BEIJING, June 12 (Xinhua) -- In the bustling business districts of many cities, you can see a Chaopai store called i.t. Many people may not be familiar with this brand, but they may know its owner's lady, the female star Qiu Shuzhen.
The aura of the goddess failed to become i.t's eternal amulet. Recently, i.t Group released its 2019/2020 financial year results report, showing that the company experienced a loss of HK$746 million.
An i.t store in Beijing. Photo by Zuo Yukun, China News Network
With a loss of more than HK$700 million a year, it is difficult for the "team that makes money" to make money
Not "information technology", much less "it" in English. The full name of the i.t group is "income team", which bluntly expresses everyone's simplest and most eternal desire - that is, to make money.
Not only are the slogans shouted loudly, but the i.t is also serious about making money. As the industry's recognized "originator of the tide brand", i.t holds two brand lines of i.t and i.t.
i.t's business scope is high-end luxury brands around the world and some designer brands with relatively high prices, with prices ranging from thousands to tens of thousands of yuan; while i.t focuses on young products, mainly selling young fashion brands in Europe, Japan and South Korea, most of which are within 1,000 yuan.
I.t brand matrix is rich, covering luxury, light luxury, the public and other consumer classes, the layout of the commercial map can not be described as broad. However, this still does not prevent the decline in performance.
In i.t Group's year-end results ended 29 February 2020, the performance for the 2019/2020 financial year was not satisfactory: total turnover decreased by 12.6% year-on-year to HK$7,719.4 million, and data on a number of key indicators, including revenue from regional segments and brand segments, declined, resulting in a net loss of HK$745.8 million.
i.t Group said a number of major operating markets were hit hard by the intensification of social instability in Hong Kong last year, the slowdown in global economic growth, the sino-US trade dispute and the outbreak of the new crown pneumonia epidemic.
i.t Group currently has more than 800 stores worldwide, with a net increase of 5 stores in Chinese mainland this fiscal year and a net closure of 28 stores in Hong Kong and Macau.
What has a generation of fashion enlightenment experienced?
The boss started from scratch, and the "purchasing agent" represented the legend
The experience of Shen Jiawei, the founder of i.t Group, is not legendary.
Born in 1968 in Hong Kong, China, to a poor family, he began to work after graduating from high school. Working in a bank during the day, opening a small shop at night, and working two jobs to support the family.
It was this small shop that later became the i.t Group, a well-known listed company.
An i.t store in Beijing. Photo by Zuo Yukun, China News Network
The idea of making money for small shops is simple: Shen Jiawei found that Hong Kong has a strong concept of fashion, and many foreign fashion brands are sought after by young people in Hong Kong. However, at that time, Hong Kong's fashion industry was not yet mature, and some foreign big names had huge differences between Europe and Hong Kong, and they needed to spend several times or even dozens of times more money than the original price to buy foreign brand clothing.
Shen Jiawei smelled the business opportunities, and with the personal resources accumulated by working in the bank, he found many flight attendants who flew international routes and asked them to bring goods back. Through this kind of resale and resale, it didn't take long for Shen Jiawei to make a big profit.
Speaking of this, you may have found that this is not the current purchasing agent?
The operating path is exactly the same, the only difference is that Shen Jiawei is decades earlier than today's daigou.
In 1988, Shen Jiawei and his sister Shen Xiuhui opened i.t company in the Elizabeth Building in Causeway Bay, Hong Kong, which was only a small shop of about 200 square feet at the beginning of its establishment, collecting many world-renowned fashion brands, and gradually developed into one of the largest fashion groups in Hong Kong and Macao, and the oldest fashion brand group in Asia.
Marry a generation of goddesses, "bring goods" out of the peak
"Become a CEO, marry Bai Fumei, and embark on the peak of life." I have to say that Shen Jiawei's career and life have ushered in a new height of transformation, that is, to marry "Bai Fumei" Qiu Shuzhen.
In the movie "God of Gamblers 2", the shot of Qiu Shuzhen sitting at the card table and holding the card in her mouth has become one of the most classic beautiful moments in the history of Hong Kong film, and Qiu Shuzhen has also become a generation of beauties that countless people dream of.
