Smith Barney Apparel Closes Flagship Store In Shanghai

However, the fast fashion brand Smith bond, located in the Me&City flagship store in Huaihailu Road, Shanghai, has recently closed quietly. The flagship store, which covers an area of more than 2000 square meters, has not been open for a long time.

Zhuang Tao: the shop is suitable to open. It is not suitable for us to open. There are many reasons. Every year, we have a store opening shop, including direct stores and franchisees. Now there are more than 4700 stores, so opening shops and closing stores are normal.

In fact, the fact that the contract between the Huaihailu Road store and the owner has not expired, the real reason for the closure is that the store has been in a state of loss for a long time.

And this time, the United States has been brewing for a long time.

Zhou Chengjian, chairman of Metersbonwe Limited by Share Ltd, has admitted in the media that he made a mistake in making decisions.

The high expectations and the failure of the big store mode made the high-end brand ME&CITY set a sales target of 2 billion yuan in 2009, but sold only 350 million yuan in the end.

In 2010, Zhou Chengjian divided Metersbonwe and ME&CITY into two major business units, and set up an independent team for ME&CITY to promote from designers to channels.

In 2011, due to the need to own profits and losses, ME&CITY had to cancel the advertising promotion of big endorsements, and optimize the details of clothing and product mix, and turn off most of the big loss shops to smaller shops on the channel.

As a representative brand of fast fashion, Metersbonwe has been developing very fast these years. From opening the first store to selling 160 million clothes, from the big signboards around us to the implanting brand in the Hollywood blockbuster, Metersbonwe's "leap forward" span is not small.

However, local manufacturers know better.

Not yet from the nightmare of high inventory, the United States has to face another headache which is a headache -- the malpractice of big shop mode.

As one of the followers of fast fashion, Smith Barney began to enter the "big store mode". In 2005, it opened the first 5000 square meter store in Hangzhou, and opened nearly 10 thousand square meters shop in Nanjing West Road, Shanghai at the end of 2007.

The flagship store of American Baron continues to rush to larger areas.

At present, as the international fast fashion brands enter China, the resources of big stores have become very popular.

Reporters found that in the east of the closed shop there are two stores of C&A and H&M, and the opposite is the store of ZARA.

After the big store entered the business circle, it attracted a large number of passenger flow, so now the store rental has begun to rise rapidly.

The industry pointed out that fashion luxury brands face 20% of the consumer group, can earn 80% of the added value.

However, the fast fashion store mode is different. It has to face 80% of the consumer groups, but the profit is far less than that of luxury goods.

In this process, product categories, inventory management, turnover of goods, retail technology management and other aspects become more complicated. If coordination is not good, there will be inventory pressure.

More importantly, the brand demand and brand image created by big stores in the golden section are one of the reasons why most brands are willing to spend a lot of money on the big store mode. However, when the rental cost of shops rises to a critical point, the loss of brands is much higher than these benefits.

According to the analysis of the industry, the low traffic volume has always been the embarrassment of its positioning. Although the American brand has repeatedly studied the brand of fast moving abroad, it has started to peel off the casual clothing for students, and has created the fashion brand Me&City of the metropolis. However, there seems to be an impossible distance between the old brand and the foreign brands in terms of design and products.

Although the same as a large store, in the Huaihailu Road business district international fast fashion big gathering, the Me&City consumption crowd and the business district consumer group difference gradually emerged.

Liu Hui, chief consultant of Zhao Yi Department store, thinks that Metersbonwe has gone a way different from JEANSWEST, Giordano and other domestic brands, and its development has been favored by the industry.

Liu Hui: he is indeed more forward-looking than other brands. He saw China's diversified market very early. Unlike Giordano and JEANSWEST, they are still eating their original market. He has already foresighted that China's market diversification will have a good chance to upgrade. He really wants to seize this opportunity. This capital market is also recognized. The industry has been very optimistic about it in the past few years, and the current development situation has not reached the industry's expectations.

Liu Hui believes that Metersbonwe wants to go fast fashion, and the strategic thinking is right, because after all, the Chinese market is huge, the urbanization process is speeding up, the demand for fashion is increasing, and its outlets and sales system are all laid out in the 123 tier cities nationwide, and the sales link is even more advantageous than Zara, but its shortcoming is equally obvious.

Liu Hui: the success of ZARA is that the new product updates very fast. UNIQLO invited famous designers to make the design. ZARA is not a famous designer, but because of the trust of European fashion, its design ability is very strong. So fast fashion requires you to have a strong design team, and Metersbonwe's style design ability is not satisfactory.

A Metersbonwe worker does not agree with that. She thinks that the media and some experts are deliberately singing black Metersbonwe, never paying attention to their good things. In fact, Metersbonwe is also brilliant in the design.

Staff: in fact, we also have many good news. Recently, we have more than 170 square meters exhibition area at the latest clothing exhibition, showing the latest achievements, showing our latest creativity and brand segmentation.

We have recently contacted the designers in Hongkong, Taiwan and the mainland, and have been able to deduce the trend of our brand. Now we have a very good response in Hongkong and Taiwan.