By HUANG Shan

In late September, fashion house Carven opened its fourth and fifth stores in China. The new Shanghai outlet was followed a few days later by another in Beijing. After two quiet years since its acquisition by China’s Icicle, the formerly French brand seems to be finally stepping up to the challenges of the Chinese market.

If Icicle's relaunch of Carven works out it will be one of the first Chinese fashion brands to shift from trend follower to leader. It’s not going to be easy to jump aboard the fast-moving fashion carousel while juggling creativity, affordability, and sustainability in front of some of the finickiest consumers in the world.

Paris match

The 4.2 million Euro (33 million yuan, US$4.9 million) acquisition in 2018 saved Carven from liquidation. The plan then was to rejuvenate the brand by “relaunching and redeploying” it in France, China, and elsewhere, but Icicle’s progress was glacial. Contrary to rumors that 33 new stores were to open in China within three years, only three had actually opened their doors to customers before the recent Shanghai splash. Shawna Tao, the co-founder of Icicle and Craven’s current CEO, called the decision “sensical.”

“Carven first needs to reconnoiter the Chinese market before going all out,” she explained.

Icicle has reassessed the Carven brand position and adjusted its creative strategy, retaining 72 of 73 employees, with creative director Serge Ruffieux the only head to roll. No successor has been appointed, and no Carven shows have been held in the past two years. A few collaborations with Icicle have appeared to no great fanfare, apparently to prevent Carven from dropping off the radar entirely.

Another task was to integrate Carven into Icicle’s supply chain. Having no factories or even a stable outsourcing relationship has always been a problem for Carven. Icicle runs its own factories.

Carven is widely seen as Icicle’s stepping stone into the overseas market. Little-known outside China, the company is under pressure to expand its international portfolio. Icicle first ventured outside the domestic market in 2013, when it purchased a palatial building at a prestigious Paris location as home for its design team and, after a lengthy renovation, a flagship store.

Chinese fashion brands crave places at the Haute-couture table and have long tinkered with their domestic brands through overseas acquisitions?with mixed success. After a few high-profile fallouts due to inadequate management, Chinese companies, including Icicle, have learned that they need a more hands-on approach after the initial money injection.

Icicle may be better positioned for this task than most. Instead of outsourcing its manufacturing, it runs its own factories and fulfills over 80 percent of its own manufacturing needs.?In 2013, Icicle acquired a factory in Haimen of Jiangsu Province with over twenty years of making coats for luxury brands such as?Max Mara. After seven years of making clothes for Icicle's?French market, it is now claimed to be up-to-speed with the needs of Carven.

“The factory is extraordinary,” Tao said. “We believe Carven will be very well-served by it.”

Its next step is to establish a distribution network overseas comparable to the one the company has in China, with both brick-and-mortar stores and e-commerce channels. The company believes the global supply chain helps it get a foothold in Europe and other big markets, including Japan.

Sustainable social values

Upgrading its image might be easier said than done. Marketing is Icicle’s Achilles’ heel. The company did not even have a PR department until recently.?For a long time, Icicle has been trying to shake its image as the “Max Mara of China”: Premium customers are happy to pay more for “the real deal.”

To distinguish itself from European competitors, even in China, Icicle has new marketing rhetoric that emphasizes its Asian origins. When talking up a 30,000-yuan wool coat, the salesperson in the Shanghai store seemed proud of the “Made in China” tag. She emphasized that the cut better fits Asian body types and claimed that many Max Mara fans had defected to Icicle for that very reason.

Nevertheless, the brand still needs to scale up its “sustainability” approach for the vast Chinese market and, equally importantly, tell a good story. Despite the hype, sustainable fashion has struggled to gain traction.

"Customers have no reason to buy a product simply because it's environmentally friendly. The priority, for Icicle, is to develop good, sustainable products at reasonable prices," Tao said.

As the company strives to inject social value in its designs, Tao admits that creative ideas alone are not so hard to come by: “Creativity that speaks to social values breathes life into a brand."

In this way, Icicle could be a long-lasting presence in the global fashion industry, bringing every step from manufacturing to retail in-house, and pivoting from pure apparel to lifestyle. The Shanghai store integrates fashion with dining, art, and a bookstore. The Paris store also sells home and leisure products alongside its fashion collections.