680 million sold houses, Metersbonwe switched to e-commerce

Metersbonwe is selling again

Metersbonwe once sold houses, closed stores, laid off employees and other frugal lives, but despite this, money is still tight, and this time it is going to sell the property again.

Meibang Apparel announced on December 4 that it intends to sell the store at No. 43, Dakejia Lane, Jinjiang District, Chengdu, Sichuan Province held by the company to Ningbo Youngor Garment Co., Ltd. in a cash transaction, and the transaction price was finalized by the two parties at a price of 680 million yuan.

Source: Screenshot from the announcement of Meibang Apparel

Previously, Metersbonwe sold a store in Wuhan Optics Valley World City for 190 million yuan at the end of October 2022, a store on Zhonghua Middle Road in Guiyang City for 130 million yuan on December 26 of the same year, and a store in Shenyang for 300 million yuan in June this year. Several house sales have accumulated more than 600 million funds.

In addition, the "pick-up man" of Metersbonwe is Youngor, and the amount this time is significantly higher than the previous one.

Selling houses to revitalize assets, Metersbonwe is really burning eyebrows. According to the financial report for the third quarter of this year, Metersbonwe has less than 100 million yuan in its books, short-term borrowings and payables of more than 1.5 billion yuan, and a debt ratio of more than 90%.

Meibang Apparel was listed in 2008, with a revenue of more than 10 billion yuan, more than 5,000 stores, and a market value of 39 billion yuan. Now, the company's revenue has shrunk sharply, stores have closed, and its market value has shrunk.

Now that time has passed, as of press time, the market value of Meibang clothing is only 4.774 billion. In the first half of this year, the number of stores of Meibang clothing is still decreasing, with only 26 directly operated stores and 899 franchised stores, and the total number of stores has fallen below the 1,000 mark.

It is worth noting that Metersbonwe said that it will use the funds from the sale of store properties to lay out the strategic development. It will be converted into a cash flow reserve, which will be used to prepare liquidity funds for supply chain investment and production investment corresponding to the expansion of global business development, focusing on broader development opportunities, and at the same time continuously reducing liabilities by realizing assets.

And the broader development opportunity that the company is talking about should be the online e-commerce business. Meibang said that despite many difficulties in the transformation, it did not give up on saving itself, and this year its founder Zhou Chengjian returned to the business and went deep into the field of content e-commerce.

At present, the company has laid out the field of e-commerce, and the battlefield is mainly in Douyin. According to official data, the official Douyin flagship store account of Meibang achieved 919,000 followers in just three months after its opening, and the Tmall flagship store achieved a month-on-month increase of 269% during the Double 11 period.

In addition, 3 months after the broadcast, Metersbonwe received a good market response in the official flagship store of Douyin. In particular, in mid-October, the "China Goose Down 1995 Series" goose down jacket was launched, and the number of fans soared to nearly one million, and the GMV of a single game reached more than 3 million.

The founder, Zhou Chengjian, said that he would continue to make "good products", "good content" and "good experience", continue to learn and grow, and return to consumers with a comprehensive upgrade of Meibang.

At present, live e-commerce has long been popular, and Metersbonwe, which has just entered the game, seems to be a little late, and whether it can successfully transform e-commerce to return funds still needs to wait for time to investigate.

Metersbonwe is trapped in the pedestrian street

In fact, as the "king of pedestrian streets", Metersbonwe has been trying to transform for many years, and has been working hard but has never succeeded in getting out of the pedestrian street.

Metersbonwe has been in the field of e-commerce for an early time, and in 2010, Metersbonwe launched the e-commerce platform "Banggou.com". At this time, Ali was in full swing, and Taobao had just launched group buying websites Juhuasuan and AliExpress.

At that time, Meibang's "Banggou Network" was also quite avant-garde, consumers could scan the code in the physical store to consume, and they could also realize offline and online shopping and return and exchange functions.

In the first year of its launch, the transaction volume of a single brand of Meibang on Banggou reached 300 million. Despite this, Banggou only lasted for about a year before it came to a hasty end.

The main reason for the failure was that it faced the suppression of similar clothing brands such as B2C, and then it did not match the tonality of the website in the supply chain, and the supply chain at that time was not as mature as it is today.

