On February 15 this year, the fast fashion brand La Chapelle, once known as the "Chinese version of ZARA", once again issued a risk warning. It is expected that the net assets will be negative in 2021, and the company's shares may be terminated by the Shanghai Stock Exchange.
From H&M, ZARA, to Metersbonwe, Iger, vera moda, Baijiahao, La Chapelle, whether it is European and American, Korean, Japanese, or local brands, fast fashion brands of various styles and price points, why more Is it getting harder to win the favor of consumers?
The decline of domestic brands
Everything starts with a leaderboard. Some time ago, Euromonitor data released the top ten brands in China's apparel market in 2020. Uniqlo ranked first with a market share of 1.6%, which is not too surprising. However, it was followed by Semir, which had a deep-rooted "earth flavor" label and was suspected to have closed down in many people's concepts. Netizens were shocked: "I thought Semir was dead, but it did!"
During the epidemic, Semir clothing was indeed struggling. Throughout 2020, Semir closed a total of 2,796 stores, an exaggerated number, including 760 directly-operated stores, 1,762 franchise stores, and 274 associate stores.
One is Metersbonwe and the other is Semir, the casual wear "Gemini" from Wenzhou. These two brothers and sisters quickly became the "earth taste" abandoned by the market after they entered ZARA, GAP and other foreign fast fashion brands. ". Smith Barney launched "Youfan" later in an attempt to build its own retail ecosystem, but it was unable to avoid falling into a business dilemma.
Losses are normal for Smith Barney. In August 2008, Smith Barney Apparel was listed on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange, becoming "the first domestic casual clothing stock".
In the year of 2020, Smith Barney's revenue has been shrinking year by year, and its losses have also increased.
As for the number of stores, Smith Barney no longer announced it as early as 2017. Judging from the previously released data, from 2013 to 2016, the number of Smith Barney's stores decreased from more than 5,200 to more than 3,900.
How to travel through cycles
Industry insiders have observed that the golden development period of Zara and H&M in China basically started from 2011 to 2013. At the same time, brands such as Forever 21 and Topshop also entered the Chinese market strongly during this period.
This period is also a period of rapid expansion of domestic commercial real estate. Almost every shopping center has H&M and ZARA on the first floor, and the store area is not small.
In 2013, H&M opened a flagship store in Wangfujing, Beijing, with an area of 1,100 square meters. The original site of this store was the Nike flagship store.
Cache Cache, does anyone know about it?
It has been in China for 17 years, and there are only 550 stores before the sale, which is nearly half of the peak. In the past five years, traffic to its stores in China has dropped by 60%.
From entering China in 2007, to the time of sale, there were only 66 stores in 22 cities in China.
Fast fashion, as the name suggests, can only keep up with "fashion" if it is new and "fast".
It is understood that the average production cycle of fast fashion brands is 10 days, and the stores are updated at least once a week. In this industry, ZARA is a case that is often compared. It can achieve new products twice a week and about 12,000 new models per year.
At 11 o'clock in the middle of the night, the lights of the jeans factory in Xintang Town, Guangdong Province were full of lights. The whitening workers skillfully sprayed bleach on the jeans. After finishing the scratches, they earned 30 cents.
This pair of pants is likely to be hanging in your downtown Zara store, with a tag price of 259 yuan, and you will still buy it.
What is fast is not fashion, it is hierarchy.
La Chapelle issues risk warnin
