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Tag: China

  • Chinese tea chain Mixue expands into South Korea and Japan

    Chinese tea chain Mixue expands into South Korea and Japan

    Mixue, a Chinese tea-based beverages brand that is set to list on the main board of the Shenzhen Stock Exchange, has recently entered the South Korean and Japanese markets.

    In the beginning of November, an account named “MIXUE.Japa” became active on Xiaohongshu, a lifestyle-sharing Chinese social media platform, where it released a brief opening notice and site selection of its first store in Japan. The location is Omotesandō, Tokyo, a business district as popular as Harajuku and Shibuya, focusing on high-end fashion and creative clothing.

    According to Chinese web users living in Omotesandō, this high-end location isn’t concentrated with Chinese people, and it seems to be inconsistent with the low-cost style of Mixue. However, MIXUE.Japan quickly said in the comment area that besides Tokyo, it will expand to Kyoto and other places in the future.

    The first store in South Korea of Mixue officially opened at the end of October. It is located near Chung-Ang University, where local students and Chinese students often gather. In the first three days of opening, attracted by free ice cream, the store was crowded with customers.

    Many Chinese students posted pictures of products from the store on social media. The types of drinks are basically the same as those in China, but the prices are slightly higher. Lemonade is around 8 yuan ($1.14), which is similar to the price of a bottle of water in Korea, and the most expensive drink costs less than 16 yuan. The store was opened by Chinese people, and most of the employees in the store are also Chinese, so ordering in Mandarin is possible.

    Another Chinese milk tea brand called Gongcha has opened over 700 stores in South Korea, with a price range between 23 yuan and 42 yuan. Other milk tea brands, such as COCO, Tiger Sugar and Guming, have also expanded their stores to South Korea, and their product prices are much higher than those in China.

    Entering the Japanese and South Korean markets for the first time, Mixue has experienced imperfections in its operations. Due to the long journey to purchase raw materials from China and inconvenient logistics, Mixue was often out of stock after opening, and a large number of packages in the stores are still in Chinese. MIXUE.Japan’s short promotional video was also criticized by social media users because the translation was not in place.

    Established in 1997, Mixue opened its first overseas store in Hanoi, Vietnam in 2018. By the end of March, 2022, Mixue had opened 249 stores in the country, with a total revenue of 9,290,400 yuan and a net profit of -322,000 yuan. The brand runs 317 stores in Indonesia, with an operating income of 25.4108 million yuan and a net profit of 2,235,500 yuan.

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  • Japanese eyewear retailer Aigan to exit China

    Japanese eyewear retailer Aigan to exit China

    The company said that Japanese eyeglasses seller Aigan will leave the Chinese market as the impact of the coronavirus dims its hopes for turning a profit.

    Already weak earnings in China have been squeezed further by coronavirus-related disruptions that forced temporary store closures.

    The Osaka-based company’s Chinese arm has lost money for seven straight years since 2015.

    Aigan set up a China unit in 1994 and later expanded to six stores in Beijing and Tianjin, including franchisees.

    Also, on Monday, the company projected a group net loss of 425 million yen ($3 million) for the fiscal year ending March 2023 — wider than the previously forecast 315 million yen. It cited losses related to liquidating the Chinese unit, estimating them at 110 million yen.

  • Louis Vuitton picks Shanghai for first furniture and homewares store

    Louis Vuitton picks Shanghai for first furniture and homewares store

    Louis Vuitton on Friday announced plans to open a dedicated furniture and homewares store in Shanghai, a world first for the French luxury brand as it aims to expand further into lifestyle offerings to affluent Chinese clients.

    The appointment-only showroom, which will open on Monday, is located in a century-old three-storey mansion situated just behind Nanjing Road, the city’s premier upscale shopping strip.

    Louis Vuitton, part of LVMH, said in a statement the showroom will be trialed for several months as a pop-up and if successful will then become a permanent feature.

    While no price tags were on show at the store during a media preview, a Louis Vuitton employee said a brightly hued hanging cocoon chair designed by the Campana brothers is priced at more than 700,000 yuan ($97,860) and a small lamp resembling a glass milk bottle encased in leather straps cost 10,500 yuan.

