Daphne Expands Apparel Business Pformation Channels

Under the plagued by slower growth and high inventory, women's shoes giants are doing something right now to find a suitable pformation strategy to survive the "severe winter".

Unlike BELLE international, 100 billion and Saturday overweight self operated and multi-channel operations, it also started with footwear products.

We are trying to implement diversification strategy through the introduction of clothing brand.

Diversification strategy

A few days ago, Daphne launched its first clothing brand, Daphne Young, to expand its clothing business and cover fashion accessories such as shoes, handbags, and so on.

In the short term, the launch of the brand is mainly due to the consideration of group management. Daphne group stakeholders told reporters that apart from Shanghai, the brand has several stores in other cities in trial operation, and will be adjusted according to the results of trial operation in the future.

In the long run, Daphne said that the group's goal is to develop into a diversified fashion group based on footwear, clothing research and development, manufacturing and brand management. The future business development will take the core strategy of "multi category, multi brand, multi level and multi-channel".

Daphne has launched Daphne brand Daphne Collection and Debina (D espina) two brands to test water clothing business.

Among them, the positioning of Daphne's impression is more high-end, and will mainly be stationed in department stores in the future. Debbie's brand positioning and sales channels are still being adjusted.

For Daphne life brand, Daphne CEO Chen Yingjie has said that this year's goal is to open 50 clothing stores.

In addition to sports brand, shoes enterprises do

Daphne is not the first case.

Wenzhou dragonfly, a shoe maker, has pformed its productivity advantages over many years into the clothing industry.

In addition to clothing, Daphne is also coveted in the field of logistics. Chen Yingjie told the media that the company is interested in acquiring assets related to logistics.

In fact, in 2002, Daphne began to spare no effort to build its own logistics system, covering more than 30 provinces and municipalities directly under the central government, and formed a logistics distribution center with long-distance distribution to the city and short distance distribution to shops.

Whether it is involved in the clothing industry, or to increase the logistics system, behind this is actually the domestic and foreign economic downturn, the shoe enterprises are generally undergoing severe pformation.

For Daphne, which is the Main Street store strategy, although it avoided the "killing" in the shopping malls and famous brands, the average stock turnover days in the first half increased from 149 days to 202 days.

At the same time, the increase in production costs, the decrease in gross interest rates caused by the increase in terminal discounts, and the increase in sales and distribution expenses.

In the first half of this year, the net profit growth rate of Daphne has dropped sharply. At the same time, the gross profit margin of Daphne's core brand also showed a slight decrease of 0.5%.

Channel reform

In addition, Daphne's change in the channel, that is, "de Affiliate" strategy is also very obvious.

This dispute with the franchisee not long ago is not unknown.

Daphne also made it clear that "self employment channel is the main direction of future expansion, and no new application will be accepted at this stage."

Among them, in the proportion of direct and franchise, Daphne also began to adjust early.

From 2009 to 2010, the growth rate of Direct stores was 9.4%, and the growth rate of franchised stores was as high as 25.5%.

By the end of 2011, the growth rate of Daphne's stores has reached 16.05%, while the growth rate of franchised stores is only 7.21%.

As of June 30th this year, Daphne had 4598 Direct stores and 1010 franchised stores, and 411 new outlets in the first half of this year, reducing 45 stores.

The proportion of shops increased from 81% at the end of 2011 to 83%.

In addition to changes in offline channels, Daphne's online channels are not very successful.

Although Daphne has always denied "abandoning the electricity business", it has also indicated that it will adjust the electricity supplier operation strategy in the future.

In 2006, Daphne had "electric shock", and set up a special e-commerce company in 2009, from the rise to the full bloom, and then to the setback, less than six years.

BELLE international, 100 degrees and Saturday are also pforming in different ways.

In addition to overweight self owned products and proprietary shops to control the right to speak, the channel of e-commerce is the common force of these shoe companies.

For example, BELLE international, a leading enterprise, not only has its own powerful electronic business platform, but also has all the brands of BELLE international, and Tmall has 5 core flagship stores.

It is expected that Daphne inventory pressure will remain in the second half of the year. Although the company has increased the intensity of terminal discounts to reduce inventory, it may continue to affect gross margins and net interest rates. It is expected that the company will still face greater pressure in 2012.