Will Gap Continue To Expand Children'S Clothing Market?

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Before entering the Chinese market

, H&M, Mango, C&A,

And other brands have taken the lead in entering.

Over the past 10 years, new clothing brands have entered the market, and the market has become crowded.

"Our reputation in the United States is 99%.

But the popularity in China is indeed... "

Wu Xiumei, general manager and vice president of e-commerce in Greater China, GAP group, said in an interview with reporters in September 18th.

Nonetheless, the company is still trying to make a good contribution to the Chinese market. After all, the consumption power of Chinese customers can not be underestimated.

"Pick up" Ma Sha

About half a year ago, the British retail giant Marsha general announced the withdrawal of the mainland market, and the flagship store in Nanjing West Road, Shanghai also closed.

In August of this year, the original site of the original Marsha department store was opened, and the "connecting disk" was GAP.

It is reported that the area of the shop is 1908 square meters, which is the largest flagship store of GAP brand in Greater China.

In Wu Xiumei's view, offline shop sales are still "promising."

She did not reply to rumors that 40 new shops will be opened this year, but said that she will continue to open new stores this year.

With the group's another Old Navy brand, GAP group has nearly 160 entity stores in Greater China.

This figure is slightly less than that of H&M and UNIQLO.

H&M currently has about 450 stores in the Chinese market, while UNIQLO has broken through 500.

In contrast, the number of GAP is equal to that of Zara, which has fewer than 200 stores in the Chinese market.

However, compared with its American counterparts, the development of GAP has been regarded as "excellent".

For example, Abercrombie & Fitch (hereinafter referred to as "A&F") has only 10 "poor" shops in the Chinese market. By July of this year, the company signed a cooperation agreement with Tmall.

Fran Horowitz, chief executive of A&F, told reporters in July this year that the company will increase investment in the business of e-commerce.

"Tmall can help us reach more Chinese consumers."

She told reporters this time.

Compared with "fellow townsman", GAP is "one step ahead".

The reporter understands that GAP has done very early in China.

Five months after the opening of the first line store, that is, in March of 2011, GAP entered Tmall. Before that, the brand also had its official website as an online sales platform.

"Our electricity supplier in the United States is also earlier than peers. Before Amazon, we had our own sales website."

Wu Xiu's reputation.

Force children's wear

But a problem that can not be evaded is that the competition in China's clothing market is fierce now, and new brands are coming and more localized brands are born.

Ye Yao, an apparel industry observer, believes that GAP is a family brand in the United States. "In particular, people who buy this brand have a very large age span, and parents from younger children to older parents can buy it.

At first, GAP advocated clothing for the whole family.

But in China, it is obvious that the main consumers are more inclined to other fast fashion, because the latter is more fashionable.

After entering the Chinese market, GAP once criticized the changes in clothing styles, but Wu Xiumei stressed to reporters today that "although GAP is also shortening the product processing cycle and increasing the variety of styles, we are not a fast fashion brand."

According to Wu Xiu's reputation, some of the products sold by GAP are still classic pieces such as jeans, shirts and big logo casual wear. "We hope to make these classic clothes of good quality and people can wear them for a long time instead of throwing them away in a single season.

On the other hand, we will add new styles according to the trend of the season.

According to the world clothing and shoe net, GAP collaborated with the Van Gogh museum last year in the VanGogh X Gap cross-border cooperation series, cooperating with DreamWorks's movie "magic elves", and the GapXDisney cooperation fund to make some initial activities in Tmall.

This year also led by Ali pictures, cooperated with Nintendo in the "elf treasure dream" cooperation series.

These new products and cooperation will help Gap precipitate old customers and pull new capital.

Now it is much more difficult to stand out from peers than it used to be, but GAP seems to have found its way.

Reporters interviewed learned that children's clothing has gradually become a major advantage of GAP in China's development.

In recent years, Tmall's "double eleven" children's clothing sales ranking, GAP's children's clothing can almost squeeze into the top three position, far ahead of other international brands.

Zhou Huan, head of marketing department of local children's clothing company, told reporters that this is because the well-known brands of children's clothing are not many in China, and GAP compared with other new brands are large brands, styles, design atmosphere, and moderate prices.

"Another important reason is that GAP children's clothing is on the line early, and the resources available at that time are not comparable to those who later came in."

The reporter learned that when the original GAP was in the Tmall mall, the Tmall merchants did not directly put it in the women's clothing category, but put them in the children's clothing category.

This is because Tmall's data show that the growth of baby clothing is faster, which is conducive to the rapid growth of GAP.

GAP caught the trend of the rise of China's children's wear market. As a "latecomer", GAP chose to use baby's children's clothing as the entry point to open the market.

Compared with other businesses, GAP has performed much better in the children's wear market.

The China children's wear market report released by Ou Rui consulting in 2015 shows that GAP's share in Chinese children's clothing market has increased from 0.1% in 2010 to 0.6% in 2014, and the market share in 2014 has ranked seventh. It is also the only foreign fast fashion brand entering the top 10 of China's children's wear market.

The reporter also saw in the brand entity store. At present, GAP also put quite a lot of resources into children's clothing. Some stores have placed their children's clothing series in an obvious position when they present their products.

According to Wu Xiumei, the company will open an independent children's wear shop in Hangzhou by the end of September this year, which is also the first independent children's clothing store opened by GAP in China. "Our baby clothes were sold in the store before, and it is a series."

But later we discovered that the series was selling so well that they decided to open a separate shop. "

More interesting reports, please pay attention to the world clothing shoes and hats net.