    A smaller side building is dedicated to showing designs by Frank Chou, the first mainland Chinese designer tapped by Louis Vuitton to collaborate on the Objet Nomades collection, as the furniture and homewares ranges is known.

    Finding new avenues for growth, particularly among wealthy consumers, is becoming increasingly important for luxury brands in China as COVID-19 curbs, a property market decline, and widespread economic uncertainty pressure luxury spending.

    Louis Vuitton dipped its toes into a more lifestyle-oriented offering in China last month when it opened a store in the southwestern city of Chengdu that included an exhibition space and restaurant.

    “LMVH is striving to … reposition itself as a contemporary luxury brand by tapping new avenues that resonate with dynamic Chinese Millennials and Gen Z consumers,” said GlobalData consumer analyst Bobby Verghese, whose firm reckons sales in China’s home sector will grow to $782 billion by 2026.

    Verghese sees homewares as a good bet for Louis Vuitton, especially in China.

    “Unlike their predecessors who prioritized privacy, the Gen Y digital immigrants and Gen Z digital natives are not averse to flaunting their lifestyles on social media,” Verghese said. “LMVH aims to gain an early-bird advantage in this emerging space.”

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  • JD.com to slash top exec salaries amid China’s ‘common prosperity’ push

    JD.com to slash top exec salaries amid China’s ‘common prosperity’ push

    China’s JD.com said on Tuesday it would cut the salaries of more than 2,000 senior managers by 10% to 20% next year to help pay for improved benefits for other staff amid the government’s “common prosperity” drive to reduce income inequality.

    Liu also plans to personally donate 100 million yuan to a fund that help children of JD employees should anything happen to their parents, said the letter circulated online and later confirmed by JD.com as authentic.

    “The employee benefits plan is currently being improved, with a focus on front-line staff,” a JD representative told Reuters. The company has 540,000 employees.

    Alibaba Group 9988.HK and Tencent Holdings 0700.HK last year pledged to spend billions to support the effort, while state-owned investment banks have implemented pay cuts and delayed bonus payments this year.

    JD has been hit by a slowing economy and flagging consumer spending this year, though it last week posted an 11.4% rise in third-quarter revenue and said it was seeing signs of a demand recovery as China adjusted it zero-COVID policy.

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  • Tim Hortons teams up with Alibaba to woo Chinese coffee drinkers

    Tim Hortons teams up with Alibaba to woo Chinese coffee drinkers

    The operator of Canadian coffee chain Tim Hortons in China said on Thursday it had forged a two-year partnership with Alibaba Group’s grocery chain that will see the two launch co-branded products.

     Freshippo will begin sales next month at its stores, of which it has more than 300, as well as through its official app, it said in a statement. Products will include drinks such as Velvet Cocoa Coffee.

    Tims China, whose backers include Tencent Holdings, opened its 500th outlet in China last month and has set its sights on having a “profitable network” of 2,750 stores in the country by 2026.

    Even so it would still lag Starbucks, the dominant foreign coffee brand in China with 6,000 stores and which also has a wide-ranging partnership with Alibaba.

    Tims China was founded in 2019 by Cartesian Capital Group and Canada’s Restaurant Brands International, which also owns the Burger King and Popeyes brands in addition to Tim Hortons.

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  • Chinese luxury resale platform Plum bags $100 million in funding

    Chinese luxury resale platform Plum bags $100 million in funding

    Plum, a used luxury fashion e-commerce platform, announced on November 1 that it had completed a C round of financing worth $100 million. In this round, Zhuanzhuan, a Tencent-backed leading used goods trading marketplace in China, made the strategic investment. Xu Wei, founder and CEO of Plum, said that the funds will be mainly for upgrades in service, user experience, product R&D and database construction.

    Plum was established in 2017. The platform focuses on second-hand luxury goods trading, and its products cover all categories of fashion trends such as bags, shoes, clothing, jewelry and watches. According to statistics published by Aurora Mobile, in the fourth quarter of 2021, the number of monthly active users of Plum exceeded that of Secoo, a famous luxury e-commerce platform in China, ranking first among the luxury e-commerce platforms. In addition, Plum’s business has achieved rapid growth this year, and its business income has doubled since 2022 compared with the same period of last year.

