SHANGHAI “”mdash; Though images of Royce Quad and a Bruin football squad adorn the walls, the clothing sold here is unlike what students are used to finding when they stroll into Ackerman Union.
Instead of T-shirts, hoodies and athletic gear emblazoned with the letters “UCLA,” customers are greeted with an array of sleek black blazers, short- and long-sleeved polo shirts and button-downs with starchy collars.
A navy sweater with an argyle pattern offered for about $85 features a discreet tab on its bottom-left side bearing the letters “UCLA.”
At boutiques and specialty counters in China, UCLA apparel is meant to represent a style dubbed “smart casual,” a marketing decision that capitalizes on an idealized vision of a relaxed Southern California lifestyle and American intellectualism.
By the end of 2008, there will be about 100 locations in China selling the UCLA brand, said Wade Chen, director of licensing and consumer products for Interasia and Associates.
Interasia is the licensing agent that holds the rights to solicit business for UCLA in all Asian territories, excluding Japan and Korea.
Chen said the revenue for the stores, which are owned and operated by U’s Industrial Development, is about $4 million annually.
UCLA receives a royalty rate from U’s Industrial set at 7 percent of the wholesale price of the goods; last year that amounted to $151,000, according to Cynthia Holmes, the director of trademarks and licensing for Associated Students UCLA.
Banking on a lifestyle
Although the UC Board of Regents owns all trademarks for the University of California, “ASUCLA is delegated authority by the chancellor to manage the commercial use of the university’s name,” Holmes said.
Last year, the total royalty income that ASUCLA received from international licensing was $543,000 ““ $285,000 of which was from Asian markets.
According to Holmes, that income is used to manage the licensing program, including legal, marketing and administrative expenses.
Income from domestic licensing, which reached $1.3 million last year, is shared with UCLA Athletics, since the teams’ performance has a direct impact on sales performance, she said. The net revenue after those expenses is retained by ASUCLA to fulfill its student service mission.
The UCLA label’s success in China, Holmes said, is a combination of a “Pacific Rim commonality” that has helped UCLA in Asian markets since the university began marketing in Japan 30 years ago, and the idea of a Southern Californian lifestyle.
“There’s sort of a universal appeal. Not everyone knows about the smog and the fires and the earthquakes,” Holmes said with a laugh.
Along with the university’s academic reputation, UCLA boasts a unique acronym, she said.
“There’s more than one USC, there’s more than one OSU, but there’s only one UCLA. And we’re really known more by “˜UCLA’ than by the full name.”
Because of the size of the licensing program, ASUCLA relies on firms such as Interasia and Associates to manage interactions between the university and licensees.
Interasia represents more than 200 different clients, including three schools: UCLA and the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge.
Chen said the firm works to ensure that all parties are satisfied with the products being offered; though the look of the UCLA line marketed in China is vastly different from the clothing sold in the United States, all of the products go through approval from UCLA, through Holmes’ trademark and licensing office.
That process ensures that brands, copyrights and logos are being produced correctly and will have no negative impact on the school, Chen said.
“Anything that’s out there that you can see, that the public can see, that’s gone through approval with the school.”
Staying on message
To ensure consistent advertising and the portrayal of a “UCLA lifestyle,” there has to be a lot of communication between U’s Industrial, Interasia and UCLA, Chen said.
“If there wasn’t, the store would be very interesting. Most people at U’s haven’t been to the school, and they don’t understand the lifestyle,” he said.
“(UCLA) provides a lot of support with images of the school: They have the UCLA magazine, they provide catalogs. … That’s how they make sure that everything matches UCLA, the school, what they represent.”
Without such guidance, Chen said, the brand’s advertising might include images of New York and Las Vegas, juxtaposed with pictures of the Golden Gate Bridge, instead of focusing on Southern California and the UCLA campus.
“They would take a mishmash of whatever they could find that is culturally American.”
Part of the appeal to an idea of cultural Americanism includes piping music with English lyrics through the sound systems.
At the Shenzhen Coastal City Mall on a Wednesday night, the playlist includes Enrique Iglesias’ “Hero” and the Backstreet Boys’ “I Want It That Way,” as well as a song that mixed Korean and English rap, with lyrics such as “Let’s do it, do it, do it like this,” over a techno sample of Mozart’s Symphony No. 40.
(Wang Yang, a sales clerk at that location, said the regional manager allows them to choose the music to play, so she and her co-workers go online to download tracks they like.)
The marketing of a Southern Californian lifestyle also includes using models of different ethnicities in store displays and advertising.
The catalog for the summer 2008 line, which Chen said was a collaboration between UCLA and U’s Industrial, has only white models.
Instead, the 32-page booklet features American and vaguely European-looking men posing in a studio, chatting on the Kerckhoff patio, resting against the pillars of Royce Hall.
“Typically, most of the foreign brands will use a foreign model. China still sees foreign brands as having higher quality, and UCLA is known as a U.S. brand,” Chen said. “When they think of the U.S., they think of more non-Asian people.”
