"king of shoes" Belle transformation first through the quality barrier
On May 21, Beijing Business News reporter learned from the official website of Shandong Municipal Bureau of Quality Supervision that 39 batches of unqualified products were disclosed in its recent release of footwear product quality supervision and sampling results, the unqualified issues involved formaldehyde, outsole Abrasion resistance, folding resistance, logo, etc., the unqualified detection rate of 39%. Among them, one batch of Belle Belle female travel shoes were detected "formaldehyde" project failed.
Ltd. on its sales of "BELLE" women's travel shoes test results, and applied for re-inspection; by the Qingdao Institute of Product Quality Inspection after re-inspection, maintaining the original initial test conclusions, Belle the product still failed.
On this quality inspection failure-related issues, Beijing Business News reporter interviewed Belle, but did not receive a reply as of press time.
The product quality failure under Belle is not a new thing. 2020 October, the Guangdong Provincial Market Supervision Administration issued a footwear product quality notice, Belle and its Best, Timex, and other footwear due to quality problems were named. Among them, Bata sheep leather female casual shoes, JOY PEACE female leather shoes were found to be unqualified peel strength; BASTO's cow leather female leather boots failed to pass the folding resistance, Tianmei cattle cutting layer leather female travel shoes there are decomposable harmful aromatic amine dyes unqualified. Previously in Ningbo Municipal Bureau of Market Supervision informed the 2019 circulation of footwear quality sampling inspection, a total of four batches were found unqualified, including the Belle brand. 2018 Liaoning Provincial Bureau of Industry and Commerce issued the circulation of women's clothing, footwear and underwear and other goods in the sampling test results, there are 63 batches of goods quality failed, the same unqualified products involving Belle brand.
According to the information disclosed by the Shandong Quality Supervision Bureau, Belle's unqualified products manufacturer is Lirong Footwear (Shenzhen) Co. The production units of Belle's unqualified products disclosed by the Guangdong Municipal Bureau during 2020 are New Belle Footwear (Shenzhen) Co.
It is understood that Lihua Footwear Trading Co., Ltd. was founded in 1981 by Deng Yao in Hong Kong. 1991, it was established in Shenzhen, Belle Shoes Co. With the development, Belle was once crowned as the "King of Shoes" by the industry, with more than 20,000 stores in the country at its peak.
The good times did not last long, with the rise of e-commerce, to offline department stores channel-based Belle encountered impact. Public data show that since 2012, Belle's net profit only reached single-digit growth; in 2015, Belle saw the first significant decline in net profit since its listing nine years ago, down 38%; in 2016, it fell by 18%. By 2017, Belle International's net profit had fallen from 4.764 billion yuan in 2015 to 2.403 billion yuan, accompanied by the reduction of thousands of footwear retail self-operated stores.
In 2017, the news of Belle's decision to privatize and delist came out, and in July of that year, a consortium consisting of investors such as High Tide Capital and Wise Ventures officially privatized Belle for HK$53.1 billion.
Five years after the privatization, Belle returned to the public's view under the management of High Tide Capital - back to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. According to the official website of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, Belle IPO is currently in the lapse stage.
It is worth mentioning that in these years of Belle's privatization, a series of transformation and development measures have been formulated and implemented for the footwear business, including repositioning the brand, investing a lot of resources to develop online business, optimizing offline retail channels and accelerating digital transformation. According to the information in its previously filed prospectus, the revenue contribution from its online channels increased from less than 7% before delisting to more than 25%. Meanwhile, Belle is also trying to shift to casual sports style, such as co-branding with sports brands and investing in designer sportswear brand MAIA ACTIVE.
In the footwear industry independent analyst, Shanghai Liangqi brand management Co., Ltd. founder Cheng Weixiong, with the impact of the epidemic, Belle and mainly offline channels, especially offline earnings conversion, performance is affected to a certain extent, the failure of the listing does not exclude this factor. But with the continuous transformation and development of Belle, the corresponding performance will also be certain to improve, and then listed may only be a matter of time.
"The impact of sports footwear brands on traditional women's footwear brands is really not small, especially compared with the current head brand Nike, Adi, etc., Belle has a certain gap. These years can be seen, Belle also in accordance with the market demand for continuous transformation, but for many times named product failure Belle, how to control the quality is equally important." Cheng Weixiong said.