    Apart from Xu Wei, Plum was jointly founded by Pang Bo. CEO Xu Wei is the co-founder of Blink and served as the investment director at Sinovation Ventures. She is said to be a serial entrepreneur. Pang Bo is currently the CTO of Plum, who is a former senior engineer of Baidu, and has more than 10 years of technical management experience.

    In recent years, Plum is investing in improving its standardized service capabilities, focusing on building key modules in the performance operating system such as commodity identification, commodity information and price database. It aims to build the largest second-hand fashion transaction database in China.

    The cooperation between Plum and Zhuanzhuan, two second-hand trading platforms, is not only reflected in the capital level. Before this financing, Plum’s products had been available through Zhuanzhuan and other “exclusive” channels such as bags, accessories, designer shoes, watches and clothing. Plum’s products complement the other’s core 3C (Computer, Communication and Consumer Electronics) category. In addition, Plum will also do commodity recycling in Zhuanzhuan’s channel.

    The rational and low-carbon consumption concept is gaining traction and second-hand trading such as used cars, 3C items and books continue to prosper. According to an industry research report by Frost & Sullivan, the transaction scale of second-hand idle goods in China has increased from about 300 billion yuan ($41.2 billion) in 2015 to over one trillion yuan in 2020, and it is estimated that this figure will reach nearly 3 trillion yuan by 2025.

  • Tesla closes its first showroom in China in retail strategy shift

    Tesla closes its first showroom in China in retail strategy shift

    Electric vehicle giant Tesla has closed what had been its flagship showroom in China as the company adjusts its sales and service strategy in its second-largest market, two people with knowledge of the matter said.

    Tesla shut the showroom in Beijing’s Parkview Green, an upscale downtown shopping centre late last week, according to the people, who spoke on condition they not be named because they were not authorised to discuss the closure.

    A member of the mall’s staff confirmed to Reuters during a visit to the site on Wednesday that Tesla had shut the showroom, whose windows are now plastered with posters belonging to the next tenant, a streetwear brand.

    “Their contract with us expired and Tesla decided not to extend it,” the mall staff member said.

    A call to the store earlier in the day was redirected to another Tesla showroom nearby. Tesla did not immediately reply to a request for comment.

    The Beijing store, opened in 2013, was Tesla’s first in China. It was renovated in 2018 and expanded to occupy two floors of the mall.

    Tesla owns and runs over 200 outlets across the country that display models and arrange test drives for potential buyers.

    Reuters reported in September that Tesla was considering closing some showrooms in flashy malls in cities like Beijing after traffic plunged during Covid restrictions.

    It also plans to put more emphasis on stores in less-costly suburban locations that can also provide repairs as the company works to meet Chief Executive Elon Musk’s goal of improving service for customers.

    As part of that effort, Tesla has been hiring technicians and other staff for service jobs in China. The company’s China recruitment website showed 305 openings for service jobs as of Wednesday, little changed from September.

    More than half of Tesla’s China stores do not offer repair or maintenance services and are in high-rent locations where space is limited. That included the now-closed Parkview Green Tesla store.

    Tesla owns all of its own stores rather than relying on dealers. It also sells its cars online. That has allowed it more leeway to adjust a retail strategy that had been initially modeled on Apple’s glossy stores in high-rent locations.

    Tesla has cut starter prices for its Model 3 and Model Y cars by as much as 9 per cent in China, reversing a trend of price increases across the industry amid signs of softening demand in the world’s largest auto market.

    Tesla sold 318,151 vehicles in China in the first nine months of 2022, up 55 per cent from a year earlier, according the China Passenger Car Association. By comparison, overall sales of electric vehicles and hybrids increased 113.2 per cent.

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  • Swiss Banks Face a Tense Future in China

    Swiss Banks Face a Tense Future in China

    President Xi Jinping’s report to the 20th Communist Party congress hints at more tax and regulatory measures aimed at reducing wealth disparities.

