Fast Fashion Squeezing Traditional Department Stores Is Becoming More And More Marginalized.

Martha, Marks&Spencer, the largest clothing retailing group in Britain, is suffering from a labor pains.

In April 1st, Martha, chief executive of MarcBolland, announced that it would close its 2-5 stores around Shanghai, and hoped that its partners could expand better in China.

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Lei Xiaoshan (Shaun Rein) of China Market Research, Shanghai, said the statement shows Martha China is in trouble: "they basically admit defeat, but can not speak frankly."

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Martha P has entered 15 stores in the mainland since its entry into China in 2008.

But since the opening of the first store, Martha has been challenged in China, criticizing his clothes for not being fashionable and high priced, while the European version of the tailoring, the older age and the conservative British design are not suited to the Chinese appetite.

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< p > a person close to Martha told the "financial world" Weekly: "Martha's executives in China are all British, and there are problems in China's product mix, pricing, design, publicity, or the old British system, not in China."

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< p > Hermann China retail micro-blog blogger < a href= "http://www.91se91.com/news/index_c.asp > > Wu Ziheng < /a > commented:" in the UK, Martha's experience department stores do better, have a large number of restaurants and a large number of food formats, a bit like shopping centers, allowing people to spend more time in the store to generate consumption.

In China, Martha has been reduced to a top selling clothing store.

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< p > localization failure is only one reason. Traditional department stores such as Martha have been increasingly marginalized in recent years.

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< p > "fast fashion is a killer. It will kill many obscure intermediate formats."

Wu Ziheng believes that this is the fundamental problem of Martha. "Martha's position is a middle class department store.

On the high end of the foreign trade, but less than the luxury; on fashion and parity, but in recent years, the rapid rise of fashion.

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Martha P, which originated in 1884, is an old department store giant in Britain. In recent years, it is facing the threat of declining performance and market share.

According to Markets Advisory Inc's Kantar Worldpanel survey, Martha's attractiveness to his 25-55 year old core consumer group and customers over 55 years old is declining.

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< p > April 10th, Martha department store released its fourth quarter financial report in fiscal year 2013, showing that the sales of daily goods (including clothing) of Martha stores opened for more than a year and 1 from March to this year dropped by 0.6%.

Nevertheless, this figure is much better than that of 3.8% in the same period last year.

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< p > although Martha's life in China is not very good, new China is still possible for "a href=" http://www.91se91.com/news/index_c.asp "foreign department store" /a ".

Retail consultancy Verdict predicts that by 2019, the sales volume of department stores in the Chinese market will increase by more than 38%.

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P, therefore, in response to the industry's response, Martha reiterated his commitment to China's development and expressed China as one of the "top priority international markets".

In April 1st, CEO MarcBolland announced that in the next three years, Martha will open 250 new stores in important markets such as Western Europe, China and India.

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In an official statement supplemented by P in April 8th, < a href= "http://www.91se91.com/news/index_c.asp" > Martha department store < /a > indicates that 15 branches have been opened in China, and the number will remain unchanged for the next three years, but the location of some branches may change.

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< p > on the other hand, in order to restore its performance in China, Martha launched an official flagship store in Tmall from 2013 in early September to sell clothing products, and launched the flagship store of Martha imported food in the same year.

According to the insiders, Martha's another problem in China is the lack of publicity leading to lower popularity.

Stephen said that this time, through the official flagship store of Tmall, we hope to further expand the brand awareness and push the Martha brand to the whole country.

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< p > Martha also denied that he would give up the news of direct camp in the mainland.

In a statement on April 8th, Martha said that the future flagship stores and central stores in Shanghai would be focused on developing new flagship stores in Beijing and Guangzhou, and announced the appointment of Maria Rodal as general manager of China.

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P, Maria, with rich retail experience in the Chinese market, was formerly the Asia Pacific Human Resources Director of Inditex group, Zara parent company before joining Martha.

"Martha's move is undoubtedly to help people in the fast fashion field to accelerate the pformation of China's formats to a faster, newer and more fashionable way to meet the rapidly changing needs of the Chinese market."

Wu Ziheng said.

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