Can Tmall Retain The Hearts Of Chinese Consumers For H&M?

To sum up, 2017 is Sweden.

Retail companies

(Haines Maurice) has entered the Chinese market for tenth years.

But after ten years of development, the brand is slightly "tired".

In 2016, the company opened 80 stores in the mainland, but by 2017, the pace of opening up began to slow down.

According to the company's external call, the number of new stores opened in 2017 was 60.

Compared with the original entry into China

As a guest of honor, today's H&M seems to be losing the "priority" of negotiations, at least in some big cities.

In order to save the situation of continuous decline, H&M, who has been insisting on building its own electricity supplier, has announced that it has settled in the third party platform Tmall. But can the latter's large flow still keep the hearts of Chinese consumers?

Slowdown in internal problems

Lv Jinyu, a 90 year old girl, recently went shopping in the Dragon dream of Zhongshan Park in Shanghai, and found that the H&M store on the first floor was in a prominent position.

This shop is not a case.

Earlier, H&M's news of the withdrawal of Xidan's Joy City in Beijing was raging.

In addition, according to a media report in Changsha, just in the past December, the large posters of "H&M's soon to open" on the first floor of the first "top city complex", Huachang International Plaza, were quietly removed after being posted for several months, and the original location would be replaced by its merchants.

H&M Xidan Joy City store is considered a benchmark.

In 2009, H&M entered Beijing, the first phase opened Qianmen Street store and Xidan Joy City store, and then maintained an average annual rate of 3 new stores in Beijing.

At that time, this fast fashion brand has boundless scenery.

Consumers who have just opened their eyes are in a rush to brand new brands such as H&M.

The fashionable young people have only met on the Internet, and now they will open their doors one day.

As for the local brand in the department store or the local leisure brand on the walking commercial street, consumers are tired of it: the former price is too high, and the latter is too slow to update the style, so the fast fashion at that time is going to go all the way.

In order to compete for the largest number of consumers in the increasingly fierce competition of real businesses, several fast fashion became the standard of main shopping centers in China for a long time.

Major commercial real estate developers are throwing Hydrangea to them.

"A few (fast fashion) brand contracts are generally signed in 5 years ~10.

This is almost unthinkable for other brands. Convention is signed on 1~2. "

Durbin, general manager of the commercial real estate service provider Rui Yi De renting business line, told reporters, "and there are hundreds of thousands of even millions of subsidies. The discount point is also far below 10%, which is lower than the average brand."

It also made the sales of H&M in China grow steadily.

The peak was in 2012, its sales growth has reached 50%, and in 2015, the company's annual sales growth in China also maintained at more than 20%.

However, this "flourishing age" did not last too long.

After 2015, although H&M still kept fast opening, sales growth in China began to slow down. In recent two years, the growth rate has dropped from its two digit high to single digit.

Durbin told reporters that H&M China encountered some internal problems last year, and the development team of the company's marketing department was fired. This is undoubtedly a certain impact on the brand in the whole year's new store opening process.

Ten years itch of "H&M"

For any multinational company, China has huge consumption potential.

The company's CEO Karl-Johan (Karl-Johan Persson) said in its fourth quarter of fiscal year 2017 (from September 1, 2017 to November 30th) that the fashion retailing industry is growing and is in a period of widespread and rapid change, which is the result of digitization.

However, he acknowledged that the growing online sales of H&M did not fully compensate for reduced passenger traffic in several important markets where the company was located, leading to sales failure.

According to the world clothing shoes and hats network understanding, H&M has always insisted on self built e-commerce.

Even in the most developed countries in the world, China's competitors have chosen to cooperate with the third party platforms with larger traffic volume, but H&M has remained independent.

In 2014, it opened an official e-commerce website.

Although consumers reflect that if the online shopping at discount time is cheaper than the brand shop, the fact is that consumers are not willing to download a APP for every brand.

Or in order to stimulate the performance of the Chinese market, H&M finally announced in mid January last month in Tmall.

This may be the first time for H&M, but not for its partners: Tmall has "captured" almost all international fast fashion brands such as ZARA (Gap), Gap (Gai Pu) and UNIQLO.

How much discount can H&M get in late arrival?

There is also an aesthetic fatigue period.

Of course, more than H&M families are in trouble.

In fact, some foreign fashionable clothing brands such as Forver21, Topshop and so on, which entered the Chinese market earlier and vigorously, did not develop as well as they expected.

"From the big environment, these foreign brands face some problems, first of all, domestic consumers are not as popular as before."

Local clothing listed company Ningbo Taiping bird (25.020, -0.17, -0.67%) fashion dress Limited by Share Ltd (603877.SH, hereinafter referred to as "Pacific bird") Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) and chief account director Zou Qian said.

In other words, after ten years of bombardment of foreign brands, domestic consumers have grown and matured and are picking on them.

They look forward to seeing different products every time they enter a store, rather than a long-term discount.

"I always feel like ZARA can't go shopping."

Lv Jinyu told reporters.

Compared with other foreign brands, ZARA is really better at the speed of product updates.

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Durbin, a long-term commercial real estate developer with investment leasing, believes that "some of the earliest projects will expire in the next two years. If the performance is bad, they will not renew their contracts in general."

He said frankly that the existing shopping centers in the new round of investment, mostly hope to change a new brand, "because a few years ago, consumers are tired of shopping."

Times are different.

These foreign brands have not been able to get the preferential conditions in the early days.

Nowadays, the shopping mall in the first tier cities has already had bargaining power for the "arrogant" brand.

It is reported that ZARA was able to renew its rental business with Xidan's Joy City store in 2015. After the renewal, it invested heavily in increasing the original 1100 square meter shop to 1800 square meters and upgrading it to the flagship store in Asia.

The industry speculated that upgrading to the flagship store is likely to be a key requirement for the owners and ZARA in the renewal negotiations.

However, Durbin added that several international brands entering the new three or four lines and four or five lines of new shopping centers or suburban projects in second tier cities still have advantages.

After all, the retail formats such as clothing, shoes and hats are hard to attract.

So big projects need a lot of brands to fill up, and they can't be empty. "

If it's empty, there will always be someone to fill it out.

From the second half of 2016, people who regularly stroll around the streets will find that there are local brands such as Taiping bird, Hai Lan home and Mei Bang dress in the new shopping center, but they are in a different look.

Cai Minxu, deputy director of the management and Public Relations Department of apparel brand resources, admitted that it was very difficult for her brand to enter the shopping center a few years ago, but this situation began to improve in the second half of 2016, and changed considerably in 2017.

Reporters learned from a number of industry people, ZARA brand earlier joined Wanda shop, Wanda opened where ZARA to follow.

However, this situation has changed since last year.

"Foreign brands are really cautious when they go deep into four or five or even three or four lines."

Durbin said.

Cai Minxu believes that, compared to the brand of Yu Yang, the cooperation between local brands and these commercial developers is better. "We are not so strong, we do not need rent concessions and subsidies, so our market price is good."

Reporters noted that brands such as Taiping bird and Hai Lan home announced a strategic cooperation with Wanda, Baolong, Yinli, Yintai and other real estate developers last year to upgrade channels.

Zou Qian said, consumers are constantly changing, brand channel strategy also need to make adjustments at any time.

"For us, entering new channels is a rare opportunity to cherish."

And the H&M? Won the first ten years of service.

In the next ten years, if we can't satisfy consumers who are fickle, fastidious and not loyal, then the next road will not be easy.

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