Across The Border | China’s top shoe retailers failing to adapt to digital age
Hundreds of stores shuttered, amid towering inventories as online sales replace in-store shopping
As consumers’ love affair with online shopping continues, China’s traditional women’s shoe retailers, such as Belle, Daphne, and Red Dragonfly, are facing tough times, as e-commerce chips away at their sales while their own transformation from mall to digital lags behind.
“We are witnessing the decline of traditional shoe retailers, due to the rise of e-commerce and the change in consumption trends, ” said Wu Xiaoyu, an analyst for Tianfeng Securities.
Belle, China’s biggest women’s footwear vendor, was once dubbed “the king of women’s shoes” by the media.
It owns and distributes a dozen brands that were extremely popular among Chinese women, such as Belle, Teenmix, Tata, Staccato, Basto, Joy & Peace, Mirabell, as well as Hush Puppies, Clarks, and Caterpillar.
Between 2007 and 2015, the company’s revenues soared more than threefold from 11.7 billion yuan to 40 billion yuan, thanks to its rapid expansion in new stores, and as it acquired existing brands.
From 2010 to 2012, Belle opened 1,500 to 2,000 new stores on average yearly, and in 2015, its total number of stores peaked at 14,128.