriously: is marketing not doing enough, or is the product itself the problem?

Of course, I also don't think a good product alone guarantees a fashion business that succeeds over the long term.

Clothing is easy to copy. Today you develop trousers that sell really well, and a competitor may soon launch something similar, even cheaper.

So real competitiveness may not be having a product no one else can make, but having the ability to keep understanding customers, developing the right products, and responding quickly to what the market wants.

Good marketing can bring the first purchase, but good product is what creates the second and third. And those repeated buying experiences are what eventually add up to real brand value.

Customers think of you naturally

Seeing the news about this Taiwanese brand today left me with mixed feelings. Taking a fashion business from online to offline and running it for more than ten years is definitely not easy.

We don't know what problems it really ran into, and we shouldn't casually comment on why a business failed.

But it did remind me again that after all these years in business, it's really easy to be drawn in by results that only look good on the surface.

Followers, engagement, KOLs, GMV, number of stores: all of them can make a very pretty report card.

But in the end, we don't start companies to run a business that looks successful. We start them to run a business that can keep creating value, keep making money and keep serving customers.

Marketing gets customers to know you, product makes them want to come back, and how well you run the business decides whether you can keep going.

A truly good brand isn't necessarily one that lots of people talk about on social media every day.

It's one that, even without a KOL sharing it, without a special campaign, without anyone reminding them, customers still naturally think of when they need to buy clothes, and are happy to pay for.

I think that's what we should most be aiming for in the clothing business.