Is Baleno Really Coming To An End?

Green bottom sign,

The collection shows, the brilliant years,

The fresh breeze almost swept the streets and alleys.

Despite the past achievements, the reality that Baleno is facing now is a sharp reduction in stores and a decline in brand influence. Even though sales are growing, the parent company, Germany, has recently decided to sell Shanghai Baleno Kingdom Limited at 250 million yuan.

Fair price

Brand channels sink, online shopping share the main market share of low-end clothing, before there is a tiger behind the wolf, is Baleno really coming to an end?

Core business circle out

For many "80" and "post-90s" consumers, Baleno has been the pronoun of youth fashion.

However, in recent years, in the mainstream business circle of a second tier city, almost no Baleno has been seen.

"I used to buy Baleno clothes when I was at school, I felt very fashionable, but I seldom bought it after work. Now I prefer the fast fashion brand."

A "post-90s" white-collar told reporters.

Reporters saw in Baleno's official website that Baleno still has 56 stores in Beijing, and more than half of them are located in the suburbs of Changping District, Shunyi District and Fangshan District. In Xicheng District and Chaoyang District, Baleno mostly appears in the form of street stores.

In the Xidan business district where the young people are gathered, Baleno, which has opened stores in many stores, currently has only two shops on the ground floor of Xidan's joy city.

According to the German Mid-term Financial Report, as of September 30, 2015, the total number of Baleno stores decreased from 36 to 2849, and the number of stores in 2012 was 4044.

Despite the continuous closure, Baleno's sales are growing.

In the first half of fiscal year 2015, sales in Baleno mainland increased 3% to HK $1 billion 768 million, and total sales increased 0.5%.

Yang Dayun, President of UTA excellent international fashion management group, said Baleno entered the mainland market earlier, and entered the golden period before 2003, and the following ten years have entered a long trough.

"Baleno's performance has bottomed out, and its size has returned to its level ten years ago. It has achieved a slight increase by closing stores and shrinking the scale.

As for Baleno students, the rise of the US state is later than that of the two brands. The life cycle of the two brands is not synchronous. The peak period of the US bond market is now at a low point before 2012, so we can see that the performance of the US state is still declining.

But in fact, the size of Baleno is not at all comparable to that of the American States. "

Fade out of the public eye

No enterprise can remain invincible forever. Since the 90s of last century, Baleno has experienced the life cycle from birth, growth, peak to trough.

Statistics show that the Baleno brand was born in 1981 and was acquired by de wing Jia group in 1996.

De Yongjia repackaged Baleno, founded Baleno Kingdom Ltd and BALENO (Baleno) casual wear brand, thus creating the first place of domestic casual wear.

Baleno targeted the target consumer group in the age of 18~40, the main line of the young line, male, female, neutral casual wear, including Baleno, S&K, I.P.ZONE, Ebase and other six brands.

At the time when domestic brand competition was not enough and the market was in short supply, Baleno took the lead and was pursued by a generation of young consumers, almost entering all the core business circles of big cities.

Baleno is far away from the public today.

Reporters at Baleno Tmall flagship store saw that shops sell more than 200 categories of men's wear, women's wear, children's wear and accessories, and so on. Only over 200 pieces of merchandise are sold, the price range is 29~499 yuan, and the average passenger price is less than 200 yuan. In the sales list, the first is a short price of 36 yuan, with 1657 monthly sales. This kind of sales volume is not only difficult to compare with the brands such as the United States, but also even less than the existing Taobao shop.

Insiders pointed out that in today's market brand saturation, relying solely on low price strategy has not worked.

A fashion brand leader thinks that fast fashion brands like UNIQLO have become synonymous with price performance.

Even in the three or four tier cities, Baleno is also difficult to compete with the United States, Semir and some Amoy brands.

In the middle and low end market, Baleno's living space is also being squeezed.

The pioneers have become martyrs.

Baleno has also been beset with brands such as Esprit, VERO MODA, ONLY and Giordano.

Shutting down stores and declining performance are the common keywords of these leisure brands in recent years.

In the three quarter of the 2015 fiscal year, Giordano, a Hong Kong brand, reported a 3.4% decline in sales compared with the same period last year, while sales in mainland China fell 12%.

Giordano's total number of stores in the world has decreased from 2479 in the same period last year to 2359, and the number of mainland stores has decreased to 1003 from 1003 in the three quarter of last year.

Another Hong Kong brand Esprit had to raise operating capital by selling Hongkong office.

Some foreign fashion brands who had entered the Chinese market earlier failed to avoid the decline of brand influence.

With ONLY, VERO MODA, JACK&JONES and SELECTED dominating the Chinese clothing market, the fashion group has opened more than 6000 stores in more than 300 cities across the country, creating a miracle of "no bestsellers, no shopping malls", but the group failed to reach the target in fiscal year 2015, and the pre tax profit dropped 41% to 134 million euros.

Most of these brands start earlier, and occupy a large market share with the advantage of early establishment. Nowadays, brand aging is serious, marketing methods are single, and communication and communication with consumers are few.

In the age of Internet that is changing faster and faster, the update speed and rhythm of these brands have been derailed.

The rise of local brands in recent years has been increasing exposure and covering up these low-key old brands.

Take La Natsu Bell as an example. Last year, La Natsu Bell launched a shop partnership system so that each shop assistant could become a "store partner" and share profits according to the store's performance.

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Middle and low maintenance

International fast fashion brands such as UNIQLO, ZARA and so on are still in the Chinese market, and have begun to sink to the three tier urban channels.

Ryui Seiso, President and chief executive officer of fast retailing group of UNIQLO parent company, said that greater China will expand at the rate of 100 new stores a year, so as to achieve the goal of 1000 stores and 3000 stores in the short term.

By the end of May 2015, the number of stores in the Greater China region had reached 442.

In addition to the fast fashion brand, the Internet has spawned the rise of the Amoy brand, and consumers' clothing purchasing channels and brand screening have become rich and diversified. This also squeezes the survival space of Baleno's traditional leisure brands.

Baleno's "franchising" mode, joint design and collection store concept have gradually been submerged in the imitation of brands.

Yang said that as early as a representative of Baleno, a group of leisure brands entering the Chinese market at that time brought advanced design and retail ideas to the domestic garment industry, and were the initiator of the domestic casual wear brand.

However, after gaining stability in the market, Baleno did not take the long-term consideration into account and ignored the rapid changes in the market.

In the face of the rapid growth of imitation and learning and the coming of fast fashion in the domestic leisure brands, Baleno is still in the "long-term trend" with a "big boss".

In the Internet era, Baleno also failed to give full attention to the channel of e-commerce.

"The generation of consumers who follow Baleno now has too many brand choices, and Baleno's attractiveness to consumers is greatly diminished.

To some extent, Baleno has entered the end of the brand life cycle. Although it can still rely on the low-end market to maintain its life, Baleno will eventually be unable to go anywhere under the diversion of fast fashion brands and electricity suppliers.