In 2014, Metersbonwe won the overall title of "Wonderful Story", and in April 2015, the "Youfan" APP was launched. Subsequently, the "Youfan" APP successively won the title of the second and third seasons of "Wonderful Story".

Youfan APP is positioned as a fashion matching experience platform, on which users can match and splice their favorite clothes, make fashionable pictures, and share them on the platform. If a user's outfit suggestion is paid for, they will receive a corresponding revenue share.

According to reports, after getting the dressing advice given by a professional stylist on the APP, consumers can place an order with the advice provided by the stylist in one second, and only need to use fragmented time to efficiently complete the purchase action that used to take dozens of times the time.

This model is equivalent to the current social e-commerce model, but Youfan APP finally failed to get through this road and went offline in 2018.

Source: Meibangren public account

Zhou Chengjian once hoped that through the vertical integration of resources through this APP, the company would shift from the model of large-scale store opening and wide distribution channels to online precision marketing, so as to solve the problems of high store costs and unattractive products. But things didn't go in the direction he wanted.

In general, Metersbonwe did not find the right positioning for the development of e-commerce at the beginning, but the same type of clothing brand Semir turned to e-commerce but achieved good results.

At present, Semir has adopted a diversified marketing network development model that combines direct sales, franchise and joint operation, and complements online and offline, and has established an online and offline omni-channel retail system including specialty stores, supermarkets, department stores, shopping malls, outlets, e-commerce, mini programs, etc.

As of the 2023 interim report, Semir's e-commerce revenue accounts for about 47% of the overall revenue, and the e-commerce business is directly operated by the company. In the first half of 2022, Meibang's online revenue accounted for more than 30% for the first time, while Semir's online revenue accounted for nearly 50%.

Zhou Chengjian once said that in recent years, Meibang has no advantages in shopping malls and online, but has made its own e-commerce channels such as "Youfan" and "Banggou", but from the perspective of e-commerce platforms, it is unrealistic to build its own channels.

Meibang is obsessed with e-commerce

Metersbonwe's transformation is not something that can be achieved overnight, but it is still very persistent in the layout of e-commerce.

Tianyancha shows that in July this year, Meibang Apparel established two e-commerce live broadcast companies - Hangzhou Meterss Digital Industry Co., Ltd. and Zhejiang Meterss Digital Industry Co., Ltd.

Source: Screenshot from Tianyancha

The two e-commerce live broadcast companies are 100% owned by Meibang Apparel, and the legal representative, general manager and executive director are Zhou Chengjian, the founder of Meibang Apparel. The business scope involves technical services, technology development, technical consulting, Internet sales (except for the sale of licensed goods), clothing and apparel wholesale, clothing and apparel retail, Internet live broadcast technical services, etc.

In addition, Metersbonwe has also set up an e-commerce headquarters in Hangzhou to develop live broadcast e-commerce. Relying on e-commerce platforms such as Douyin, Tmall, Channels, Xiaohongshu, and Kuaishou, we will start from the needs of consumers to improve the efficiency of information connection and reduce interaction costs.

Although it is a little late to enter the game, live e-commerce is not impossible, and expanding a new channel is equivalent to finding a new way to live.

The apparel industry is still greatly affected by online live broadcast e-commerce, and after entering the live broadcast e-commerce, Metersbonwe still needs to integrate brand resources and supply resources, and then output through the live broadcast track, which seems to be more feasible. Coupled with the fact that it is now equipped with the national hot tide, it is believed that it can improve the revenue situation.

In addition, in addition to domestic e-commerce, Metersbonwe has also transformed to open cross-border business. At the end of 2020, Hu Zhoubin, the son of Zhou Chengjian, the founder of Metersbonwe, left BloomChic and founded the fast fashion brand BloomChic, choosing to subdivide the track plus-size women's wear.

Source: Screenshot from BloomChic's official website

BloomChic has only been around for two years, with 1.8 million visits in November 2022 and more than 1.28 million followers on social media.

Whether in the field of domestic or cross-border e-commerce, Meibang has just entered the market, and there are many competitors, and whether it can reverse the situation still needs to be investigated by the market and time.

Author | Li Ying