After decades, Qiu Shuzhen, who is more than half a hundred years old and has been in the shadows for many years, can still defeat a number of veteran stars and traffic flowers, and become the first goddess in the minds of straight men in the Tiger Poker community.
The picture shows Qiu Shuzhen's stills in "The Five Ancestors of New Shaolin". Image source: icphoto
In 1999, Qiu Shuzhen married Shen Jiawei, setting another record for a star to marry into a rich family. It is reported that the ferrari f50 used in the wedding car, there are only four in Hong Kong, and the price is more than 5 million yuan that year.
After marriage, Qiu Shuzhen can be said to have gone all out to help her husband, and she did not hesitate to bet all her savings for the listing of i.t - the prospectus of i.t Group shows that "Ms. Qiu Shuzhen's bank deposit" was once one of the collateral. At the same time, she also personally served as an image spokesperson, and even flew to Europe, Japan and South Korea for many years to pick up goods for the company.
The star effect coupled with extraordinary taste, most of the brands that have been approved by Qiu Shuzhen's trial are in line with the tastes of Hong Kong people, and they are sold as soon as they are introduced.
Speaking of this, everyone may have found out again, isn't this the current star with goods?
"Purchasing + bringing goods" double killing, the couple can be said to have been well versed in the way to make money decades ago.
Qiu Shuzhen, who owned 25% of the company's shares at the beginning of the listing, was worth more than HK$2 billion by the peak of i.t Group's stock price in 2011, far exceeding the net worth of many stars in the same period.
However, today's i.t group share price has fallen to about 1.3 Hong Kong dollars, the company's total market value is less than 1.6 billion Hong Kong dollars, Qiu Shuzhen's wealth has naturally shrunk significantly. As the saying goes, the most important thing is that the human world cannot be retained. Beauty is late, and a generation of "overlords" has negative income.
When the "tide" hits, why did the previous wave overturn the boat?
Not just i.t, the ebb and flow of established fashion brands seems to have become a curse in the fashion world recently.
In May, Esprit, which had been brought by Lin Qingxia, announced that it would close all stores in China; in March, Gap Group's brand Old Navy officially closed all sales channels; in October 2019, Forever 21 filed for bankruptcy and closed stores in China, Japan and other markets.
In stark contrast to the dismal exit of old brands, the new fashion brands have gone from niche to the public and become one of the most profitable businesses.
According to Nielsen's tide brand big data report, the growth rate of tide brand consumption has reached 62% in recent years, 3.7 times that of non-tide brands; the "2019 Global Fashion Format Report" released by McKinsey also shows that Chinese young people spent $35 billion to $38 billion on tide brands in 2019, which has surpassed the United States to become the world's largest fashion market.
But i.t apparently did not eat this wave of dividends.
In the eyes of industry insiders, the digital era has brought more channels for clothing companies to contact foreign trends, from e-commerce to the rise of many buyers, i.t, which relies on the time difference between domestic and foreign trends, has encountered difficult challenges in recent years.
Nowadays, buyer collection stores emerge in an endless stream, overseas purchasing is fast and affordable, and various emerging niche brands around the world can be easily bought, and the collection advantage that i.t Group once maintained by relying too much on offline physical stores is naturally no longer obvious.
I.t is certainly aware of its own dysplicability and has sought new means of appeal in recent years.
In 2017, i.t launched a new concept store, which integrates fashion, catering, beauty and lifestyle products, which is popular with local consumers in Hong Kong, but has not made a big splash on the mainland.
Online, in addition to the routine operation of the mainland layout of e-commerce, i.t also signed star Wu Yifan as a global spokesperson in 2017, hoping to maintain the "youthfulness" of the brand and attract post-90s consumers.
But in the midst of a number of rising fast fashion brands and surging "national tide" forces, I.T's measures still seem to have little effect.
The beauty in the memory still sat obliquely on the table with a card, and her red clothes burned. But in this world, there has always been no one with a thousand days, and no flowers with a hundred days of red.
The front wave is too late to linger, and the back wave is already rolling in. As one netizen said: This may be the essence of fashion. (End)