Daphne, Belle... Do You Still Wear These Former "Shoe Kings"?

Daphne, Belle, Red Dragonfly, and Noble Birds... They were once called the "King of Shoes", but now, they rarely stand on the top of the mountain.

Daphne, the "popular shoe king", has closed 3000 stores in the past three years, and its market value has shrunk from 19.5 billion Hong Kong dollars to less than 600 million Hong Kong dollars;

Belle, which dominated for a while, has become legendary for its grand occasion of "opening a new store in less than two days on average". The conventional operation is to close the store and stop loss;

And a generation Men's Shoes The giant rich bird is now heavily in debt, and only 4.2 billion debts have been obtained after 27 years of prosperity

The market is the battlefield, and the country that the "shoe kings" once played has changed dynasties.

Once upon a time, wearing Daphne was "more extraordinary than anyone else"

In 2005, there were 1326 comments on "Shrimp Music" on the new song "Laurel Goddess" of Taiwan women's group, one of which received 340 praises: "This song always feels like Daphne The commercial song ".

Daphne is also the name of the laurel goddess in Greek mythology.

Many young girls met Daphne through this song. They began to imagine that wearing Daphne would be "more extraordinary than anyone else".

Many people also began to notice that Daphne's stores were everywhere.

In fact, Daphne's expansion began in 2002, and since 2005, the expansion speed has been visible to the naked eye.

According to historical data, Daphne had about 500 sales outlets in 2002, and by 2014, it had grown to 5748! It has expanded nearly 10 times!

At the same time, with the increase of market exposure, Daphne's share price began to rise rapidly, from about 0.5 Hong Kong dollars to 11.84 Hong Kong dollars in 2012.

At that time, it was even said that at the peak of Daphne's sales Women's Shoes Almost one out of every five pairs comes from Daphne. The reputation of "Popular Shoe King" also spread.

In a twinkling of an eye, the red buildings and green tiles are in ruins

In April 2012, Daphne International (HK0210) reached a record high of HK $11.84, with a market value of more than HK $19.5 billion. This is the last time Daphne stood on the mountain top.

Then, Daphne share price Although there was a temporary recovery, it still failed to stop the momentum of the torrent. Since then, this "shoe king" stock has been falling for 6 years.

On September 7, 2018, Daphne International closed at 0.355 Hong Kong dollars, with a market value of 585 million Hong Kong dollars. Compared with six years ago, it has shrunk by 97%! Thin and shapeless.

Just a week ago, Daphne International released its performance report for the first half of the year as scheduled, showing that its turnover fell 15.6% to HK $2080.5 million. As of the semi annual report, Daphne has lost money for three consecutive years.

"Seeing him rise from the Zhulou, feast guests, and collapse of the building" might well sum up many girls who followed Daphne.

According to the data, from 2015 to 2017, Daphne closed 827 stores, 1030 stores and 1009 stores respectively. By the end of June 2018, the Group had 3386 stores, and 450 sales outlets were closed in the first half of the year.

The decline of shoe kings

Daphne, Belle, Aokang, Fuguiniao... Are you still wearing them?

Unfortunately, history does not simply "favor" Daphne, but "rain and dew". The answer of the market is already clear: the former shoe king has gone into decline.

Chen Yingjie, the former head of Daphne, once said that if Belle is a Mercedes Benz in the shoe industry, Daphne will be a Toyota.

Now that "Toyota" has gone, what about "Mercedes"?

Teenmix, Tata, Staccato, BASTO, Millies

It's said that every girl's shoe cabinet will have at least one pair of shoes of these brands. And they are all products of Belle.

According to statistics, at the most brilliant time, Belle Group had more than 2000 stores nationwide, 6 brands among the top 10 in the domestic women's shoes market, and had won the champion of China's women's shoes sales list for 13 consecutive years, deserving of being the largest company in China's shoes industry.

