POP MART has started to produce jewelry; Pang Donglai sold 17 billion in 2024; Walmart is selling a Hermès alternative for 600 yuan | Brand Weekly Report
Organized | Zhong Yixuan
Big News
Walmart Is Selling a Hermès Lookalike for $600
Recently, Walmart launched a handbag that is extremely similar to the Hermès Birkin. It is reported that this Walmart handbag is also made of leather, equipped with the signature lock of the Birkin, and even the handles are very similar.
After the launch of this lookalike bag, it caused a heated discussion on social media platforms and was quickly sold out. Compared to the Hermès Birkin, which starts at tens of thousands of dollars, Walmart's lookalike bag starts at $78 depending on the color and material. It has been nicknamed "Wirkin" and "Walmès" by netizens.
The Hermès Birkin has been called "a globally recognized symbol of status and wealth" by The New York Times. According to a study by the online market Baghunted, the Birkin has an investment return of over 500% in 35 years. In addition, the uniqueness of the Birkin also lies in the restrictions on the channels. For example, when customers purchase a Birkin, they need to provide past purchase records of Hermès as a qualification proof.
It is worth noting that John David Rainey, Walmart's chief financial officer, once stated that about 75% of Walmart's share expansion comes from households with an annual income of more than $100,000, and this group is the middle-class consumers who account for half of the luxury goods income. They are not financially strong, and they buy at least one luxury item every year, but they will be affected by changes in consumption trends and income structures. For example, the "middle-class failure" encountered by the light luxury in recent years confirms this point, and high imitation products may attract this group invisibly.
It is still undecided whether the lookalike can撬动 the value of luxury goods, but Walmart's move has already caused great controversy in the luxury goods industry. According to Fashion Business Daily quoting intellectual property lawyer Milton Springut, the similarity between this bag and the Birkin may trigger copyright disputes, and consumers may find it difficult to distinguish between the two.
Image Source: The Times
Pangdonglai Sold 17 Billion Yuan in 2024
On January 8, Yu Donglai posted a message on the social platform stating that in 2024, the overall sales of the Pangdonglai Group were nearly 17 billion yuan, the tax was more than 600 million yuan, the profit was more than 800 million yuan, and the average monthly income of employees was more than 9,000 yuan. Based on this calculation, Pangdonglai's revenue in 2024 increased by 58.9% compared to 10.7 billion yuan in 2023.
Up to now, Pangdonglai has 13 stores, of which 11 are located in Xuchang City and 2 are located in Xinxiang City, which means that its single-store profitability has exceeded that of all supermarket listed companies in the industry.
In addition, Yu Donglai also released the sales data of the Pangdonglai Commerce Group in 2024. The data shows that the supermarket has the highest annual sales among all business forms, with 5.945 billion yuan in Xuchang and 2.148 billion yuan in Xinxiang. The sales of tea in a single product is 619 million yuan. Among the 15 sales venues, Times Square has the highest turnover, reaching 4.413 billion yuan. Up to now, five stores of Pangdonglai have accumulated sales of more than 1 billion yuan within the year, namely Times Square Store, Angel City Store, Big Fat Store, Small Fat Store and Life Square Store, all of which are commercial complexes.
According to public news, Pangdonglai is currently planning a large commercial complex - "City of Freedom". According to Yu Donglai's previous revelation, "City of Freedom" is planned to be a super-large commercial complex with a scale of 420,000 square meters and an investment estimate of about 4 billion yuan (excluding supporting hotels). According to Yu Donglai's plan, when the available funds of Pangdonglai reach about 3 billion yuan by the end of next year, the construction will start, and there is no plan to apply for a bank loan.
According to the "2023 China Chain TOP100" list previously released by the China Chain Store & Franchise Association, Pangdonglai, which was listed for the first time, ranked 46th in 2023 with 13 stores and 10.7 billion yuan in sales.
Moutai Ice Cream May Come to an End
Recently, the closure of Moutai Ice Cream stores in many places has attracted attention. In response to the above market news, the relevant person in charge of Guizhou Moutai said that Moutai Ice Cream has achieved certain results in cultivating young consumer groups. Currently, the company has chosen to actively shrink the ice cream business strategically.
Not only offline, but also in online sales, Moutai Ice Cream has withdrawn from major e-commerce platforms such as JD.com and Tmall, and the products in the Douyin flagship store have also been all removed from the shelves. And the Moutai Ice Cream products that are on sale have entered the clearance channels such as HotMaxx, and the products that were originally priced at 59 - 66 yuan can now be bought for only about 20 yuan. Some media reports said that Moutai Ice Cream has actually been out of production for more than half a year, and even in the summer peak season, no new goods have been put on the market. Now the discounted products are already part of the clearance inventory.
