Our reporter Li Haoyue
"The traditional clothing industry has entered a bottleneck period. At present, whether it is e-commerce or offline stores, prices are relatively 'loose', and there is a lot of room for bargaining. It is difficult to surpass fast fashion brands." An unnamed digital economy researcher told the "Securities Daily" reporter.
This gap is also becoming more and more obvious in clothing e-commerce companies.
There are established fashion e-commerce companies facing the risk of delisting, while emerging fast fashion forces have become the new favorites of capital.
In the past, the "first stocks" faced the risk of delisting
Mogujie went public in the United States in December 2018, and was dubbed the "first share in fashion e-commerce", with an issue price of $14/ADS.
However, in the past 4 years since its listing, Mogujie has repeatedly reported layoffs.
From fiscal year 2018 to fiscal year 2021, Mogujie’s operating income was 973 million yuan, 1.074 billion yuan, 835 million yuan, and 482 million yuan, and net losses were 558 million yuan, 486 million yuan, 2.224 billion yuan, and 328 million yuan respectively.
The company continued to lose money and the stock price was ugly.
In 2021, Mogujie received a notification letter from the New York Stock Exchange in November of the same year because its stock price was below US$1 for a long time, saying that its transaction price was lower than the compliance standard, and the company must be notified within 6 months after receiving the notice. Raise share price and average price above $1.
If the 6-month remediation period does not close at $1 per share by the last trading day, or if the average closing price within the 30 trading days ending the last trading day does not reach $1, the NYSE will initiate a trading suspension and delisting warning .
In order to avoid delisting, on March 28, 2022, Mogujie merged shares, 1 share for every 12 shares.
As a result, the company's stock price has returned to above $1.
Secoo, known as the "first stock of luxury e-commerce", also has the risk of delisting.
Last year, Secoo received a written notice from the Nasdaq Stock Market Listing Eligibility Department in December 2021 because the stock price was below $1 for a long time.
Secoo said it will monitor the closing price of its ADSs from now until June 15, 2022, and consider it, including adjusting the ratio of ADSs to Class A ordinary shares to regain compliance with the Nasdaq minimum bid requirement.
Secoo has also been in constant turmoil in recent years. News such as "bankruptcy" and "arrears of wages" are rampant, and its performance is difficult to reassure investors.
In November 2021, the 2020 financial report, which was half a year later than the prescribed time, was finally released, and the company turned from profit to loss.
As of now, the company's share price is still below $1. With the June 15 deadline approaching, there is not much time left for Secoo.
In this regard, the relevant person in charge of Secoo told the "Securities Daily" reporter: "Affected by relevant policies in the past two years, there are many companies whose Chinese stocks have fallen by US$1. We are also actively working to seek improvement, but specific companies will adopt It is not convenient to disclose which measures are taken at the moment.”
It is worth mentioning that the poor performance of listed clothing e-commerce companies such as Mogujie and Secoo is not an isolated case. In recent years, more clothing e-commerce companies have disappeared even before the listing day.
For example, luxury e-commerce Shangpin.com and Catwalk.com have both suspended operations in recent years.
The once-popular "shared wardrobe" means that companies are also withdrawing from the market.
In 2021, Yiersan said in a notice on the homepage of its APP that due to business adjustments, Yiersan will close its service on August 15.
Previously, Yiersan had received 6 rounds of financing, with a total amount of more than 80 million US dollars.
Talking about the current situation of the "downturn" of these clothing e-commerce companies, an analyst of a securities firm who did not want to be named introduced to the "Securities Daily" reporter that the clothing industry is a long-term low-growth field, although it will not become worse, but Nor will it get better at the existing foundation.
"The clothing industry has many categories, and it is a big market. In the early stage, the threshold for vertical e-commerce is very low, and it is easy to enter the market. But in the later stage, the important thing is the content creation and platform construction, and the verticality is not so important. Chinese consumers There is no habit of going to vertical e-commerce to find a product first, and in this case, the advantages of comprehensive e-commerce are obvious.”
"Many clothing e-commerce companies are now transforming into live broadcasts, but due to changes in channels, the transformation is difficult. Channels such as Douyin and Kuaishou are all doing clothing delivery, and the sales data of clothing categories can even be ranked very high on the platform. , but that's it. The platform will not strip out the clothing separately because of the good data in this category, it is not necessary." The above-mentioned analyst said.
Fast fashion e-commerce becomes the new favorite of capital
The industry seems to be in decline, but there are also brave people emerging.
Recently, many media reported that SHEIN (Xiyin), a fast fashion cross-border e-commerce company, is in the latest round of financing, and well-known investment institutions such as Sequoia China, Tiger Global Fund and Pan Pacific Capital participated in it, with a financing amount of at least US$1 billion.
According to industry insiders, after this round of financing, the valuation of SHEIN may be as high as 100 billion US dollars.
Based on this calculation, its valuation exceeds that of fast-fashion clothing giants H&M and Zara combined.
In terms of the market value of Chinese Internet companies in 2021, Tencent, Ali, Meituan and JD.com are ahead of SHEIN, and they have become the third largest start-ups in the world, second only to ByteDance and SpaceX.
In February of this year, it was reported that SHEIN restarted its US IPO plan, but in April the company responded to the media saying: "There is no IPO plan yet."
In this regard, Jiang Han, a senior researcher at Pangu Think Tank, told the "Securities Daily" reporter that the main gameplay of SHEIN is "fast".
ZARA used fast fashion to conquer the market before. It took 14 days to copy trendy clothes from fashion week and make them into finished products, while SHEIN was faster, only 7 days.
"The reason why China's manufacturing can be unimpeded in the world these years is the low price and extremely high quality. SHEIN is fast in new products and cheap, and it has built itself into a 'Pinduoduo + Taote + Mingchuang' in the fashion industry. Excellent product'."
The above analysts believe that although SHEIN is relatively successful at present, it has no reference significance for other domestic clothing e-commerce companies.
"SHEIN's success is precisely because it does not operate in the Chinese market. Its logistics in the United States is faster and cheaper than other competitors, and this advantage is very prominent overseas. But it does not work in China, and domestic e-commerce logistics are fast. , there will be cheaper e-commerce. If SHEIN is in the Chinese market from the beginning, it will not grow, because the Chinese e-commerce market is very mature.”
You Wuyang, dean of Hangzhou Xijiang New Retail Research Institute, told the "Securities Daily" reporter that the valuation of SHEIN may be watery, because many of the company's data have not been released for the time being, and there is suspicion of exaggeration.
Regarding the future development direction of clothing e-commerce, You Wuyang made several suggestions: "On the one hand, the phenomenon of polarization of consumption has created many growth opportunities in the high-quality and high-end market; secondly, online and offline will eventually move towards integration, content and social It is also the model with the most potential, and these companies need to grasp it well.” (Securities Daily)