CCEE visits Europe: select businesses of Fashion Centrum Hamburg (MCH) to attend CCEE

Stefano Venza

Under the guidance of Zhejiang Government, Cifnews announced that it would partner with the Zhejiang Province E-commerce Promotion Association to hold the 2018 CCEE in Zhejiang. Then, Cifnews’ founder & CEO Barry Weng, VP Ken Zhao and the Global team set off for a visit to the European market.

The special trip calling for European collaboration not only adds an international element to the CCEE Zhejiang, which will be held in June but also follows the mission of Cifnews: to help global SMEs do cross-border business.

Cifnews will integrate more resources around the world to help Chinese premium brands access the global market.

On Apr. 08, 2018, Barry Weng, founder, and CEO of Cifnews, Ken Zhao, VP of Cifnews, Guido Ghedin, COO of Cifnews Global and the global team visited Fashion Centrum Hamburg, a mall in northern Germany, and made a trip to the offices and showrooms of the German womenswear brand Anna Justper. The Cifnews team recommended CCEE Zhejiang to the companies of the Centrum, and some have already agreed to attend.

It is hard to imagine that these modern interiors that are full of design were built in 1974 as a family services center. In the present day, with a total construction area of 77,500 square meters, it’s the heart of Germany’s fashion industry. It’s also increasingly becoming the most effective base for German clothing brands to sell to the Eastern European market.

Fashion Centrum Hamburg (MCH) brings together over 400 apparel brands, over 1,000 different collections of clothing and approximately 270 distribution offices. Each year, over 60,000 professional buyers and sellers come to purchase items. MCH has become Germany’s leading fashion center.

MCH has a wide range of SKU, and the price range is flexible. Both low-end and high-end suppliers cohabitate in the center. Markets include womenswear, menswear, hats, footwear, jeans, youth fashion apparel, accessories, children’s clothing, underwear, home goods, sportswear, footwear and leather products.

The Cifnews team also visited the German women’s brand Anna Justper in the MCH. Although this new fashion brand has only been established for three years, it currently has 500 offline retail stores in Europe.

Anna Justper founder, Lorenzo Lu, explained the German fashion apparel retail market to the team.

Lu said that in recent years the influence of low-quality products has challenged the traditional German textile industry to transform. In 2016, the industry evolved to face international competition through product innovation, well-designed goods, and flexible supply capabilities.

Meanwhile, taking into account the cost of cross-cultural communication and the logistics costs of transportation, the labor costs of Asian countries such as China and India have gradually lost their advantages. Therefore, some German companies have moved their factories to Poland, Bulgaria, Hungary, and Turkey.

Germany is the world’s fourth largest exporter of textile and apparel products following China, India, and Italy. In 2015, 49.1% of  German textiles and 37.3% of apparel products were exported. In Germany, companies pay more attention to the research and development of new products and technologies, by investing hundreds of millions of Euros each year, and the production costs have thus been effectively controlled and reduced.

Since e-commerce has transformed retail, the shopping habits of German consumers have also changed a lot. In the third quarter of 2016, the GMV of the German e-commerce industry amounted to 12.5 billion Euros, while apparel sales accounted for the largest proportion, accounting for 22.4% of the total sales.

In Germany, online sales, and exclusive agency sales using a vertical business model are the main distribution channels. For European consumers, despite the convenience of online shopping, e-commerce has not been able to realize the immersive quality of physical consumption. More and more clothing manufacturers have been showcasing and promoting products and brands in real life to build their customer base.