Fashion retailer ASOS plans move to China
Global online fashion retailer ASOS has plans to enter Chinese markets, a decision that hinged on the company’s recent aggressive sales growth – a 41 percent rise in year profit. The company has declared that it is well on its way to hitting the mark of one billion pounds (more than $2 billion) in sales by 2015, making the move to China official, reported The Straits Times.
“It is not a question of if, but when,” ASOS CEO Nick Robertson said to Reuters, noting that the expansion into China could take several years to become reality.
China trails Britain, the United States, France and Germany as ASOS’s most crucial market.
“It will be a partnership because we can't do it independently,” Robertson said to Reuters. “It's part of a strategic play. You've got to think where it would be in 10 years.” This partner, he revealed, will most likely be Chinese.
Robertson would not guarantee that an expansion into China, through the launch of a local language website, would occur in 2011. Further details will be released in October along with the company’s interim results.
ASOS’s designs attract Web-savvy young women seeking ensembles that emulate the designer styles of celebrities such as Kate Moss, Sienna Miller and Alexa Chung, without the hefty purchase price.
With the launch of American, French and German websites, the firm has seen incredible growth and anticipates a further rise in sales with the unveiling of websites catering to Spain, Italy and Australia, scheduled for 2011. The firm reported earning a pretax profit of 28.6 million pounds in the first three months of the year.
Purple Neon/LadyLUX via ASOS
