Over the next few years, London will notice an increase in Chinese retailers. There are as many as five retailers showing an interest in the London market in order to set up stores, including retailers JNBY, Li-Ning and luxury menswear brand Eve Enterprise Group.
The first entrant in the London market was Bosideng in the month of July, 2011. Peter Thomas, who is the director of retail at Savills in central London said, “While its one of China’s largest clothing companies, our research has shown that it only ranked sixth domestically in terms of annual retail sales, meaning that while it was one of the first to land in London, it certainly won’t be one of the last to take a store here”.
Savills reports also say that among retailers with the highest annual turnover, many including Li-Ning and JNBY have already begun expansions into Europe and the US. In order to analyse the impact of some of the top Chinese retailers, the firm has compared their annual turnover with that of the expanding American based retailers Forever 21 and J Crew. J Crew has just announced their first UK Store on Regent Street, which is a prime shopping location. J Crew makes a global turnover of approximately £990 million. As compared to China’s top seven retailers, which have turnovers of about £850 million.
