Another American fast fashion brand will withdraw from the Chinese market.
On August 25, the Tmall flagship store of the American chain clothing brand Urban Outfitters issued a store closing statement. The products in the store will be cleared from August 23 to September 1. The products will be removed from the shelves and sales will cease on September 12th, but customer service will continue to operate until September 24th.
The reporter noticed that since Urban Outfitters has not yet opened a physical store in China and has not opened a Chinese official website, Urban Outfitters’ announcement to close its Tmall flagship store means that it will withdraw from the Chinese market. As of now, the number of fans of Urban Outfitters’ Tmall flagship store is approximately 1.14 million.
As for the reason for withdrawing from the Chinese market, the Urban Outfitters brand explained on Weibo: “Due to the adjustment of the brand’s global strategy, Urban Outfitters will temporarily withdraw from China.”
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Urban Outfitters is an American integrated lifestyle sales brand. Founded in 1970, it has grown from a small store across the street from the University of Pennsylvania to more than 200 stores in the United States, Canada and Europe. Products include women’s clothing, men’s clothing, accessories, beauty, music, technology and home. Urban Outfitters’ main products include BDG denim series, Out from Under casual home clothing series, etc.
Although it has failed in the Chinese market, Urban Outfitters has performed fairly well in terms of recent global performance.
Recently, Urban Outfitters released its performance report for the second quarter of fiscal year 2021 (as of July 31), revealing that sales increased by 44.08% year-on-year to US$1.158 billion, with net profit of US$1.27 One hundred million U.S. dollars. Among them, the sales of the retail sector increased by 43.86%; the revenue of the wholesale sector increased by 42.90%.
Since 2016, fast fashion brands have begun to decline in the Chinese market.
In 2016, British fast fashion e-commerce company ASOS ended its operations in China. In the same year, British fast fashion brand New Look, which once claimed to open 500 stores in China within three years, also withdrew from the Chinese market. In 2019, American fast fashion brand Forever 21 withdrew from the Chinese market for the second time. The first time occurred in 2008. In September 2020, Dutch brand C&A announced the official sale of its Chinese market business.
On March 9 this year, the American fast fashion brand GAP reported that it was considering selling its Chinese business. Previously, the Old Navy brand, which belongs to the same group as GAP, has announced its withdrawal from the Chinese market. ZARA’s sister brands Bershka, Pull & Bear and Stradivarius also announced that they are expected to completely withdraw from the Chinese offline market before the middle of this year.
Why did the international fast fashion brands that once flourished in China lose their popularity? Industry insiders said that after years of development, the channels and market structure of China’s fashion apparel market have undergone major changes.
With the rapid development of e-commerce, the “low prices” of fast fashion brands are no longer the key to attracting traffic. However, the speed they were originally proud of has lost its advantage against the backdrop of the mature domestic supply chain.
ZARA once said that it can complete the process of selecting, pattern making, production and new products arriving in stores within 21 days. Today, this has long been surpassed by domestic brands: For example, Alibaba’s new manufacturing platform model “Rhinoceros Factory” has flexibly transformed the traditional clothing supply chain and shortened the above process to a minimum order of 100 pieces and seven-day delivery. </p
