Allbirds, the once globally popular athleisure footwear brand, is to relaunch its China market with Belle Fashion Group (Belle Fashion). 

On August 2, Allbirds announced that effective June 28, 2024, it officially transferred its exclusive operating rights in China to Belle Fashion. The operating rights include the distribution of Allbirds' products in retail, online and wholesale channels.

Guangzhou Fashion Headhunter learned that Belle Fashion already has a multi-brand operation of mature experience, Allbirds global business is in the node of strategic transformation, to take the Allbirds China operating rights, is the Belle Fashion more brand portfolio of attempts.

In 2014, Tim Brown, New Zealand's international footballer and founder of Allbirds, launched a crowdfunding campaign for minimally designed wool athleisure shoes at $98 a pair, raising $119,000 in five days.

Joey Zwillinger, a recycled materials scientist and co-founder of Allbirds, solved the problem of wool not being strong enough by choosing extremely fine merino wool with a diameter of 12.5 microns as the fabric, and using the tanning process for the fabric to address the non-abrasion-resistant nature of wool. The pursuit of comfort and quality control have made Allbirds followed and recognized by many consumers. Time Magazine once named Allbirds' Wool Runners "the most comfortable shoes in the world".

In 2019, Allbirds entered the Chinese market, opening its first store in Taikoo Hui, Shanghai. People passing by find this niche brand foreign. After all, former U.S. President Barack Obama, Google co-founder Larry Page, and Apple CEO Tim Cook are all fans of Allbirds. Hollywood movie star Little Li Zi is not only an investor in Allbirds, but also starred in its first branding video to enter the Chinese market.

In 2021, Allbirds was listed on the NASDAQ. After listing, Allbirds financial performance is disappointing, inferior to almost the same time "out of the circle" On Ang run, HOKA and other emerging sports brands.

Previously, Allbirds has agreed to cooperate with distributors in Canada, Korea, Japan, Australia and New Zealand. And in the Chinese market, Allbirds chose to cooperate with Belle Fashion.

Industry insiders point out that Allbirds is in the high-potential track of sports and leisure, and has a good international reputation, high-quality brand image and assets are high-quality fundamentals, and now urgently need to solve the problem of localized operations.

After entering the Chinese market, according to the statistics of the Guangzhou fashion recruitment agency, Allbirds opened 6 stores and has 230,000 fans in its Tmall flagship store. On On Run, which entered the Chinese market at almost the same time, has opened 22 stores by the end of 2023 and currently has 720,000 fans on its Tmall flagship store.

In contrast, Allbirds' ability to localize its omni-channel operations in the Chinese market is clearly lacking. It is worth noting that this is precisely the strength of Belle Vogue.

From the perspective of the footwear and apparel industry, as a non-standard product, footwear pays more attention to the offline experience, coupled with the increasingly peaked online traffic, offline still need to maintain a larger proportion of the omni-channel development is more important to look at the overall and structural. According to Frost & Sullivan, the proportion of online retail sales in the total retail sales of China's fashion trend market is expected to rise from 26.1% in 2020 to 31.5% in 2025. Currently, the industry's online-to-offline revenue ratio of 3:7 is ideal.

For a long time, Belle Fashion has adhered to the DTC model, and has continued to optimize the channel structure and upgrade capacity since the digital transformation in 2017, with online increasing and offline adjusting, and the current online revenue share has risen from less than 7% before the transformation to about 30%, and the share of shopping centers and emerging channels in the offline aspect has risen to about 30%, and the share of department stores has been adjusted downward to about 40%. In addition to structural optimization, it also highly integrates online and offline channels to form a national inventory, achieving efficiency improvement and inventory optimization.

According to Guangzhou Garment Headhunter, Belle Fashion has the largest directly-managed fashion footwear and apparel retail network in China, with more than 8,000 directly-managed stores and tens of thousands of shopkeepers in China. The extensive network of offline stores and sales clerks not only serves as a strong sales and service channel, but also serves as a frontline touchpoint for the brand to reach a large consumer base, while the continuously implanted digital capabilities have significantly enhanced the operational efficiency of single stores, with the annualized average sales of single stores for the nine months ended November 30, 2023 recording a same-store sales growth rate of 16.1% as compared to the same period in 2022.

According to Frost & Sullivan, Belle Fashion has been the No. 1 fashion footwear market share in China in terms of retail sales for more than 10 consecutive years, of which the market share further expands to 12.3% in 2022, making it the leading fashion trend company and the largest fashion footwear company in China. The Company already has 19 core private brands and co-brands covering the categories of women's shoes, men's shoes, children's shoes, apparel and accessories, including BELLE, TATA, STACCATO, 73Hours, Joy&Peace, BASTO, TooManyShoes which are set in the fashionable and popular fashion, SKAP, hush puppies in the functional and casual fashion, Bata, SENDA, TEENMIX, Champion, CAT, ellesse of sports and leisure, OGR, INITIAL, MOUSSY, SLY of trend and vigor.

According to China Fashion Headhunter, "This is a win-win cooperation with mutual reinforcement. For Allbirds, Belle Fashion can make up for the short board of Allbirds in localized operation and bring new growth engine and vitality. For Belle Fashion, there is Champion before and Allbirds after, the inclusion of high-quality international sports and leisure brands is not only the optimization of the brand matrix, but also the expansion of the group's ability to expand the boundaries - Belle Fashion is not just women's shoes.