Luxury Fabrics: Building Your Brand’s Unique Competitive Edge Part Two
Author: Sophie Chen
Date: 14 Nov 2024
In the high-end fashion and textile market, luxury fabrics are not just a premium material, but a powerful tool for brand positioning.
For designers and small retailers focusing on high-quality products, luxury fabrics such as mulberry silk can offer a unique high-end experience. However, in luxury pricing and brand positioning, the challenge is how to avoid being overshadowed by inferior imitation silks while reaching a wide customer base. This series explores the reasons behind choosing luxury fabrics, customer segmentation, and how to build a brand’s “moat.”
In our previous discussion, we explored how luxury fabric products can enhance a brand’s uniqueness. If you’re interested, please visit Why Choosing Luxury Fabrics Can Add a Unique Sense of “Sophistication” to Your Brand https://blog.docsunhomeandliving.com/why-choosing-luxury-fabrics-can-add-a-unique-sense-of-sophistication-to-your-brand/ and “Building Brand Moats with Luxury Fabrics: New Functions and Applications for Enhanced Competitiveness”（https://blog.docsunhomeandliving.com/building-brand-moats-with-luxury-fabrics-new-functions-and-applications-for-enhanced-competitiveness/）. This article focuses on using luxury fabrics to build a brand’s price positioning and customer segmentation.
Small and mid-sized retailers and designers often face a challenge: Will luxury fabric products lose their customer base due to high prices? My answer is that the richness and diversity of mulberry silk production methods and manufacturing processes can cater to a variety of price points and customer layers.
As the world’s largest producer of raw silk, fabrics, and silk products, China offers a wide variety of mulberry silk types, grades, qualities, weaving techniques, and finished products.
In terms of raw silk, mulberry silk is classified into six grades based on factors such as fiber diameter deviation, cleanliness, purity, and tensile strength. There are options ranging from 4A grade for mass-market consumption to 6A grade for luxury
When it comes to fabric silk content, there are options from light 8-momme mulberry silk crepe to heavy silk fabrics above 30-momme.
For dyeing methods, there are both mass-production dyeing processes and digital printing methods for sample or small batch orders.
Therefore, small and mid-sized retailers and designer brands don’t need to worry about the price of mulberry silk fabrics being too extravagant or inaccessible. On the contrary, they need to focus their attention on analyzing their customers’ purchasing power and offering the corresponding mulberry silk products.
For example, I once encountered retailers who requested expensive 30-momme mulberry silk for pillowcases, with a request for five colors, 10 pieces per color. However, they were unaware of the costs of small-batch dyed heavy silk or whether the defect rate in the dyeing process would match their customers’ expectations. In this case, I suggested lowering the silk grade or foregoing custom colors in favor of starting with basic white.
To make the brand positioning of luxury fabric products more targeted, customer segmentation analysis can help precisely identify target groups. Different customer layers have different expectations for luxury fabrics.
High-End Customers: Customers who are willing to pay over $300 for a single product.
This group highly values quality and brand prestige. They demand meticulous craftsmanship and top-quality fabrics and are willing to pay a premium for authentic luxury fabrics. Brands can make mulberry silk products more exclusive by using limited editions or high-end customization.
Mid-Range Customers: Customers who are willing to pay over $100 for a single product.
These customers seek value for money while having a preference for high-quality fabrics. They may not opt for the most exclusive luxury products, but they are open to luxury fabrics. Brands can design basic styles incorporating luxury fabrics that meet their desire for quality while maintaining price affordability.
Emerging Customers: Customers who are willing to pay over $30 for a single product.
With younger consumer groups on the rise, their demand for luxury fabrics is unique more perspective. They pay more attention to the environmental aspects of products and the social responsibility of brands. Brands can attract this group by emphasizing the natural, sustainable, and eco-friendly production processes of mulberry silk.
Young Customers: Customers who are willing to pay around $10 per product.
This group is younger, with limited purchasing power, but they are sensitive to health, sustainability, and fashion, and are eager to try new products. Silk products priced around $5-$10, such as silk hair ties, scrunchies, small silk fabric pieces, or mini accessories, are particularly appealing to them.
Through this article, we understand that by precisely segmenting customers, luxury fabrics (such as mulberry silk) can find the right position in a multi-tiered market, helping brands enhance their competitiveness, meet the needs of different consumer groups, and increase customer loyalty through differentiated products and pricing strategies. If you are interested in learning more about silk products, you can click this link to follow DOCSUN and stay informed with more silk knowledge https://www.docsunhomeandliving.com/