Original : Zuizui
Source: Vista Hydrogen Commercial
UGG has brought ugly shoes to a new height.
Either the bottom is thicker and thicker, the new version of the shorty Le Champion is hard to convince without mini snow boots;
These two snow boots launched in September have somehow become the favorite of fashion people.
is represented by the sister group of Kendou, Hailey, and GiGi. They wear white socks and yoga pants. People are very worried, will these two pairs of ugly shoes wear sparks.
Insgream Naturally, many Internet celebrities cannot lag behind, as if anyone who does not own UGG's new ugly shoes this autumn will be expelled from the trendy hometown.
Of course, the competitive Chinese girls cannot lose. In fact, they worked even harder. In order to grow the 5 cm taller, they even gave up the annual Taobao 300 minus 50, just to pick up the full price of this pair of thick-soled grandma shoes , which are only available in offline stores.
So What is the magic of ugly and expensive UGG, why can it make young people so obsessed?
Even the name means ugly
How much effort does it take to make a pair of ugly shoes look beautiful?
Just look at the two new thick-soled grandma shoes from UGG, and they can appear in any trend that is popular today.
sporty. It doesn't matter how beautiful the shoes on 's feet are, but they must be niche and expensive. Pairing them with Lululemon's yoga pants can not only get rid of a train of budget-conscious Double 11 girls in terms of money, but also secretly flaunt themselves Its aesthetics directly poke the heart of middle-class young people.
preppy. is wearing a large heavy industry baseball uniform on his upper body, white washed jeans on his lower body, UGG thick-soled grandma shoes and alien sunglasses. There is a tacit understanding, walking on the street seems to say, "I'm super cool, look at me."
Image source Xiaohongshu account @CHI177
American retro style. bare legs, put on white socks, and match it with a short skirt and a short sweater with a leaky waist. This autumn version of Y2K Spice Girls has a new look.
The source of the picture is Xiaohongshu account @CHI177
and the trend of not wearing clothes well, and trendy people don’t go out in winter or are not afraid of freezing wind.
However, no matter how trendy people pursue it, it cannot be denied that UGG is really ugly, or at least not elegant enough to put it so harshly. Every time I see it, I always think of Dobby in "Harry Potter", UGG and his shoes are somewhat ingeniously similar.
Even in the millennium when UGG just became popular, people did not hide their condemnation of UGG. In 2003, The Independent said, "UGGs aren't sexy unless you're Mrs. Bigfoot, or Mr. Bigfoot planning to cross Antarctica alone." (No discrimination against Bigfoot here)
2015, Dress Up In London, England, the "first shot of resistance" was sounded, and a coffee shop in Brick Lane, East London, directly banned people who wore UGG from entering. This coffee shop called UGG "boots from soil to slag".
Back to the beginning, at the beginning of UGG birth, the combination of these three letters originally meant ugly .
Around 1920, in order to keep their feet warm, Australian shearers trimmed lambskin into a pair of rough shoes by taking materials directly from their side. Because of its clumsy appearance, workers directly called it "Shearers&39; Ugly Boots", which translates to the ugly boots of shearers, and was later shortened to "UGG Boots" .
At that time, UGG was not pronounced directly in the form of English letters, but was pronounced as "Ah Ger"; in terms of brand, it was not even a brand, but made of a whole piece of sheepskin. Boots are a general term for snow boots, or just a type of boots.
A hundred years ago, people in the southern hemisphere would pay attention to this kind of shoes just because of its outstanding warmth retention. Therefore, UGG has been used by the Australian Air Force since then as special military boots and .
The snow boots we are talking about now often refer to the American brand "UGG australia".
The brand's founder, Brian Smith, noted in his book "The Birth of a Brand: Unleash Your Entrepreneurial Passion and Soul" that by the time he was a teenager, these round-toed brown boots were already common in Australia , people can buy it at gas stations for only $12.
is the same as at the beginning of its birth. At this time, UGG is popular because of its functionality. Young men and women surf wear them after surfing at Broulee Beach on the NSW south coast, and their feet are dry in just 10 minutes. In 1979, the youth from Australia brought UGG to the United States and created the UGG australia brand. At first, he tried to sell the shoe to the shoe store, but kept hitting a wall, "Selling sheepskin in California ? Are you crazy".
