With the improvement of women’s professional level, the increasing independence of the economy, and the continuous improvement of clothing consumption capacity, women’s clothing has become the first major category in clothing consumption.
According to data from business consulting firm Frost & Sullivan, the overall size of China’s women’s wear market has exceeded 800 billion yuan, and it is expected that the scale of China’s women’s wear market will maintain stable growth in the future, with a market size of more than 1.7 trillion yuan in 2021.
As the earliest and most active clothing industry in China, the women’s wear industry has formed a relatively complete industrial chain, from product design, manufacturing to sales mode have reached a mature level, the market tends to be highly saturated. However, the influx of foreign fast fashion brands and designer brands has made this track more crowded.
Recently, the 2018 annual reports of various clothing brands have been announced, looking at the overall performance of women’s clothing listed companies in 2018, the gap between enterprises is gradually narrowing, and the competition in the women’s wear industry will become more fierce in the future.
“Lianshang.com” focuses on and selects nine domestic key women’s clothing listed companies, covering scale leaders to ladder followers, cutting in terms of revenue, net profit, channels, future plans, etc.
1. Comparison of revenue and net profit
The data shows that the performance of women’s listed companies in 2018 is mixed, but the overall trend is still upward.
From the perspective of revenue, among the 9 brands counted, in addition to La Chapelle, the remaining 8 listed women’s wear companies all achieved positive revenue growth, the highest revenue is La Chapelle, up to 10.176 billion yuan, followed by Vignas 3.09 billion yuan, Jiangnan Cloth 2.864 billion yuan. From the perspective of revenue growth, the highest is Jiangnan Cloth 22.80%, followed by high-end women’s clothing Vignas 20.30% and Golisi 18.66%.
From the perspective of net profit, in addition to La Chapelle and Daily Broadcast Fashion, the remaining 7 brands have achieved positive growth, and the top three are Disu Fashion, Jiangnan Cloth and Gelisi. The top three with the fastest increase in net profit in the same period were Vignas, Jiangnan Cloth and Gelisi, which reached 43.6%, 23.80% and 20.74% respectively.
It is worth noting that although La Chapelle won the first honor in revenue, it is also the only company among the 9 companies with negative revenue growth, and La Chapelle has seen its net profit decline for the first time, falling 132%, which has lagged behind other women’s clothing listed companies.
According to the data, La Chapelle landed on the A-share market in September 2017, and the company’s performance in 2018, the year after listing, suffered a loss. At the beginning of listing, it was enthusiastically sought after by capital and continued to rise and fall. Today, its total market value is only 4.35 billion yuan, almost half the previous high of 7.52 billion yuan. However, in the face of both sluggish performance and stock prices, La Chapelle said that it will continue to expand stores and the construction of smart stores, and in the capital winter of 2019, La Chapelle may face more cruel challenges and tests.
Second, the number of stores comparison
With the decline of department stores and the rise of shopping malls, major clothing brands have also accelerated channel changes and adjustments, presenting a different landscape in the speed of store expansion.
According to the annual report, as of the end of 2018, La Chapelle had a total of 9,269 directly-operated containers. However, in just three months after the start of 2019, La Chapelle closed 1,616 stores to 7,653, a net decrease of 1,887 from the end of March 2018, claiming to reduce “ineffective investment of resources”.
Interestingly, while La Chapelle closed its stores, it also opened 1,132 new stores in 2018, and most of these stores are still directly operated. It can be seen that La Chapelle is still “crazy” expanding its stores while closing stores. This mysterious model of “expanding the left hand and closing the store with the right hand” is somewhat incomprehensible, and it is unknown whether it can save La Chapelle from trouble.
IN ADDITION TO LA CHAPELLE, THE NUMBER OF VIRGINUS STORES ALSO DECREASED DURING THE REPORTING PERIOD, WITH A NET DECREASE OF 5.5% TO 153 OF THE GRASS BRAND STORES, A NET DECREASE OF 4.2% TO 1,232 OF TEENIEWEENIE-BRAND STORES, AND NO CHANGE IN THE NUMBER OF YUNJIN STORES. The number of stores of the remaining brands showed positive growth during the reporting period, with the largest increase being Jiangnan Cloth, with a net increase of 240 during the reporting period.
Third, online revenue comparison
With the development and penetration of e-commerce and the transformation of consumer consumption habits, the competition field of major brands has also spread from offline to online, and online channels have become an increasingly important arena for brands. On the whole, the online channel revenue of various women’s wear brands in 2018 increased significantly, and the proportion of total sales gradually increased.
Taking the above 9 major women’s wear brands as an example, from the perspective of growth, in addition to La Chapelle and Daily Broadcast Fashion, the growth rate of other brands has reached double digits, and Anzheng Fashion has reached 107.18%. In addition, although Langzi did not release specific data on online channels, it also mentioned in the annual report that the annual turnover of e-commerce women’s clothing increased by 117%.