This also means that Moutai Ice Cream may come to an end.
Looking back at when it was just launched, Moutai Ice Cream was also very popular. In May 2022, Moutai Ice Cream was launched at the Guizhou Moutai International Hotel. On the same day, it created a record of selling more than 5,000 in 7 hours and achieving a sales volume of more than 200,000 in the Guiyang flagship store. On the same day, the 40,000 prepackaged ice creams listed on the "i Moutai" APP were all sold out within one hour, with a sales volume of over 2.5 million yuan. A product priced at 66 yuan was hyped to 250 yuan in the secondary market. As of April 2024, Moutai Ice Cream has opened 35 stores.
For Moutai, the significance of the ice cream business is not in revenue, but more in the transformation to a younger image. The same is true for the Maotai-flavored latte in cooperation with Luckin. It is easy to try something new across borders, but it is difficult to break through and retain. Regarding the issue of how to balance innovation and tradition, the current Moutai chairman Zhang Deqin mentioned in April 2024, "If some innovations in the market are not suitable for Moutai, the company will stop doing them" and "We should believe in Moutai's ability to correct mistakes."
Uniqlo's Performance in China Faces Challenges
On January 9, Fast Retailing Group, the parent company of Uniqlo, announced its first-quarter results for fiscal year 2025 (September - November 2024), showing that the company achieved revenue of 895.1 billion yen, an increase of 10.4% year-on-year; operating profit of 157.5 billion yen, an increase of 7.4% year-on-year; and net profit of 131.9 billion yen, an increase of 22.4% year-on-year.
Fast Retailing Group believes that the increase in performance is mainly due to the excellent sales performance of the Uniqlo business division in Japan, as well as the continuous and stable expansion of the Uniqlo business in Southeast Asia, India, Australia, North America and Europe.
Specifically, the first-quarter revenue of the Uniqlo business division in Japan was 266.6 billion yen, an increase of 9% year-on-year, and the operating profit was 52.1 billion yen, an increase of 12% year-on-year. The financial report explains that this increase in performance is related to the booming inbound tourism in Japan driving the growth of the tax exemption amount, and the company held the 40th anniversary festival in November, so the discount力度 was relatively large.
In addition, the overseas Uniqlo business division has achieved continuous growth. The total revenue in the first quarter was 501.7 billion yen, an increase of 13.7% year-on-year; the total operating profit was 83.5 billion yen, an increase of 7.4% year-on-year. Among them, due to the increase in the number of stores and the improvement in the sales per store, Uniqlo in Europe and the United States continued to exceed expectations, with a combined revenue of 170 billion yen in this quarter, an increase of 31.1% year-on-year. In the past year, Uniqlo has continued to open flagship stores in important European and American cities such as Rome and Houston, and the number of stores has increased from 36 to 179.
However, the performance in the Greater China region is facing challenges. Due to the continued sluggish consumption and the warm winter, Uniqlo's operating income in China from September to November 2024 was 178.6 billion yen, the same as the same period in the previous year, but the operating profit decreased by about 10%. As the largest source of overseas revenue for Uniqlo, Fast Retailing pointed out that in terms of future performance forecasts, due to the performance of the Greater China region not meeting expectations, it is expected that the overall overseas UNIQLO business division will be lower than expected.
New Brands
Pop Mart Starts to Make Jewelry
The value of emotional consumption is still rising.
Recently, Pop Mart officially released its jewelry brand "POPOP" to the public for the first time. According to the official introduction, POPOP JEWELRY is a jewelry brand born to light up the fun of life. Currently, POPOP will launch 5 series, including necklaces, rings, bracelets, etc. The POPOP limited-time pop-up store will be launched in Shanghai, Shenzhen and Chengdu from January 15.
The first new product series all carry the popular IP elements of Pop Mart, including HIRONO the Wild, MOLLY, SKULL PANDA, Crybaby, Zsiga, LABUBU, etc. Some of the design inspirations come from popular toy series, such as the HIRONO Reconstruction Series, SPACE MOLLY Series, MOLLY Little Painter Series, etc. From the style point of view, Pop Mart's jewelry continues its characteristics as a trendy toy brand, that is, heavy design, with a metallic sense and recognition. Previously, Pop Mart also collaborated with the jewelry brand Chow Sang Sang with the theme of "Traveling Dreams" to launch six themes of pure gold pendants and Charme bead series.
Beibingyang Launches Xiaodiaolishitang
There are endless cross-border players, and this time it is Beibingyang.