Therefore, even at the beginning of the establishment of the brand, the target users of UGG are young people who love sports. Until the mid-'80s, UGG was a niche business, largely viewed as a California eccentricity.
UGG's first breakthrough came in 1994, when the national newspaper " USA Today " published a photo of Pamela Anderson (Pamela Anderson) on the set of Baywatch, wearing standard red swimsuit and a pair of UGG boots.
Pamela Anderson
Because of this photo, people began to know that there is such an ugly shoe.
In October of the same year, the "New York Times" published a short article introducing UGG, calling them "the most popular footwear on the west coast of the United States" at that time. So far, UGG has opened the era of unifying the world of ugly shoes .
Because in 1995, Smith sold shares of the company to Deckers (Deckers), an outdoor sports company. Deckers has registered the UGG trademark in more than 100 countries, and other brands containing the word "UGG" are not allowed. Access to the market in the country where Deckers is incorporated. This approach of
is both domineering and clever. Deckers seized the market opportunity and angered the Australian manufacturers. After all, why should an American take away the rights of the country of origin?
As a result, these manufacturers living in Australia jointly established the UGG Snow Boots Association, claiming that Australia is the country of origin of UGG, UGG should be changed into a generic name, and Deckers was taken to court.
Although only the Australian court ruled that UGG is a generic name, the farce across the ocean quickly spread, and people in other parts of the world suddenly knew , "Oh, so winter boots can still look like this " , and curious, is it worth arguing like this for a pair of ugly shoes?
However, so far, UGG has not been popular enough to be noticed by fashion circles and trendy people .
Breaking the "U.S. service"
Canadian journalist Malcolm T. Gladwell in his book "Tipping Point" (Tipping Point) introduces three ways how to make a product trend : the law of individual characters, the factor of adhesion and the law of environmental power .
I don’t know if the executives of Deckers have read this book, but coincidentally, following the path proposed by Gladwell, UGG has achieved the transformation from "the ugliest in history" to "the trendiest in history" A stunning reversal of . After
entered the millennium, perhaps because of the sweetness of Pamela Anderson’s photos, Deckers Company began to realize the extraordinary influence of Hollywood stars. Therefore, since then, UGG has started a star strategy and began to Celebrities present snow boots, so that UGG frequently appears in the public's sight, which is the "rule of individual characters", giving full play to the cultural effect of Hollywood celebrities.
Although such an approach is not trendy now, after all, brands willing to send shoes to the GIGI supermodel sister group may really be able to line up in Paris, France, and they show thick-soled grandma shoes on the street every day, which must be the brand presented by the party.
But 20 years ago, Deckers still had great feedback.
At that time, Oprah Winfrey (Oprah Winfrey), the queen of American talk shows, not only put on the shoes directly after receiving the shoes, but also appeared on the talk show " Oprah Talk Show" with the highest ratings in American history. UGG was grandly introduced on the "Favorite Things" unit.
Oprah’s recommendation on UGG
In Winfrey’s enthusiastic selling, UGG quickly became popular. Soon, this trend from Hollywood swept the world. Celebrities such as Paris Hilton, Kate Moss, Oprah Winfrey stepped out of the classic style Classic Boot, making UGG not only a "new star" in the entertainment circle, but also directly Walking into the shoe cabinets of thousands of ordinary girls, those girls who initially thought it was ugly also began to buy it.
In 2003, this pair of ordinary-looking fur boots began to appear in Milan and New York Fashion Week , successfully prying open the door of the fashion circle. UGG was directly named the 2003 Brand of the Year by Footwear News, an authoritative magazine in the industry, for its two new colors of baby blue and baby pink snow boots. Leah Larson, vice president and creative director of
UGG, believes that the sudden explosion of UGG in 2003 is also related to the development of women's liberalism at that time. "It seems that suddenly, girls are allowed to wear pajamas. Going out with slippers.
That year, UGG sales jumped to $25 million (Larson thinks it was actually closer to $40 million), “Since then, we started getting orders from celebrities. Sarah Jessica Parker asked us to make her a pair of ruby-colored snow boots, and she wore them in Sex and the City, arguing with Big. "
Since then, Hollywood stars have become even more fanatical about UGG. Just like today’s Insgream would be expelled from trendy status if they don’t wear thick-soled grandma shoes. At that time, stars who didn’t have a pair of UGGs would probably be considered not popular enough.