    In the last two decades, the Swiss wealth management sector has been forced to directly confront and contend with the vagaries of the world’s two largest economies in the world – China and the US.

    In the case of the US, it has been anything but a delicate balancing act. Most of the wealth management industry has been manhandled into coughing up material fines for abetting tax evasion attempts by American citizens.

    China has been different. The wealth management sector has seen the country as the greatest new market of our time. For decades, bankers have returned wide-eyed from trips to Beijing and Shanghai, effusively spouting about this wide-open, boundless future full of promise. Many have been able to benefit copiously, from the unheard-of growth rates that country has experienced since the turn of the millennium.

    The two major Swiss banks have built onshore presences. And the smaller private banks and wealth managers that haven’t can still catch any passing outflows from the wealthy Chinese with their booking centers in the proximate cities of Hong Kong and Singapore.

    Although the political and economic differences between the US and China are indescribably wide, there is one striking similarity. They both tax citizens on their worldwide income. In China, almost all nationals are defined as being domiciled in China unless they live in Hong Kong, Macau, or Taiwan.

    That similarity could be a very significant inflection point for private banks and wealth management. And that looks likely to continue unhindered, at least according to President Xi Jinping’s report to the 2022 party congress on Sunday. In a translated transcript published by Nikkei Asia that was provided to journalists covering the event, he indicated:

    We will enhance the roles of taxation, social security, and transfer payments in regulating income distribution. We will improve the personal income tax system and keep income distribution and the means of accumulating wealth well-regulated. We will protect lawful income, adjust excessive income, and prohibit illicit income.

    That message has already been made very clear to China’s celebrities and influencers who were fined late last year for tax evasion.

    It is going to be very tough going for anyone trying to bank what many would consider the core target client base for a wealth manager or a private bank.

    That view seems to be borne out more generally, with Hong Kong’s daily English newspaper, the South China Morning Post , writing on Thursday that the wealthy Chinese could face a rocky road ahead.

    All of this, taken together, puts wealth managers in a double bind. Not only are they going to have to parse carefully and regularly review and re-review their client base for possible tax discrepancies, but they are going to have to go to pains to make sure that they are not making anyone excessively wealthy, at least not in the eyes of the Chinese government.

    What that means in practice is anyone’s guess. But for an industry traditionally known for privacy and discretion, it is a very big ask.

  • Swedish fashion label Filippa K launches into Mainland China

    Swedish fashion label Filippa K launches into Mainland China

    The online store features the brand’s new autumn/winter 22 collection, as well as the core women’s, men’s, active and loungewear collections.

    Creative Director Liisa Kessler’s first collection for Filippa K, the spring/summer 23 pre-collection, will be available from November.

    Filippa K’s CEO Rikard Frost said: “Scandinavian customers have loved Filippa K for many years, so I’m very excited to have introduced the brand to China this year. The house has a unique position within high-end fashion, offering a distinctly Scandinavian design perspective that’s rooted in sustainability. I hope the Chinese audience will appreciate this approach as much as we do.”

    Mei Chen, head of fashion and luxury in the UK, US and Northern Europe at Alibaba Group, said: “The Chinese market offers great potential for Scandinavian fashion brands, where there is a strong demand for timeless Scandinavian design and quality goods with a sustainability profile, qualities which Filippa K embodies. Connecting brands like Filippa K with over 1 billion consumers, Tmall continues to support businesses in their international growth strategy.”

    Filippa K was founded in 1993 by designer Filippa Knutsson. She stepped away from the creative director role in 2019 but remains as a shareholder.

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  • Miniso launches ‘$2 plus’ concept store in Canada

    Miniso launches ‘$2 plus’ concept store in Canada

    Chinese retailer MINISO unveiled a new “$2 Plus” concept at the re-opening of its Vaughan Mills store in the Greater Toronto Area. The concept reflects MINISO’s aim to provide shoppers with a unique in-store experience while offering excellent value, well-designed products in response to the effects of rising inflation on consumer budgets.

