The Hong Kong listed female spin off group Winner Fashion has revealed its quarterly operational performance since the beginning of 2024. The company has Koradior, NAERSI, and NEXY under its umbrella 8 mid to high end female dismantling brands, including CO (Naikou).
Winner Fashion revealed that in the first quarter of 2024, Koradior brand revenue (product sales) recorded a low single digit decline year-on-year, compared to NAERSI and NEXY CO recorded an increase in the middle and high single digits, respectively. These three major brands are the main brands of Winner Fashion, contributing approximately 70% of their revenue. The other five brands recorded a low single digit increase in total revenue. The overall revenue of the winner’s fashion trend also saw a low single digit increase.
According to Shenwan Hongyuan’s research report citing data from Wingaid Fashion’s public cooperation at the German law conference, Wingaid Fashion’s expenditure scale in the first quarter reached 1.7 billion yuan. Among them, the main brand Koradior saw a slight decrease of 3%, mainly due to the opening of low-quality stores in the department in the first quarter; NAERSI and NEXY CO recorded an increase of 5% and 9% respectively; La Koradior and emerging brand FUUNNY FEELLN recorded double-digit increases of 17% and 21%, respectively; And ELSEWHERE, CADIDL, and NAERSILING, the three medium-sized brands with an annual revenue of 400 to 500 million yuan, have fallen into single digits.
Shen Wanhongyuan pointed out that the performance of Winner Fashion in the first quarter of 2024 is in line with expectations – despite the high base in January and February, the need for spring dismantling and seasonal changes due to meteorological factors in March, and identity disturbances such as franchisee returns, it can still achieve a low single digit increase.
But compared to the past, there seems to be a slowing trend in the growth rate of winner fashion. The reference is the comparison of the growth rate between Winner Fashion and the wholesale market of clothing dismantling. In the first quarter of 2024, the total wholesale volume of social consumer goods such as clothing, shoes, hats, and knitted textiles increased by 2.5% year-on-year, which is equivalent to the low single digit of Winner Fashion.
In the first half of 2023, Wingaid Fashion saw an overall increase of 15.26%, outperforming the 12.8% increase in wholesale sales of social consumer goods such as clothing, shoes, hats, and needles and textiles during the same period; In the first half of 2019, Winner Fashion had not yet purchased brands such as NAERSI. The growth rates of its three self owned brands, Koradior, La Koradior, and ELSEWHERE, were between 8% and 19% respectively, far higher than the 3% increase in wholesale sales of clothing, shoes, hats, and knitted textiles during the same period.
Winner Fashion’s achievements in the past five years
For companies like Winner Fashion that have been increasing all the way, their revenue has increased from 1.037 billion yuan in 2014 to 6.912 billion yuan in 2023, with a compound annual growth rate of 23.5%; How long can high-speed growth last and where is the space for inheritance and growth? It is always worth paying attention to.
Looking at the information leaked by Winner Fashion at its 2023 event, its remaining growth points will come from an increase in store efficiency from existing brands (rather than an increase in the number of stores), as well as the introduction of new brands beyond the existing eight brands.
The goal of Winning Fashion is to double the store floor efficiency in the next three years, and the increase in store efficiency is mainly due to the promotion of product strength and optimization of channels. In 2023, the store efficiency of Wingaid Fashion’s direct operated stores increased by 28% year-on-year, and also increased by 13% compared to 2021.
Winner Fashion demonstrated at the aforementioned event that in 2021 and 2022, it reviewed the company’s growth over the past decade and realized the shortcomings of its product system. Therefore, in the past few years, it has focused on optimizing this aspect. Including perfect digital measures to provide big data support for product collaboration and response; Provide more products that reveal the daily life scenarios of users; Improvement of the common supply chain to further enhance the quality to price ratio of products.
It is worth mentioning that Winner Fashion’s previous product pricing under its brand was artificially high, resulting in high promotional costs, and the actual selling price was always lower than the hang tag price; The current goal is to improve daily sales by increasing the quality to price ratio. This is also why winners are fashionable to think that the gross profit margin of companies that have not yet left may not necessarily be higher, but the profit margin will be inherited and optimized.
The optimization of channels mainly involves two aspects: combining large stores and good stores. “Good stores” mainly refer to the premise of good store status. In addition, compared to new stores, Wingaid Fashion has focused on optimizing existing stores in the past two years. In 2023, the number of offline stores of Wingaid Fashion increased by 42 to 1964, with 361 directly operated stores over 200 square meters, accounting for 24% of the total.
Winner Fashion has shown at the aforementioned event that the offline store area will increase by nearly 10% in 2023, and the increase in store area in 2024 is likely to continue this trend, with growth rates ranging from 10% to 20%. However, there is no expectation for the specific number of joint stores.
In terms of introducing new brands, Winner Fashion has shifted its focus to exploring existing domestic brands that are suitable for the growth of Chinese shopping malls. The plan is to jointly develop new brands through forms such as joint stock, brand authorization, and even IPO. At present, Winner Fashion is stopping negotiations for new brands, only revealing that the new brand will be available for men and women to dismantle. It is expected to meet the cross scenario clothing dismantling needs of high net worth individuals for activities, leisure, and business commuting, and will be launched in the first quarter of 2025.
Cheng Weixiong, a self reliant analyst of fashion assets and founder of Shanghai Liangqi Brand Management Co., Ltd., believes that multi brand fashion groups like Wingaid Fashion find it difficult to truly differentiate their brands due to capital sharing in product co development, supply chain, and other aspects, and even survive and cooperate with other brands within the group. Therefore, under the dominance of a strong main brand, the second, third, and other sub brands are difficult to grow into the main force.
“Introducing new brands also has a cultivation cycle. Brands introduced from China are not necessarily guaranteed to grow well, but ultimately need to be cultivated into their own brand,” Cheng Weixiong told Interface News.