Future of retail lies in clicks, not bricks
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Product offerings by online sites are expanding with the growing market in China. Items like Montblanc pens, Diesel shirts, Soma shoes and Timemaster watches are popular among Chinese consumers. Photos Provided to China Daily |
Foreign shopping sites, which she discovered through a magazine in 2010, turned out to be her type of service. With just a few taps on her MacBook, and without having to step outside her home, Sun has found brands of accessories that aren't sold in Chinese stores.
Consumers like Lu and Sun are among the reasons foreign online retailers have dived into China in recent years. Of the 591 million Chinese with Internet access - almost half of the country's total population - 271 million shop online, according to January-June 2013 statistics from the China Internet Network Information Center.
Within the year, China's e-commerce market is expected to overtake that of the United States as the world's largest by total customer spending, says management consultancy Bain & Company. Drawing the biggest number of online shoppers - 91 percent, according to a recent Nielsen survey - are sellers of clothing and fashion accessories.
Since 2010, Yoox Group launched the Chinese e-commerce sites of seven fashion brands, including Armani and Dolce & Gabbana. Over the next two years, the Italy-based company has also opened the Chinese versions of the multi-brand stores thecorner.com and yoox.com.
The group's China expansion has involved opening a domestic logistics center from where all Chinese orders are shipped, adjusting clothing sizes to respond to market needs, as well as doing local collaborations, such as styling the looks of contestants on Hunan TV's Super Boy talent show.
"We believe localization is one of the keys to success in the China market," Mimi Vong, China country manager of Yoox Group, says in an e-mail interview.
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