    Having been closed for refurbishment for several months, MINISO’s store at Vaughan Mills, one of the largest shopping malls in Canada, re-opened its doors to shoppers with a brand-new look. Inspired by MINISO’s original creation, the MINI Family of adorable animal characters, the store’s remodeled interior embodies the brand’s lively and youthful atmosphere and reflects the company’s intention to feature more of its own original products.

    The revamp heralds MINISO’s new direction in Canada, introducing the brand’s all-new “$2 Plus” concept to local consumers. The concept sees MINISO take inspiration from the much-loved dollar store as a means of offering customers products at low prices, while the brand provides more diverse and higher quality goods than traditional low-cost retailers. As inflationary pressures grow, MINISO’s long-standing Chinese supply chain capabilities ensure customers, who are increasingly cost-conscious, can rely on the “$2 Plus” model for quality, affordable, design-led products today and into the future.

    “Ever since we first set foot in Canada in 2017, our ambition has been to provide customers with well-designed products at reasonable prices, as well as enjoyable shopping experiences, and the ‘$2 Plus’ concept is our way of further realizing this. With affordable prices and a unique treasure hunt shopping experience in-store, our ‘$2 Plus’ stores aim to be the go-to place for everyone looking for quality lifestyle products on a budget,” said Bella Tu, General Manager of MINISO Overseas Operations.

    The Vaughan Mills store is one of the first four stores to be refashioned for the “$2 Plus” concept. Three other stores, in the Scarborough district of Toronto, Markham, and Vancouver, also opened on the same day. The remaining MINISO stores in Canada are slated to undergo similar makeovers soon.

    MINISO has opened 50 outlets across Canada since May 2017. The brand is well-known for its licensed collections with Marvel and Disney, We Bare Bears, Coca-Cola and more.

  • Apple adds 4 companies in Vietnam to supplier list

    Apple adds 4 companies in Vietnam to supplier list

    Apple has added four new suppliers in Vietnam for the 2021 financial year, bringing the total to 25 out of its 190 suppliers worldwide.

    The most popular Apple suppliers in Vietnam include Foxconn and Luxshare and subsidiaries of Samsung, Intel and LG.

    The only supplier it excluded from the list was Foster Electric with factories in Binh Duong and Da Nang.

    China remains the most significant manufacturing hub for Apple, accounting for half of all manufacturers.

    The biggest company in the world by market cap is said to be increasing its manufacturing activity in Vietnam, and is set to produce Apple Watch and Macbook in the country.

    Vietnam will make 65% of Apple wireless AirPods by 2025 as the U.S. tech giant continues to shift its production away from China, JP Morgan analysts have forecast.

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  • Apple moved iPhone 14 production out of China in mere weeks

    Apple moved iPhone 14 production out of China in mere weeks

    Apple is trying to diversify its supply chain away from China on rolling pandemic lockdowns there, as well as geopolitical headwinds between US and China, on one hand, or China and Taiwan, on the other, as that’s where the headquarters of its main assembler Foxconn is located.

    Foxconn, however, has also built operations in India, in factories near Chennai, and Apple’s iPhone 14 production diversification effort there went so well, that it was able to start shipping phones made in India mere weeks after the Chinese output instead of the two months expected initially.

    According to Jeff Pu, an analyst with Haitong International Securities, “India is now an attractive location for manufacturing as it offers better labor cost structure while Apple is looking to reduce geopolitical risks,” while Aruna Sundararajan, a former government secretary there, adds that “all major companies are now looking at India as part of their ‘China-plus one’ or ‘China-plus two’ strategy.”

    When asked for a comment on the successful transition of part of the iPhone 14 production schedule from China to India, Apple simply commented that it is “excited to be manufacturing iPhone 14 in India,” somewhat confirming that the conveyor belt launch has been smooth and earlier than anticipated.

