Sunscreen Clothing Industry Needs To Improve Transparency And Standardization

On April 7, iResearch, together with the lightweight outdoor lifestyle brand Jiaoxia, released the White Paper on China's Sunscreen Clothing Industry Standards (hereinafter referred to as the White Paper). The White Paper pointed out that in recent years, sunscreen clothing has been relatively popular, but with the asymmetry of supply and demand in the market and the opacity of information, there is a risk of consumer rights being infringed, which also affects the credibility of the sunscreen clothing industry. Therefore, the sunscreen clothing market needs further regulation and supervision to ensure the healthy and sustainable development of the industry.

Strong demand and fierce competition

The White Paper adopts a combination of industry research, expert interviews and user questionnaires, and selects sunscreen users from all over the country for questionnaire research.

The inspiration of modern sun protection clothes came from foreign skin windbreaker/windbreaker. After 2007, the domestic brand Jiaoxia upgraded it and created a modern sunscreen clothing, but at that time, sunscreen clothing was still focused on the consumption needs of women. In the following years, with the establishment of consumers' awareness of sunscreen and the enrichment of sunscreen consumption scenarios, consumers' demand for sunscreen has grown rapidly, and the consumer group has also continued to expand, with men and children growing rapidly. In the past two years, sunscreen clothing has been relatively popular. The market has changed from supply side to demand side. The market size has also been growing steadily, followed by more intense competition.

The White Paper shows that under the current consumption background, the rapid development of sunscreen clothing market benefits from multiple factors. The enhancement of users' awareness of sunscreen, the increase of lightweight outdoor activities, the diversification of wearing scenes, the integration of sunscreen and fashion, and the promotion of scientific and technological innovation have injected new vitality into the development of the sunscreen clothing market and jointly boosted market growth.

Sunscreen clothing is an important type of sunscreen clothing market. The White Paper shows that sunscreen clothing has become an important part of the sunscreen clothing market with a market share of more than 50%. It is predicted that the size of China's national defense clothing market will reach 55.4 billion yuan in 2026.

At present, the sunscreen clothing market presents a diversified competitive situation, forming a pattern of six mainstream types of competition: outdoor lifestyle brands, online red/e-commerce white brand brands, vertical sunscreen brands, traditional outdoor brands, sports brands, and regular clothing brands.

Consumers have formed an all-round dependence on sunscreen clothing and have high expectations for the sunscreen clothing industry. Based on the real needs of different weather, body feeling, functions and scenes, users hope that the sunscreen clothes can not only fully meet their functional needs for sunscreen, sunburn and other aspects, but also meet their needs for breathability, portability, cool and other body feelings, and hope to provide all-round protection and comfortable wearing experience.

The White Paper shows that at present, users' demand for sunscreen clothes should be more diversified, and only sunscreen functions can no longer meet users' needs. The White Paper shows that 70.6% of the respondents believe that the performance of sunscreen clothing should be more diversified, rather than just focusing on sunscreen. In addition, 63.6% of consumers also hope that the sunscreen clothes can have better skin affinity, more comfortable to wear for a long time, more fashionable in style, and more and more close to the regular clothes, which reflects that consumers have more diverse needs for sunscreen clothes, and hope that sunscreen clothes can participate more in daily life. In terms of performance, in addition to sunscreen power, air permeability, UV barrier power, sunscreen durability and other indicators have become more concerned by users.

Lack of standards and confusion

The White Paper shows that the sunscreen clothing market has not yet established a perfect standard system, and most brands do not disclose the standards and values of sunscreen clothing, but use perceptual words instead of values. From the data of brand disclosure, most brands have done well in UPF value, UV barrier rate and cooling sensation coefficient. Some brands, such as Jiaoxia, have achieved six standards and values of openness and transparency. They believe that a qualified sunscreen garment needs to meet consumers' requirements in six dimensions, namely UPF value, UV barrier rate, cooling sensation coefficient, air permeability, washability and weight Body feeling, function and needs in the scene.

