With an online population of 103 million people, Indonesia has topped the list as the fastest rising e-commerce country. Clothing is the most dominant sector for spending after travel, and is now on the course to reach USD 53 billion by 2023.
This lucrative potential has resulted in a proliferation of Indonesian homegrown brands, making waves in the country’s fashion scene. Strong domestic demand is pushing these brands to create up-to-the-minute collections, driven by consumer demands.
In this report, we reviewed five homegrown brands in Indonesia to analyse the performance and trends offered in Fall 2019. Focused on the top apparel categories – Tops, Dresses and Pants & Leggings, we then analysed how the homegrown brands fared on trend adoption, compared with global fashion brands like of COS, Zara, Mango, Topshop and River Island.
More than 1,000 data points were screened from July to September 2019 on the following homegrown brands:
Tops was the main volume driver, commanding more than half of the total assortment, followed by Dresses (18%) and Pants & Leggings (10%). These three categories also contributed to the most newness during the Fall 2019 season, but with the addition of Outerwear matching the contribution of Pants & Leggings.
Overall, Indonesia’s homegrown brands practiced little discounting, yet managed to achieve high sell-outs.
Despite having the smallest assortment, Wearstatuquo performed strongly, with above average sell-out rates and little discounting. The brand was also active in introducing new arrivals throughout the season. Similarly, Le Bijou also managed to garner high sell-outs, with an almost 100% sell-out on full price items, despite having 30% of its assortment on discount. Shop at Velvet achieved an average sell-out rate but with 85% of items sold out at full price.
On the flip side, while Beatrice Clothing did deliver an above average total sell-out, it was mainly driven by discount – almost 70% of its items were discounted. The brand, which had the biggest assortment (2x higher than its counterparts) only had 27% newness. Cloth Inc also performed poorly with a mere 24% total sell-out, coupled with lower than average sell-out rate at full price and newness.
The full price assortment for Tops and Pants & Leggings were mostly concentrated between the IDR 150,000-200,000 range, while Dresses was priced much higher, at IDR 350,000-400,000 range (Chart 3).
The sweet pricing spot for Tops and Pants & Leggings sat at the same price band, as most of the sell-outs (36% respectively) occurred at this price range. However, consumers’ willingness to pay extended to IDR 300,000 before it started decreasing on the higher price range.
Meanwhile, the sell-out price range for Dresses was much lower than its common full price, at IDR 250,000-300,000 signifying a missed opportunity. Although 24% of Dresses sold out at above IDR 400,000, the demand for this category started to decrease gradually from IDR 300,000 onwards. This was especially pronounced in the IDR 350,000-400,000 range, which showed signs of overstocking with 11 percentage point variance against sell-out. Dresses that sold out above IDR 400,000 were mainly led by Wearstatuquo and Cloth Inc, which used premium materials such as jacquard, high quality lace and satin.
While only 40% of the analysed assortment was discounted during the period, some brands had to rely on discounts to drive sell-outs.
Overall, Fall 2019 displayed a higher percentage of discounted Tops compared to Dresses and Pants & Leggings. However, as depicted in Chart 5, the discounts imposed on this category was not deep, with concentration on the 10 – 19% range. This was mainly driven by Beatrice Clothing, which indicated why its most-discounted items failed to drive higher sell-out rate for the brand.
Shop at Velvet dominated the next most-common discount range for Tops, at 30 – 39%. However, it drove stronger sell-out at full price (Chart 2), proving that it offered the right products to the right consumers.
The most popular discount range for Pants & Leggings was 10 -19%, followed by 20 – 29%. The majority (87%) of the discounted items also came from Beatrice Clothing. Dresses was the least discounted category during the season.
Based on Chart 6, a higher concentration of products were first discounted in August and July. Interestingly, discounts were mostly introduced over the later days of the week, mostly on Fridays. Meanwhile, September had the least newly discounted items as most retailers launched new arrivals during the month.
To verify whether Fall 2019 trends from international brands trickled down to the homegrown Indonesian brands, global newness during the season was analysed. Key trends observed by international brands included cinched waists, modern ruffles and wide-leg pants.
The belted waist style was huge on Fall 2019 runways, and international brands interpreted this style not only in outerwear but also across dresses and tops. This cinched style was not limited to belts but also with sashes and ribbons. Among the brands popularising this style were Zara and H&M.
Ruffles were on-trend this season with a modern twist, as seen everywhere from Erdem to Givenchy. This romantic look was seen on floral dresses and blouses paired with ruffled collars or head-to-toe tiered design. The fast fashion brands interpreted this trend subtly in solid and printed tops and dresses.
Wide-leg and loose trousers were part of the ‘70s style that made a huge comeback on the runways this season. International brands had also adopted this trend – it accounted for more than 20% of the brands’ newness. These styles were most prevalent at Topshop, H&M and Zara.
