Those Fast Fashion Brands Who Lost The Clothing Market.

The temptation of clothing and clothing market is endless, but if it does not conform to the trend and rules of the market, being eliminated by the market is inevitable.

The fast fashion brand Forever 21, which once denied bankruptcy, officially declared bankruptcy before the National Day holiday. It said it had filed for bankruptcy protection under the eleventh chapter of the bankruptcy law of the United States to restructure other businesses. It is expected to close up to 350 stores worldwide, including 178 American stores, but will continue to operate in Mexico and Latin America.

In fact, the sign of Forever 21 bankruptcy has been revealed since two years ago. In 2016, Forever 21 announced its withdrawal from the Belgian market and eventually withdrew from the markets of Holland, France, Japan, Germany and the United Kingdom, and closed most of its stores in North America. In 2017, Forever 21 also closed stores in Hongkong, Tianjin, Hangzhou, Beijing, Chongqing and other places, withdrew from the Chinese market in a phased way, and closed online sales channels, and officially withdrew from the Chinese market in May this year.

Data show that Forever 21 currently has a debt of $500 million. The performance of Forever 21 continued to decline, unable to balance the expenditure, so it applied for bankruptcy protection to restructure business.

At the same time, Forever 21 said in its announcement that bankruptcy filing is not an immediate failure. The brand stores are still operating in the near future, and the policy of gift cards and returns will remain unchanged. The group will actively promote restructuring so as to restore profitability as soon as possible.

Due to the cold weather in the sales environment and the change of sales people, the development of fast fashion brands has been continuously suppressed. The decline of performance, the loss of brand groups and the closure of stores have gradually revealed a weak state of development and even been eliminated by the market.

It is worth mentioning that the weakness of fast fashion led to brand bankruptcy not only Forever 21, but also New Look, Topshop, J.Crew and other brands. New Look continues to develop unhappily and has been under pressure from huge debts. Data show that the net debt of New Look was up to 1 billion 265 million 400 thousand at the end of March 2018, with a net increase of 120 million 500 thousand pounds in the period. News came out in March 2019 that Philip Green, the Arcadia boss of Topshop parent company, is consulting with the consultant on the CVA proposal of voluntary bankruptcy agreement, and plans to carry out bankruptcy reorganization. The proposal will be submitted to the creditors as early as possible next month.

Based on this, in October 2018, New Look officially announced that it would withdraw from the Chinese market and close 130 stores. More funds would be used for restructuring and transformation of the brand itself. New Look, which entered the Chinese market in 2014, has completely lost its way to the Chinese market in less than four years. In addition, in mid January 2019, New Look announced that its Belgian subsidiary was bankrupt on the special task committee.

At the same time, the UK's high street brand Topshop has been declining as a result of the changes in retail industry, the sluggish demand in the UK and the competition in the same industry. Sales of Topshop continue to decline. In March of this year, Philip Green, parent of Arcadia of Topshop, negotiated the CVA proposal of voluntary bankruptcy agreement with consultants, and plans to carry out bankruptcy reorganization.

The sales market is in a predicament. Arcadia group announced in April that it may have plans to close stores in the US, Australia, Germany, Holland and Ireland.

In May, the Topshop company's Arcadia, a British fashion retailing group, was approved by the company's voluntary agreement, which was used to rent out the shares in order to avoid the risk of bankruptcy. 17 thousand employees also saved their livelihood.

Topshop, Forever 21, New Look are fast fashion brands, and with "fast" as the basic principles, they have gone bankrupt to seek reorganization and sustained business development in the current retail environment. Compared with the three brands, we can find that Forever 21 can expand rapidly with the expansion of stores, while Topshop takes the brand image to get consumers. New Look adopts the direct mode of opening stores, and the three different expansion methods of three brands, but it still has not been well recognized by consumers, and has finally fallen into a bankrupt ending.

Compared to Topshop, Forever 21, New Look, Zara, H&M, UNIQLO, GAP and other fast fashion brands are much better, although Zara, H&M, UNIQLO, GAP performance has varying degrees of decline, but under the guidance of the transformation strategy, market sales are slowly recovering. H&M's latest earnings data show that the third quarter sales rose 12% to 62 billion 570 million Swedish kronor about $6 billion 520 million, net profit rose 25% to 5 billion Swedish Swedish kroner about 500 million U.S. dollars.

Nowadays, consumers no longer pursue low prices and do not care about quality. Instead, the pursuit of comfort, fashion and personality is becoming more and more obvious. So the cheap, low quality, simple and sweet style of Forever 21 is hard to attract the attention of consumers. This has also become a fatal injury to the brand. The decadent situation of fast fashion shows that the era of winning by quantity and winning quickly has gone away. What is needed now is more fresh and younger blood.