According to the analysis of the White Paper, there are three major disturbances in the industry at present:

The first is the lack of standardization and the substitution of numerical concepts. According to the survey, UPF is the sun protection standard formulated by the state for textiles, which is used to evaluate the protection ability of textiles against ultraviolet rays. Some brands mislead consumers with UP ⁃ FAV, leading consumers to mistakenly believe that the sun protection ability of products is better. In fact, UPF and UPFAV are both indexes in the UV protection test, but they have essential differences. The former represents the lowest value of the test sample, and the latter represents the average value of the test sample. In other words, the use of UP ⁃ FAV to measure the sun protection ability of a product may not be accurate, and there is a false high risk.

The second is the lack of test reports, especially for core functions. At present, the lack of test reports on the core functions of sunscreen clothing products is common, especially in the original yarn sunscreen technology. Some brands claimed that their products used original yarn for sunscreen, but they did not provide laboratory test reports. Only products that pass the washing resistance test and meet the standards can ensure the authenticity and reliability of their original yarn sunscreen effect. If the original yarn technology is indeed used in the product, the washing resistance test must be carried out, and at least the corresponding report must be presented on the product introduction page. For example, based on the standard of GB/T8629-2017 washing procedure 4N, continuous washing for 30 times and oven drying, the product can only be proved to have the original yarn sunscreen technology if it passes the test. In addition, many products on the market only describe "breathable", "light" and "cool at touch" by words, but no report is provided.

Third, some products emphasize single capability, while other data are not transparent and open. Some sunscreen brands on the market are too focused on the perfection of single function. For example, they pay too much attention to cool technology, which may lead to poor wearing experience of consumers, and even pose potential risks to health. Moreover, the overemphasis on single function does not match with today's consumers' demand for diversified products. In addition, the product function data of many brands are not disclosed, which has caused problems for consumers to choose, and has also weakened the transparency of brands and user trust.

The market for purchasing pain points needs to be standardized

The White Paper shows that at present, consumers' consumption links have become longer, problem points have frequently occurred, and there are still many failed purchase experiences. Due to the diversity of users' demands for the functions of sunscreen clothing, more performance needs to be measured, but at present, there is a lack of a unified and quantifiable measurement standard to assist users in decision-making, which leads to a longer decision-making process for users. Consumers need to spend more time looking for evaluation and evaluation before they can be selected. Even after doing the previous homework, it is still difficult to make a specific quantitative comparison because of the different degrees of openness of various brands to the performance indicators of sunscreen clothing, or because the information provided is limited to some perceptual descriptions.

The survey found that 71% of users believed that in addition to sunscreen, they also need to take into account comprehensive performance such as sweat wicking; 66% of users think that the current product introductions are mostly emotional descriptions, lacking quantitative numerical references; 56.2% of consumers said that "in addition to sunscreen, other properties (such as air permeability, cool feeling) cannot be compared quantitatively"; 46.7% of consumers think that "many product performance only has perceptual description, without quantitative numerical auxiliary judgment"; 48% of users think that the concept of sunscreen clothing industry is complicated, the understanding cost is high, and it is easy to be confused; 33% of users believe that it is difficult to judge the pros and cons of sunscreen clothes at the price of 100 yuan and 200 yuan.

The White Paper pointed out that the root cause of these problems was the lack of norms and uniform standards in the sun protection clothing industry, which led some brands to play a marginal role, mislead consumers and disrupt the market order. In order to ensure the sustainable development of the industry, we call on all parties to work together to develop standardized industry standards.

Yang Junli, an expert in the consumer industry of iResearch Digital Intelligence, believes that at present, the roles of the supply and demand sides of sunscreen clothing have changed, and the importance of user demand to drive market development is becoming increasingly obvious, so the supply side is more responsible for building a more standardized and orderly consumption environment. In this way, it can not only help consumers make decisions and be responsible for their health, It is also beneficial to the sustainable development of the sunscreen clothing industry. (Reporter Meng Gang)

(Source: China Consumer News)