Still, some catalogs available in the UCLA shops also feature Chinese models. “It’s still a brand, so you have to show that you understand the local culture,” Chen said.
The store clerks have some basic training with background information about the school, Chen said, but consumers’ questions generally are focused on how old the brand is and where it’s from, rather than the history of the university.
Guo Jingfang, a sales clerk from Jiangsu who works at the Bailan Zhong Huan location, said she had not heard of UCLA before she began working for the store.
Guo said some customers have not heard of the university, but others recognize the acronym and stop in.
“They admire UCLA, so when they see the name, they’re very curious,” she said. She recalled a male customer who bought an expensive white jacket as a souvenir that he did not intend to wear.
When asked what her impression of UCLA as a university was, she responded simply, “It was founded in 1919.”
From sporty to “˜smart casual’
Although about 300 licensees work with UCLA in the domestic market, licensees abroad typically have exclusive rights for the countries they market in, Holmes said.
“Typically, the school will dictate the general direction a brand goes in,” Chen said, but individual licensees contribute expertise about local markets.
U’s Industrial, which has exclusive rights to market UCLA products in China, approached Interasia about five or six years ago, Chen said.
“U’s was looking for a brand to develop; then they approached us and we suggested UCLA,” he said. “We made a presentation about what they could do with it, and they liked it.”
But the brand was not immediately successful in China, Chen said.
“When they first started, they tried to go purely with the sports line. (U’s Industrial) implanted what you see at the UCLA store to China, but it had some issues. It didn’t work as well.”
The original 15 stores couldn’t compete in athletic wear because Nike and Adidas already dominated the market.
“But they found a niche that makes more sense with UCLA and the academic image of the school,” Chen said, adding that advertising incorporates “urban images from Westwood” to reinforce the correlation between the apparel and a specific lifestyle.
“Chinese university students from better schools will have heard of UCLA. Foreign customers are also likely to have heard of it,” said Zhen Xueyan, who works at Shanghai’s Bailan Zhong Huan store.
And though fewer Chinese shoppers have heard of the university, she said, they make up the majority of the customer base.
Now, the brand has evolved into what U’s Industrial and Interasia refer to as “smart casual,” which accounts for about 70 percent of apparel, with the remaining 30 percent having a “sporty” theme.
“When I say “˜sporty,’ I’m not talking sweatpants. They won’t do that because it’s too far from the image they’ve developed in China already,” Chen said. The sportier clothes in China’s UCLA line include T-shirts, casual pants and jackets.
And in autumn and winter, the brand focuses more on coats and heavier jackets than sportswear.
The brand’s development has attracted a base of clients who can earn rewards through a VIP points system when they make purchases.
The smart casual look also seems to draw sales clerks. Chen Li Hua liked the style of the UCLA brand, so she left another chain to work at the Shenzhen Zhongxing location.
“The clothes were just not as good,” Chen said of her previous job. “The patterns were too busy; this is more simple.”
Chen buys UCLA apparel for her father and said that she often helps women who are shopping for husbands and boyfriends. On a good day, she said, the boutique pulls in 30,000 yuan, or about $4,400.
Expanding the brand
As much as the label strives to portray a specific lifestyle, customers are drawn to the shops as much for the clothing displays as the images of UCLA’s campus.
Shi Wanting, who browsed the Coastal City location for half an hour, said she often shops for her husband and male relatives. After thumbing through racks of collared shirts, she settled on a shirt she liked and put it on hold for her husband to try on over the weekend.
For Shi, the boutique was just one more shop in the bustling department store.
“I didn’t know what UCLA was, and I hadn’t heard of it, but I liked the clothes,” she said.
The development of the smart casual and urban casual looks has boosted business for U’s Industrial, Chen said. “About two years ago, they only had about 40 (stores), so they pretty much doubled in the last few years.”
He said stores in China’s larger cities ““ Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen and Guangzhou ““ fare better because residents there have more expendable income.
In addition to the new locations, Interasia “will look for other categories that we can license out for UCLA,” Chen said. Currently, U’s Industrial focuses mainly on apparel, including full business suits and high-end loafers.
But in stores in Shanghai, Shenzhen and Beijing, wall displays also feature small stuffed bears, belts, socks and a few baseball hats, though the selection is limited. Chen said that in most markets, licensees will start selling small hard goods after a few years of focusing on apparel.
License holders in other countries in Asia might also source from China, meaning that U’s Industrial can sell some of the products it has developed in other markets, through the exclusive license holders in those countries.
Holmes often facilitates such deals by introducing licensees to each other’s products.
“Typically the licensees are willing to work with each other,” Chen said, which may explain why the paper UCLA cups produced by U’s Industrial ““ store clerks are eager to offer customers or reporters water ““ are stamped with a list of cities both in and out of China: Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Shanghai, Beijing, L.A., Tokyo, Seoul and Paris.
“You try to expand (the brand) as much as possible, as long as it’s reasonable ““ you don’t want to overextend it. But typically we’ll try to expand,” Chen said. “It’s good for the brand image.”
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