Chain Clothing Brand Chinese Market Beachhand Battle Starts

The chain clothing model may be strange in the past few years, but with the entry of foreign chain brands in recent years, people are more and more fond of this new way of shopping. H&M, ZARA and UNIQLO have become popular brands for young people to buy clothes nowadays.

Recently, GAP, an American clothing retailer, announced that it will enter the Chinese market in an all-round way.

The clothing company, founded in 1969, has over 2600 stores overseas.

For a time, the battle of China's market for chain clothing brands started.

Foreign brands roar.

Founded in 1975, ZARA is a subsidiary of Inditex group, Spain.

In February 2006, ZARA China's first flagship store officially opened in Shanghai, a new shopping mode of one-stop shopping, and the shopping environment of supermarket, which made people fall in love with this clothing brand from thousands of miles away.

Subsequently, another swedish clothing chain brand H&M also began to enter the mainland of China. From 2007 to 2008, it first opened stores in Shanghai and Nanjing.

In April 2009, H&M Beijing store was officially opened.

In fact, the first foreign clothing chain that entered China is not the two western brands of ZARA and H&M, but also the Japanese brand UNIQLO, which also came from the East. It entered the Chinese market as early as 2001.

At present, UNIQLO has distributed in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou and other important cities, which already own 5 stores in Beijing.

GAP, which has just announced its entry into China, is one of the largest clothing companies in the United States. Its stores are everywhere in the world and are known as the "McDonald's" in the clothing industry.

Its 3 brands (GAP, Banana Republic, Old Navy) GAP, the main price reasonable, simple style casual wear, circulated in the United States, "every American or Canadian wardrobe, whether he or she is poor or rich, will definitely have more than one GAP garment", so the strength of GAP can be seen.

Expansion and online shopping make strange moves.

The fashion chain giant is coming late, and the competition in the domestic chain clothing market is particularly fierce.

In the face of strong competition, all brands have launched a fierce brand offensive to seize the market.

The first wave is rapid brand expansion.

In May this year, the first Asian UNIQLO flagship store opened in the prosperous section of Nanjing West Road, Shanghai, with a total investment of 30 million US dollars, becoming the fourth flagship store after New York, London and Paris. At present, there are 64 stores in UNIQLO in China.

According to reports, UNIQLO will invest a huge sum of money to open the world's largest chain store in Fifth Avenue, New York, with a scale of about 8360 square meters.

On the other hand, H&M also announced its first half of 2010 earnings report. At present, its total number of global chain stores has reached 2062. In the first half of this year, 86 new branches were opened, and 33 of them were in China.

In the second half of the year, H&M also plans to open 180 new stores in China, Germany, the United States, Britain, France and Italy.

Another offensive is online sales.

When it comes to opening online sales, GAP has to be mentioned. In 1997 and 1998, GAP, Gap Kids and Gap Baby have opened online sales outlets respectively, enabling consumers to experience the joy of staying indoors in an early age of the Internet.

UNIQLO is also unwilling to lag behind in this regard. In the official website of UNIQLO, the reporter sees that there are several women's clothing limited time special promotion every day, and seven men's trousers, ladies' dresses and T-shirts and so on are promoted online. The prices of 39 yuan, 59 yuan and 99 yuan are also attractive.

Brand war robbed the head of the chair

People choose these foreign chain clothing brands, not only on its easy shopping mode, but also the reason why fashion brands update their products.

It is understood that a garment from conception to design and then finished products come out, GAP takes 90 days, H&M takes 21 days, and ZARA only takes 12 days, so the product refurbishment rate is unreachable by the domestic clothing brand.

In order to rapidly update products, many brands have chosen the principle of nearby processing. UNIQLO has processing points in many parts of China, Southeast Asia and Europe, of which China has hundreds of processing enterprises.

90% of UNIQLO's products are made in China.

In order to better cater to the Chinese market, UNIQLO hired artists such as Sun Li, Chen Kun and Khalil Fong to speak for their image. On the one hand, they even became closer to the current consumer's preferences, and hoped to fit the natural and comfortable clothing concept that UNIQLO admired by the fresh image of the spokesperson.

Compared with ZARA, H&M and UNIQLO, GAP has no advantage in entering the Chinese market, but as the largest apparel retailer in the world, GAP's strength can not be underestimated.

Recently, Yang Deming, President of GAP China, told the media: "GAP expects to open 4 shops in China at the end of 2010, of which 2 are in Beijing and 2 in Shanghai, and each shop has an area of 1100 to 1800 square meters.

At the same time, network sales follow up.

A chain clothing brand war has started, and Chinese consumers expect foreign brands to read their brand names in China.