Multi-store Operation for “Hangzhou Women’s Fashion” Brands and Market Sensitivity

- Hypothesis on Chinese Fashion Clothing Market -

Abstract

Hangzhou women’s fashion is a set of women’s apparel manufacturing and distributors with the leading share in China. These entrepreneurs exist in Zhejiang District. This study was promoted to investigate store development in those brands in China. The top 31 companies and those 50 brands were extracted. 661 cities were classified into six grades according to population, GDP, income, artificial commercial accumulation (shopping center etc.), temperature, distance from Shanghai and others. The survey was covered the first-class city to the fourth-class city among them. 50 brands classified into 3 types by products characteristics. First, the aggregation was carried out for each city class. Then, the numbers of stores were sum up for each city, with three different brands as a unit. The number of shops in each city was classified using principal component analysis and other multivariable analysis. The proportion of shops belonging to young women’s brands (their daily clothing) was higher for lower class cities than for advanced cities. The 19 first-class cities are scattered all over the country, but the number of stores was similar. The number of stores belonging to the brands of young ladies (daily clothing for young people) had a higher weight than lower class cities. In this way, multiple brands of different concepts existed uniformly throughout the country according to the city characteristics. Brand characteristics (concept) spread as a uniform layer throughout China of 9.6 million square kilometers. The number of layers is comparable to the number of brands. Consequently, each uniform layer is spreading and overlapping in China’s female fashion market. Understanding of such uniformity and multi-layering is essential for the successful entry into the Chinese market. However, it is unknown whether these successes will pass in the European and US markets.