In fact, online consumption plays an important role in people’s daily consumption today, and online channels have become an area that major brands cannot ignore. In the next step, how to further seize the attention of customers on major platforms is a question that these brands need to think about.
4. Create a multi-brand matrix The trend of collectivization is obvious
In the face of more and more segmented market demand, all women’s wear companies seem to have the same development goals and business actions, that is, to become a comprehensive “fashion group”, and in the future plan to continue to increase the multi-brand and multi-business layout, the trend of grouping is obvious.
FOR EXAMPLE, IN ORDER TO COOPERATE WITH ITS GROUP’S MULTI-BRAND EXPANSION STRATEGY, JIANGNAN CLOTH LAUNCHED A NEW FASHION ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION BRAND – REVERB AND ITS SECOND MEN’S WEAR BRAND – SAMO IN 2018, AND LAUNCHED A NEW MENSWEAR DESIGNER CLOTHING BRAND “A PERSONAL NOTE 73” IN FEBRUARY THIS YEAR.
Previously, Jiangnan Cloth has 8 brands, namely women’s JNBY, women’s less, men’s (sketch), Pomme de terre (Pombyhome), home JNBYHOME, men’s SAMO, designer brand collection store LASU MIN SOLA and sports and leisure REVERB.
Disu fashion currently has four clothing brands “DAZZLE”, “DIAMOND DAZZLE”, “d’zzit” and “RAZZLE”, and said in the annual report that it will continue to introduce new brands and businesses in the future, multi-brand development, the business scope may not only be limited to clothing, will cover the concept of big fashion, and will also consider extending category design on the basis of the original brand.
In addition to owning five offline fashion brands of “Jiuzi”, “Yin Mo”, “Anzheng”, “Finachen” and “Mossack”, Anzheng Fashion also acquired Shanghai Lishang Information Technology Co., Ltd., which mainly operates maternal and baby products, and began to enter the field of maternal and child products. At the same time, Anzheng Fashion also plans to lay out the field of fashion standards, including cosmetics (color cosmetics, skin care products), jewelry and other businesses.
At present, Langzi Co., Ltd. has four business segments, including fashion women’s clothing, green baby and children, fashion medical beauty, and asset management. IN THE WOMEN’S WEAR MARKET, THERE ARE CURRENTLY 4 INDEPENDENT BRANDS, NAMELY LANCY FROM 25, LIME FLARE, MARIEN°MARY, LIAALANCY, and a total of 4 agency brands, namely MOJO S.PHINE, JIGOTT, FABIANA FILIPPI, DEWL. In addition, Langzi women’s clothing also involves maternal and child products, medical beauty and other fields.
Still have to mention La Chapelle, its multi-brand strategy does not seem to have worked, and has not been able to curb the decline in performance. La Chapelle currently owns more than 20 brands such as LaChapelle, Puella, Candie’s, 7m and LaBabité, covering casual men’s and women’s clothing, designer brands, children’s clothing, etc. Although the company has many brands, from the data disclosed in the financial report, the company’s performance has been regressing in the past two years, because the sales of women’s wear brands La chapelle and Puella, which account for a relatively high proportion of revenue, fell by more than 10% year-on-year in 2018, while the growth of women’s wear brands Candies and children’s clothing and men’s wear brands has not been able to make up for the decline in La chapelle and Puella.
It can be seen that in the early stage of cultivating new brands, enterprises will experience a period of transformation pain. But if it is properly operated, the layout of the multi-brand matrix is expected to become a new growth point for enterprises.
Fifth, strive to be the head enterprise The competition in the women’s wear industry has become more intense
Looking at the operating performance of these 9 women’s clothing listed companies, the net profit of 6 women’s wear companies such as Vignas, Jiangnan Cloth, Langzi, Kelatier, Gelisi and Disu Fashion in 2018 showed double-digit high growth, especially the newly listed Disu Fashion, although the overall revenue was only 2.1 billion yuan, but the net profit was as high as 574 million yuan, becoming the most profitable of these nine companies.
However, from the perspective of revenue scale, in addition to La Chapelle more than 10 billion yuan, most of the rest of the women’s clothing companies are hovering on the ladder of 2-3 billion, and the gap is not much different. On the one hand, this reflects the fierce competition in the current women’s wear industry, on the other hand, it also reflects that the current domestic women’s wear is still in a relatively extensive market, relatively low market concentration, and lack of head enterprises and brands in the growth stage.
Today, China’s apparel industry has shifted from production-oriented to consumption-oriented, and the focus of industry competition has become the competition for brand power. The era of segmenting women’s wear brands by age group has also completely passed, and the future women’s wear market will be divided by interest tags and values. In the future, which women’s wear companies can “stand out” and truly become a competitive women’s wear group, may still depend on how the company’s transformation, adjustment, reshaping and upgrading are carried out, after experiencing fierce battles, the competitiveness of women’s wear companies will change qualitatively and really open the gap.
Source: China Garment Network
