DRAFT V1 · FOR ALIGNMENT
BRANDS & RETAILING · MARKET STUDY
Knowing the market before we write the plan
A framework for the DETERMINANT market study, for alignment before the research runs.
Past plans were built from the supply chain outward. What is missing is the front end: what type of brand DETERMINANT is, and what price tier it holds. That choice decides how much marketing we need, what the channels must deliver, and how many stores make sense.
The mid-market has replaced luxury as fashion's main value creator (34 percent of industry economic profit in 2024, the highest since 2010). Luxury raised prices 61 percent since 2019 and pushed aspirational customers down into the premium and bridge zone. That zone is exactly where DETERMINANT plays. The white space is real, and everyone is elevating into it.
Esquel's supply chain makes relatively expensive things, so the cheap-distribution, high-volume path is structurally closed. The brand has to earn its price through brand investment. The real variable is therefore not price alone; it is the marketing cost of holding each price tier, and whether the channel margin covers it.
Rather than boiling the ocean, the research starts from what we already believe and checks it outward against the market. Killing a hypothesis is as valuable as confirming one.
There is no viable position below DETERMINANT's current tier. HOW WE TEST · Tier margins and unit economics.
The winning band sits above the D2C players and below lifestyle luxury, and it demands meaningfully more marketing. HOW WE TEST · What comparable brands at each tier actually spend: listed-company marketing ratios, benchmark ranges, observed brand investment.
A GBA-focused strategy leaves less money on the table than spreading across China. HOW WE TEST · Market level: which brands win in GBA versus the rest of China, combined with our own regional sales data.
The category's growth is in the performance-formal crossover, and DETERMINANT can capture part of it without becoming a casual brand. HOW WE TEST · Formality read against growth across the map. Industry prior: China sportswear grew 9 percent in 2025 while wider apparel stayed muted.
The four workstreams combine into one full market picture in August. No recommendation is attached at this stage; the positioning choice comes after we can all see the same market.
Price stays on the horizontal axis in the first three views, because every question we have asked is "at a given price tier, what else is true." Growth shows in the fill: blue growing, grey stable, outline fading.
How much marketing each tier demands. The core question, drawn.
Where Lululemon and performance-formal eat the middle, and where smart menswear white space sits.
Expensive brands play offline; Tmall data alone misses them. Filtered GBA versus rest of China, this becomes the geography answer.
Who converts spend into momentum, who spends big and still fades. This view nominates the deep-dive brands.
What we record for every brand on the map: core shirt price, entry price, tier, brand-investment score, formality, offline share, growth, regional presence, business model, segment, and scale. A deliberately short list so we can cover the whole landscape fast; deep-dive brands get the full treatment.
| Source | What it tells us |
|---|---|
| Tmall / Taobao data (with Ken) | Online prices and volumes; which brands are shifting their assortment upmarket, tracked by price bracket |
| Mall walks across the border | The offline brand landscape that never shows up online; store experience; ground truth. Planned as a GBA city plus Shanghai, so the geography comparison has both sides |
| AI consumer panels | Who buys at each tier, what younger customers want; fast persona signal, checked against the walks |
| Listed-company reports (Anta, Li-Ning, Bosideng, Samsonite, Giordano) | Real marketing spend as a share of revenue, by tier; the hard version of "how much marketing does that tier require" |
| Our own data + the team | Regional and channel sales, current price architecture; competitor lists and market instincts from Keith, Clement, Kevin and Sting; the wool pricing study |
Project Collar (2023) stays as the before picture. Refreshing its market sizing with current data will show exactly how much the landscape has moved, which is itself a finding.
The rule for inclusion: a brand goes on the map if a target DETERMINANT customer would realistically cross-shop it, in our category or adjacent to it. Dashed chips carry older data and will be refreshed.
I will enrich the list from here: consulting Keith, Clement, Kevin and Sting for their nominations, desktop research across Tmall and social platforms, and whatever the mall walks surface.
The map has to be in service before the plan is written, so the schedule runs backwards from August.