Chen Nian, CEO and founder of Chinese apparel etailer VANCL said recently that the company which claims to be approaching profitability is aiming to challenge Uni Qlo in China, according to local media report.
VANCL has seen a 30% year-over-year growth in revenue in the first three quarters of this year, Chen said. The steady growth gave him much confidence to rival the competitors, with Uni Qlo in particular. Both companies advocate the concept of fast-fashion.
In addition to intense offline expansion in China due to strong demand, Uni Qlo also made enormous effort on its web presence www.uniqlo.cn to extend its reach to places without Uni Qlo-branded brick-and-mortar stores.
Strong consumer demands, is probably one of the major causes why the Chinese ecomm veteran said he was confident of local market and aimed to challenge competitors like Uni Qlo to gain bigger market share. Chen believes that VANCL has some advantages over its overseas counterpart; firstly it provides consumers with more options of color and style, secondly unlimited showroom ascribed to online virtual store space.
As of now, VANCL boasted 20 million customers with 60% of which are tier-1 city residents. On average, they make purchase on VANCL 4~5 times a year, spending RMB 150~200 each time.
Some of VANCL’s items, including down jacket, outdoors and snow boots are so popular with over 10k being sold every single day, a big driving force of revenue growth.
Currently most China B2C platforms are in the red, VANCL is one of the few that might break even soon. Chen put it bluntly that funding alone is insufficient to drive B2C developments now. Sustainable growth is more critical to these market players. VANCL, for example, is focusing more on revenue rather than just “low price” and “price wars”.
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