Skech'S "Marriage" Form Of YOUNGOR Is Bigger Than Reality?

On the first floor of Ningbo Century Oriental Plaza, the Skech store, which opened just now, looks more impressive than the old brand Nike and Adi, the next door old brand. It occupies two big faces. From the first floor to the two floor, shoes, clothing, women's wear and children's clothing are all available. However, during the noon of the working day, there are few people who come to shop, but it is hard to find people in such big shops.

On the same floor, YOUNGOR, a local clothing brand leader in Ningbo, has opened two stores. One of them has made special sale, including casual clothes such as down garments, woolen coats and sweaters. There are also business categories such as suits and shirts. The style of decoration in the shop is quite regular, which is in sharp contrast to the Skech store with huge electronic posters and colorful LED light box billboards.

However, in recent days, the two seemingly different styles of brand announced hand in hand, will explore the new retail mode of cooperative shop. This Skech store in Ningbo Century Oriental Plaza is the first step of cooperation between the two sides.

Related personnel of YOUNGOR public relations said in an interview with the times finance in January 2nd. At present, the two sides have opened two shops, one is located in Ningbo Century Oriental Plaza and the other is located in Wanda Plaza, Fenghua. "At the early stage of cooperation, like the Oriental Plaza, this store is a channel resource that helps us offline, including the operation team is also YOUNGOR. This stage of cooperation is just a shop opening together. In the future, we may consider the integration of brand culture between the two sides."

As for the timetable for the opening of the two sides' cooperation and the specific promotion plan, YOUNGOR said: "there is no detailed plan for the time being. This is our first attempt. There are many uncertainties to explore. First, we need to see whether the two sides are happy and harmonious. There is no definite plan for further cooperation. "

"It is an attempt, both sides want to expand the scale and find new growth points, but in the current situation, the meaning and space of cooperation may be relatively difficult to open up." Tang Xiaotang, an analyst at No Agency, said his views in an interview with times finance in January 2nd.

YOUNGOR's turn

"YOUNGOR real estate is pretty good, of course, the price is also expensive." Speaking of YOUNGOR, Zhang Jing, who worked in a large state-owned housing company in Ningbo, first thought of its real estate business. Of course, this is more or less related to her industry.

However, from the perspective of YOUNGOR's development process, the established clothing company founded in 1979 and headquartered in Ningbo entered the real estate sector in 1992, mainly in Ningbo, Shanghai, Suzhou, Xishuangbanna and Lanzhou. According to the introduction of its official website, apart from clothing and real estate plate, it also includes investment, textile and trade three major plates. According to the 2019 China Daily, clothing currently accounts for 60.35% of its revenue, and real estate tourism is the second largest sector, accounting for 30.61%.

If the time goes forward to 2016, YOUNGOR's clothing sector revenue will be lower than 28.7%, and the real estate business will be as high as 66.34%. It was also in this year (2016) that YOUNGOR formally proposed to return to its main business. Li Rucheng, chairman of the board, announced in a high-profile Fashion Festival of China "reinventing a YOUNGOR in five years" and invested 10 billion yuan to enhance the fabric, craft, brand and sales channels.

In April 30, 2019, YOUNGOR announced that in order to achieve the goal of maximizing the value of the company, it is planning to make a major adjustment to the development strategy. In the future, it will further focus on the development of the main garment industry. Besides strategic investment and continuing investment commitments, the company will no longer carry out the financial equity investment in the non principal sector, and choose to deal with existing financial equity investment projects.

However, from the three quarterly report of YOUNGOR in 2019, the road of return is still far away. In the first three quarters, the net profit of the clothing sector was 775 million yuan, and the net profit of investment was 1 billion 392 million yuan (about two times of the main industry income), and the net profit of real estate was 910 million yuan.

Li Hua, who lives in a small county in the west of Hubei, remembers the impression of YOUNGOR more than ten years ago. "In 2000, it was regarded as a brand with a lot of quality. Now it is rarely seen." According to Li Hua's description, in the traditional commercial streets, YOUNGOR, Qipai and red dragonfly are all well known shops, and their reputation is good. But nowadays, they are shopping too little. Most of the time they choose to shop online.

Tang Xiaotang said to the financial analysis of the times, although YOUNGOR has made many attempts to diversify, its foundation in the field of clothing is relatively good, and the secondary cities have a wide audience. "Low line cities, 6070 of the latter group, its consumption awareness is still very deep, especially for some forty or fifty year old people. If the economic conditions are good, people who are willing to choose YOUNGOR are quite numerous."

In his view, YOUNGOR's hand in hand, Skech, is a move that follows the trend. "The overall clothing market has slowed down. If we eliminate the price factor, it is actually close to a decline, but the sports category is unique, and everyone wants to cut a piece of cake."

Catch up with the "super store" fashion?

However, it is difficult to find each other's figure in the process of bilateral cooperation.

Those who are in the YOUNGOR area say frankly to the times finance that they are just opening the shop together. As for whether the future will integrate YOUNGOR's existing stores into a common offline channel between YOUNGOR and Skech, YOUNGOR has denied this assumption. "We are two completely independent brands and have their own crowd positioning. This is different. There is no plan for this side."

For the foreign brand of "Cage", the more than 50 year old Li Hua has not heard much of it. "She has never seen a store before, and my daughter bought me a pair of shoes (Cage) for me and my partner."

In Tang Xiaotang's view, there are overlaps between YOUNGOR's consumer groups and YOUNGOR, which may be the direction for the two sides to expand in the future, "pay attention to comfort and cost performance", but he also emphasizes whether the transformation of customers and consumption can be covered by the synergy of both sides.

In fact, in August 2015, AOKANG, who sold leather shoes, had a similar cooperation with Cage. At that time, the two sides set up a plan to open 1000 Skech brand stores in 5 years. Skech, CEO Chen Weili of China, once told the media that AOKANG has rich experience and resource advantages in the two or three line store channel. This is a market that needs to be focused on for many years, Skech, who is always the first shopping center as the main channel.

However, the progress of cooperation between the two countries is not smooth. The data in the third quarter of 2019 showed that AOKANG opened 81 Direct stores and 68 outlets for Cage, far below the 1000 vision of that time.

According to the press release issued by YOUNGOR, the focus of cooperation between the two sides is in the so-called "super store". YOUNGOR said that since 2016, the layout of the major store strategy has opened 1000 super stores in the country with an area of 1000 square meters and an annual turnover exceeding 10 million.

Tang Xiaotang told Times financial analysis, "super store" for Skech sports clothing brand, more is still in the concept of marketing, "super store is UNIQLO, HM, Zara this fast fashion brand operation mode, high turnover, new fast, single product more, equivalent to a large clothing supermarket, but sports brand category, supply chain may not be able to support the fun of this mode."

In Tang Xiaotang's view, it is difficult for sports brands to be "super large shops" to spread in full, especially in the low level market. "Doing some flagship stores and brand shops is normal, mainly marketing and consumer experience."