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China’s Bosideng outlines strategy to become premium outerwear brand; dismisses short-seller accusations as ‘misleading’

  • China’s largest down clothing maker spells out strategy to take on foreign brands in high-end winter outerwear
  • In latest clarification statement, Bosideng rebuts the four major allegations made by Bonitas Research as ‘false and misleading’

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A Bosideng shop on Bond Street in London. The company plans to revamp its retail presence and target a younger, higher-spending clientele. Photo: Alamy Stock Photo
Yujing Liu

Bosideng International Holdings, China’s largest down clothing maker, will take its product upmarket and online to compete with imported brands like Canada Goose and Moncler, as it puts up a defence against a shortseller’s report.

The company chairman and chief executive Gao Dekang outlined the company’s strategy to target big-spending twenty-somethings and millennials at a press conference in Hong Kong on Thursday, following a difficult week that saw the company’s Hong Kong shares whipsawed after a short-seller report raised doubts over its accounting.

“Bosideng is no longer a brand worn by the parents’ generation only, but a brand that young people would go to,” said Gao, who launched the company in 1976 as a small village tailor. “The company has changed fundamentally.”

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In a separate statement ­released Thursday, the company fired its second salvo at short-seller Bonitas Research, which earlier in the week had accused the company of ­inflating profits by 174 per cent since 2015 and of engaging in sham transactions to transfer ­interests to Gao.

“To reiterate, the company ­denies all the allegations made in the short-seller reports and ­considers the claims in the short seller reports to be one-sided and misleading,” Bosideng said in the statement.

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The conclusions drawn by Bonitas about the company’s ­financials were “incorrect”, the company said.

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