    Apple started its production plans in India slow, with lowly entry-level iPhones like the SE, assembled by Winstron, then moved up the ladder to handsets like the iPhone 13 in the newfangled Foxconn factories.
    It typically doesn’t start manufacturing there on the same year the iPhone models are released, but 2022 is apparently different as it is in a hurry to diversify production away from China.
    Coordinating hundreds of component and critical material suppliers, delivering assembly equipment, and training a competent workforce must have been a Herculean task. Tim Cook’s supply chain management knowledge and Foxconn’s production prowess must have coalesced to shine with an iPhone 14 Indian production mere weeks after Foxconn started assembling the new series in China.
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  • McDonald’s China launches its first zero-carbon restaurant

    McDonald’s China launches its first zero-carbon restaurant

    Leading fast-food chain McDonald’s China opened the company’s first zero carbon restaurant in the Shougang Park in Beijing recently part of its upcoming move to open more new green outlets in the country.

    The McDonald’s Shougang Park restaurant is designed and constructed in line with LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) net zero carbon and net zero energy certification standards.

    For a building to be net-zero it must remove as much carbon dioxide from the atmosphere as it emits throughout its lifespan, both in the form of embodied carbon and operational carbon associated with construction, occupation, and eventual demolition.

    Powered by on-site solar panels of over 2,000 square meters, the new restaurant is a milestone for the company’s China unit to achieve net zero carbon emission in the country by 2050. There are about 5000 McDonald restaurants in China.

    “With the scaling up of our business, we are determined to take up more social responsibilities to feed and foster our communities,” said Phyllis Cheung, CEO of McDonald’s China.

    “We will continue to drive high speed and sustainable growth by creating a future where people and the planet will thrive. We will focus on opening more green restaurants and embed green experience throughout consumer journey.”

    McDonald’s China will offer a series of green experience activities to consumers nationwide to advocate low carbon lifestyle, which includes the sealing sticker on the paper bags turning into green colors, or discounted Filet-O-Fish, which uses 100 percent Marine Stewardship Council certified codfish.

    Collaborating with Amap, McDonald’s will provide a cup of free coca cola to the customers who use Amap navigation app and arrive at McDonald’s restaurants by bike or on foot from Sep 20 to Oct 4.

    About 1,600 LEED certified McDonald’s green restaurants will change the color of their location icon on McDonald’s app, enabling over 200 million registered members to find their nearest green restaurant easily.

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  • UBS is Hiring a Team to Filter Chinese Research

    UBS is Hiring a Team to Filter Chinese Research

    UBS has reportedly hired a team of «content reviewers» in order for its Chinese research publications to be free of any sensitivities.

    UBS is hiring a team of content reviewers for its Chinese research publications, according to a report citing a job ad from the bank’s wealth unit posted in July.

    You will ensure that all our Chinese language publications are   free of any sensitivities, the ad said, underlining that the «language, tone and content will need to be appropriate and adhere to regulatory and internal guidelines.

    The team will sit alongside the research editing team. Thus far, one reviewer has been hired in Hong Kong and the bank is seeking to recruit more people in Singapore, according to a source in the report.

    The recruitment of the team follows three years after UBS’s wealth arm suspended its global chief economist Paul Donovan over comments made in a research report about pigs during a swine fever outbreak which was perceived as distatestful and racist.

    UBS would suffer blowback with Hong Kong-based Chinese brokerage Haitong International Securities cancelling all work with the bank and self-regulatory body Securities Association of China telling members not to quote Donovan’s research or invite him to events.

    Donovan would eventually be reinstated four months later after issuing an apology for having unwittingly used hugely culturally insensitive language.

  • Chinese automaker Chery plans to set up plant in Vietnam

    Chinese automaker Chery plans to set up plant in Vietnam

    China’s state-owned Chery Automobile has said it wants to sell its first made-in-Vietnam car by next year.

    “We want to build a factory in Vietnam as we don’t want to merely import and sell cars,” Chery Vietnam director Tocy Tang told VnExpress.

    The plant would allow Chery to “build vehicles that are localized for Vietnamese and optimize its potential,” while enhancing the branding of Chinese cars in Vietnam, he said.

    Several Chinese auto brands like BAIC, Hongqi and Brilliance are present in Vietnam, but they are imported by a dealer in Hai Phong.

    Founded in 1997, Chery is the ninth largest car manufacturer and top exporter in China. It also produces Jaguar and Land Rover in China under a 50:50 joint venture with the UK-based luxury carmaker.