Sheng Baijiao, its CEO, once said: "Where there are women, there is Belle!" and "Where there are department stores, there is Belle!"

Time has changed. At 16:00 on July 27, 2017, Belle International officially announced its delisting from the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. The privatization price was HK $6.3 per share, with a total valuation of HK $53.1 billion. Compared with the peak market value of HK $150 billion, the market value fell by 65%, and nearly 100 billion Hong Kong dollars evaporated!

In this regard, Chen Ji, a professor at the Capital University of Economics and Business, said that the irrational rapid expansion and the inability to adapt to the changes in the consumption structure had become the fatal injury of Daphne and other shoe kings.

Take Daphne as an example. Since 2002, Daphne has expanded at the rate of more than 100 companies every year, and this expansion has lasted for more than 10 years.

At the same time, when Taobao was born in 2003, the pure offline store sales model was not enough to compete with Taobao stores.

Although Daphne became one of the first brands to embrace e-commerce in 2006, it strategically only uses online as a platform to clean up the tail stock, and its operational efficiency and product attraction are not as good as emerging fast fashion brands and online celebrity brands focusing on online operation channels.

In 2012, Daphne's inventory began to rise. In 2013, the sales revenue was 10.447 billion Hong Kong dollars, and the inventory reached 2.643 billion Hong Kong dollars. With 218 turnover days, Daphne's performance pressure can be seen.

In addition, Chen Ji said that the domestic consumption structure has changed in this period of time. Tourism and leisure shoes have become the main force in the footwear market. Old brand "shoe kings" like Daphne have become weak in market competitiveness while sticking to the original market.

Daphne, who had won at the starting line, failed to catch the fast train of e-commerce because of insufficient attention to e-commerce channels, lack of sufficient investment and layout, and slow reaction speed.

The Last Struggle

Transformation but not fashion, not attractive to fans

On May 7, 2017, Daphne International announced that the non-executive director Chen Yingjie resigned as the chairman of the board of directors and no longer acted as the authorized representative of the company. In addition, Executive Director and Chief Executive Zhang Zhikai has been appointed as Chairman of the Board of Directors, authorized representative of the Company and member of the Remuneration Committee.

After succeeding Chen Yingjie's team, Zhang Zhikai immediately set the first goal of the new leadership team - to attract the post-90s group with the most consumption potential. They closed the stores with losses and poor image and arranged for shopping centers.

In August of the same year, Daphne teamed up with New York buyer store brand Opening Ceremony to launch a cooperative model, which makes the brand look younger and more fashionable from the image, products and channels.

"To tell you the truth, she was not attracted." 29 year old Liu Yihan, an executive of a financial company, was once a loyal fan of Daphne. Her first pair of high heels came from here.

However, she believed that Daphne's so-called transformation was not successful. "At least, my friends of the same age would hardly choose another home when buying shoes." She said that, whether in the mall or online, there are many more cost-effective and fashionable choices.

Zhang Zhikai, executive director of Daphne, once said: "Daphne can't become a fashion brand completely, its historical brand value is still cost-effective mass women's shoes, and the market can't be completely overturned." This implied meaning is that Daphne can't do fashion, and still needs to continue the low price route.

Aokang and Daphne, which were listed in 2012, have similar mental processes.

After being besieged by online stores and just one year after its listing, Aokang's performance declined significantly. In 2013, its revenue and net profit decreased by 19.07% and 46.57% respectively year on year.

Although analysts all call this a typical "listing syndrome", the management firmly believes that "in this year of great challenges, there must be pain".

Chen Ji, a professor at the Capital University of Economics and Business, said that it was secondary to decorate stores or design shoes into a more fashionable look. The fundamental problem of these shoe enterprises is that they expand rapidly when the economic environment is depressed, which greatly hurts their vitality.

Chen Ji said frankly that if Daphne wanted to fight for vitality, they had to adjust the industrial structure to meet the needs of the market and consumers.