In 2004, Kate Hudson (Kate Hudson) wore her custom-made UGG while filming the 2004 movie "Raising Helen"; A pair of UGGs also appeared at the music festival .
At the same time, UGG also played hunger marketing , joined hands with Nordstrom, a large American department store chain, and announced that each American family is only allowed to buy 4 pairs of UGGs at Nordstrom. Do you want to come and line up quickly.
and lead the topic , "Who is wearing UGG", "How to wear UGG", etc., using tabloids and magazines to spread photos of celebrities wearing UGG, and constantly brainwashing the public. UGG is beautiful and trendy, don’t you believe it? Look at those Hollywood stars.
Under such marketing operations, UGG’s compound growth rate during 2002-2005 was as high as 65.5%, completing the brand’s first counterattack. At the same time, UGG began to continuously develop new styles and wear scenes, trying to expand brand diversification. In 2002, UGG product categories were only 50, and in 2007 increased to 125. In the next few years, it also maintained 20 per year. % growth rate.
Soon, this trend from the west will blow to Asia, and set off a unique trend in the Chinese fashion circle. Nix, the global marketing director of UGG womenEricsson believes that UGG at that time represented a Western lifestyle in Asia. "Wearing UGG means you have status and money. It is a status symbol to a large extent."
Therefore, from China and Japan Consumers flocked to the UGG store in Honolulu, USA, helping the store become the UGG store with the highest sales in the world.
However, the relationship between UGG and China is not only about bustling hipsters .
As a world-renowned manufacturing power, it is not surprising that China can win UGG OEM. Although UGG australia is an American brand and the material is Australian sheepskin, most of its finished products are still Made in China, and they all come from 's foundry in Mengzhou, Henan.
and China’s small and medium-sized factories represented by Yiwu quickly lowered the price of UGG, making UGG-like snow boots with 99.999% similarity in appearance instantly went to the land of China at a low price. Pants with snow boots and suits with snow boots have become the trend memory of a generation .
In China, UGG has many similar and cheap alternatives
But around 2012, the flood of fakes and overexposure mainly caused UGG brand power to decline sharply, and snow Z boots were once chased by z2 Fast fashion brands kicked out of the list of design and development products, and consumers' preferences have also shifted to products such as Martin boots, knight boots, and .
Consumers don’t like this ugly shoe anymore .
Until 2021, UGG revived the rivers and lakes, and launched the 2021 new spring and summer plush sandal series. The plush material also added bright colors, spots, tie-dye and other trendy elements, and instantly won the feet of many stars at home and abroad. This seems to reproduce the star effect of the year.
wears fur slippers in summer and hole shoes in winter, and UGG pulls Cross to make a bloody way in out-of-season outfits. Of course, both are quite ugly.
" Guardian " believes that UGG, like jeans, violates the normal law of gravity in the fashion circle.
Then why can UGG break the law of fashion and become a long-term trendy product in the hearts of consumers?
Deckers Insight Strategy Development Director Anders Bergstrom (Anders Bergstrom) explained this is that Deckers is trying to break the single impression of boots, and hopes that UGG will become a way of life, "When people talk about UGG , can be associated with luxurious warmth and comfort, UGG is not only a pair of shoes, but also can bring a sense of security to consumers."
This may be the reason why UGG fans are so obsessed with it: UGG broke the harsh rules of the fashion industry .
Working women don’t have to wear high heels that squeeze their toes out of shape, nor do they have to wear full makeup to be the most suitable workplace etiquette.
Perhaps from the beginning of accepting the comfort of UGG, the white-collar women sitting in the grid can be upright and frank, and no longer "serve in the United States".
Of course aesthetics is always free and autonomous.
Whether it was the "Shearers&39; Ugly" on the first woolen worker's feetBoots” are thick-soled grandma shoes that are highly sought after by trendy people. Some people like to be discussed.
After all, until today, UGG products are still in two extremes in the eyes of most consumers. Many consumers like them, and some consumers swore never to wear them .