Recently, Beibingyang officially announced the launch of Xiaodiaolishitang, with a specification of 300 milliliters per can. In terms of price, the new Xiaodiaolishitang is sold by the box, and each box contains 6 cans and is priced at 50 yuan. Beibingyang said that compared with the summer, the peak season for beverage sales, launching products that meet the beverage needs of consumers in autumn and winter is conducive to making up for the traditional off-season of the beverage industry in winter.
Behind the step out of the comfort zone is the challenge of the shrinking market share of carbonated drinks. According to the Nielsen 2024 China Beverage Industry Trends and Outlook Report, focusing on the offline market of the beverage industry, from 2019 to 2023, the market sales shares of carbonated drinks were 18.4%, 20.4%, 21.2%, 21.2%, and 18.5% respectively. In 2023, ready-to-drink tea surpassed carbonated drinks to occupy the first place in the market sales share.
Beibingyang's multi-category development is not limited to Xiaodiaolishitang. In November 2024, Beibingyang entered the coffee track and launched "Wokachengzheng Latte". On January 1, Beibingyang entered the new track of plant protein beverages and launched the walnut and peanut plant protein beverage.
Marketing Matters
Nike Launches Women's Global Night Run Series
Recently, Nike announced the launch of the women's global night run series After Dark Tour, which is a global night run series exclusively for female runners. It is understood that from April 12 to June 21, this series will be held in six cities including Sydney, Shanghai, Seoul, Mumbai, Los Angeles and Mexico. Runners can participate in the night run challenge of 10 kilometers or half marathon, and the registration for the Shanghai station will start in April.
More and more sports equipment brands have noticed the importance of women in sports participation. According to the "China Outdoor Sports Industry Development Report (2022 - 2023)" released by the Sports Economy Department of the General Administration of Sports of China, among the outdoor sports participation groups, the post-90s have become the largest consumer group, accounting for 36.1%, followed by the post-80s group, accounting for 32.5%. More importantly, the pattern where men dominated outdoor sports in the traditional sense is being broken. Female participants account for 59.9%, exceeding 40.1% of men, and women's attention index to outdoor sports is also higher than that of men.
Weilong and KFC's "Crazy Thursday" Collaboration
Starting from January 9, the collaborative marketing between Weilong and KFC's "Crazy Thursday" will be launched for two consecutive weeks on the "Crazy Thursday". Based on the new flavor of Weilong's Sucking Finger Roast Gluten, the two sides have created a collaborative product "Spicy Flavor Large Chicken Strips", and formed a strong interaction with the young consumer group through the limited-time combination purchase mechanism of Crazy Thursday. In addition, Weilong will take the era emotion of "going crazy" as the entry point and display creative copy related to the "Crazy Thursday" theme in the collaborative theme store.
"Crazy Thursday" is originally a regular Thursday special offer event launched by KFC in 2018. Later, due to the fact that many netizens spontaneously produced a large number of paragraphs to flood the screen every Thursday, it quickly evolved into a phenomenal hot "meme". In 2021, KFC also personally certified and held the "Crazy Thursday Literature Festival". Until today, every Thursday, the "Crazy Thursday Literature" paragraphs compiled by netizens will always arrive as scheduled, rain or shine.
What's more
Rumor: Li-Ning Takes Away "Partner of the Chinese Olympic Committee" from Anta
According to media reports citing multiple sources, one of the important partners of the Chinese Olympic Committee (hereinafter referred to as COC) may be changed from Anta to Li-Ning. In the next 4-year cycle from 2025 to 2028, Li-Ning is very close to winning the cooperation rights of COC, with a total price of about 800 million yuan, and the annual average price has increased significantly compared to the previous cycle. Li-Ning was once a partner of COC for 12 years, but on June 23, 2009, Anta became the "Partner of the Chinese Olympic Committee".
Lululemon Signs Max Homa to Layout Golf Business
Lululemon continues to expand its sports menswear product line. Lululemon recently announced the appointment of Max Homa as its latest brand ambassador, officially laying out the golf business. According to the information, Max Homa is an American professional golfer and the winner of the Wells Fargo Championship in 2019, the Genesis Open in 2021 and the Valspar Championship in 2021. According to Lululemon's fiscal 2024 third-quarter earnings report released in early December, the company's third-quarter revenue increased by 9% year-on-year to $2.4 billion. The revenue of the Americas region in this quarter was $1.77 billion, with a year-on-year increase of only 2%, showing obvious weakness. The growth rate in the Chinese market has also slowed down, from 45% in the first quarter to