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Chinese fashion brand Urban Revivio is not keen on online retail
While brick-and-mortar retail is facing many challenges including increasing operating costs, Ubran Revivio, a Chinese fast fashion brand, is expanding. And it opened a flagship store in Westfield, in London, recently.
Since it entered Singapore in 2016, this is the brand’s third store overseas. Li Mingguang, the founder of the brand, believes that entering the overseas market could extend the life cycle of the brand by 15-20 years on average.
He says that such a move helps in promoting the internationalization of product design and brand management, discovering consumer demand for fashion and catching up with trends in Europe.
“With internationalization, the brand will keep growing in the retail market, lead to better quality of products, improve the image of the store, and better the experience and the service provided in the future,” says Li.
“London is the first stop on our way expanding in the European market and achieving globalization. We believe that the city will inspire UR to create a new sense of fashion.”
Westfield London covers an area of 2.6 million square feet (792,000 square meters), and it is believed to be the biggest shopping mall in Europe.
The UR retail store of 2,000 sq m offers a well-designed space. And purple clay, the traditional material used to make a Chinese tea set is used on the walls and the floor.
Meanwhile, new changing rooms were introduced in nine shops in China at the beginning of November. And they are painted with representative symbols of London — like Big Ben, the British royal guards, and the red telephone booth — in the style of pop art.
Also, using the theme “Hello London”, artist Christopher Tak and the brand jointly launched a limited-edition handbag based on Tak’s art piece called New Stars.
Separately, according to Li, the brand has set up over 235 retail shops at home and abroad in the past 12 years.
In China, the retail shops are located in middle-to-large-scale shopping malls in first and second tier cities, including Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, and new first tier one like Chengdu and Hangzhou.
The choice of location is aimed to ensure a good visitor flow rate and draw in diverse consumer groups.
With its “Play Fashion” brand concept, UR offers not just trendy products but also attaches importance to the shopping environment and experience. So, it frequently changes shop design to refresh the brand image.
To attract young, fashionable peo-
ple who pay attention to the fashion trends, UR took a bold step and opened an unmanned retail store in October in Shanghai.
UR is going with the trend of offline retailing. And it will soon reach Thailand, the United States, France and Japan.
London is the first stop on our way expanding in the European market and achieving globalization.” Li Mingguang founder of Ubran Revivio