Affected By The Outbreak Of COVID-19 Coronavirus Pneumonia, The Clothing Industry Suffered A "Cut Off".

Affected by the outbreak of COVID-19 coronavirus pneumonia, the total retail sales of consumer goods in China recorded a 20.5% decline in the first two months of 2020, the worst performance ever recorded.

Since the end of January, due to the closure of cities in Wuhan and Hubei, other provinces and cities have also issued strict restrictive strategies for people flow, resulting in almost no stagnation in retail businesses except for food, medicine and other necessities of daily necessities. Although the online market is still open, the restriction of the flow of people in the Spring Festival holiday has led to serious shortage of logistics personnel.

As the statistics released by the statistics bureau are the comprehensive data for 1-2 months, and the Spring Festival in 2020 was advanced to January, in fact, the retail industry suffered less impact in January, but benefited from the advance of the Spring Festival holiday. However, a number of retailers' data showed that the performance in February was "cut off" and dragged down the overall performance in the first two months.

Lin Tao, director of the Department of trade and external affairs of the National Bureau of statistics, commented on the consumption data of the first quarter. Since the outbreak of the new crown pneumonia epidemic, residents have voluntarily reduced the number of shopping trips and cancelled the dinner parties according to the epidemic prevention and control needs.

In 1-2, sales of clothing, furniture, automobiles and building decoration all recorded a decline of more than 30%. Due to the restriction of people's restrictions, the sales of catering industry in spring during the peak season fell by 43.1%, which was the most serious industry that encountered the most serious impact. Meanwhile, a large number of wedding were cancelled and gold prices were at a historical high, and sales of gold, silver and jewellery also plummeted 41.1%.

In addition to cars, the clothing industry in most categories of goods showed the worst performance. In the 1-2 months, sales of clothing, shoes and hats and needle textiles fell by 30.9% to 153 billion 400 million yuan in the month of January. The record was the worst, mainly due to the large number of shopping malls and shops in the end of February and the closing of most stores in China.

The largest brand in China's clothing market Uniqlo Fast Retailing, the parent company of UNIQLO The Co.Ltd. (9983.T) express group has said that the 750 stores in the Chinese market closed by about half during the rush hour. As of Monday, only 30 stores in China's UNIQLO stores were closed, compared with the 95 figures released in February 28th, which means that most of the stores outside Hubei have returned to normal.

The performance of Baosheng International (Holdings) Limited (3813.HK), one of the largest sporting goods agents in China, can best reflect the ice industry in 1 and February. In February, Baosheng International's total revenue was 307 million 900 thousand yuan, a sharp decrease of 82.3% compared with 1 billion 741 million 600 thousand yuan in the same period in 2019. In January, the company's revenue grew 24.6%, while the first two months of 2020 decreased by 19.2%. Up to 3 billion 432 million 800 thousand yuan.

Baosheng international performance in 1-2 months is better than the overall apparel industry performance by more than 1000 basis points, mainly due to the sports industry is the best performance category in the past three years, but the situation in March is still not optimistic.

The German sports giant Adidas AG (ADS.DE) Adidas Group expects that COVID-19 will lead to a decrease of 1 billion euros in the first quarter of the Greater China region, or about 7 billion 851 million yuan, which is almost half the income of the group in Greater China. In the 1-2 month performance of Baosheng international, the drop in the clothing industry in March was further expanded to 50% over the 1-2 month. In response to the current market performance, Adidas has stopped supplying wholesalers since February, and intends to buy stocks from wholesalers and sell them through self operated channels.

The downturn in the clothing industry is also reflected in the channel of e-commerce.

In 1-2 months, the retail sales volume of the whole country was 13712 billion yuan, down 3% from the same period last year. The online retail sales of physical commodities increased by 11233 yuan, an increase of 3%, accounting for 21.5% of the total retail sales of social consumer goods. In the online retail sales of physical commodities, the consumption of food and commodities increased 26.4% and 7.5% respectively, and the wearing commodities decreased by 18.1%.

China's largest e-commerce platform Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. (NYSE:BABA) Alibaba management in mid February performance meeting is expected in 1-3 months, the group's Tmall.com Tmall and Taobao.com Taobao sales growth is bound to slow down or even decline, its competitors JD.com Inc. (NASDAQ:JD) Jingdong said that the first quarter revenue is expected to grow by more than 10%, but the company's current revenue growth mainly benefited from the high growth rate from logistics business, and its sales performance was even lower than that of Alibaba. Another GMV just broke through the electricity business platform Pinduoduo of one trillion yuan. The spate of Inc. (NASDAQ:PDD) also indicated that the epidemic will be hit in the first quarter, but in the long run, optimistic expectations remain unchanged.

Although the epidemic has caused consumers to tend to online consumption, non essential consumer goods have experienced a sharp decline in the efficiency of logistics, resulting in a negative impact on the electricity supplier industry. It is not just the Chinese market. At present, the Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) Amazon in the US market is also hiring 100 thousand warehousing and logistics personnel to urgently respond to orders surge. However, the company is still warning that the delivery may be forced to delay during the epidemic. The online Ocado Group PLC (OCDO.L) website in the UK market has even been burst, Tesco. PLC (TSCO.L) Tesco and Sainsbury 's, Asda and Morrisons four big outlets store food sales looting and hoarding, the delivery of online channels is also delayed.

Zhang Yong, chairman and CEO of Alibaba, said at the previous performance meeting that during the epidemic period, although food, daily necessities, fast selling products and other categories had a very fast growth, consumers of clothing and consumer electronics products had no doubt that their willingness to buy these products in the epidemic situation would temporarily decline.

2018, in 2019, the performance of cosmetics continued to be strong, and sales in 1-2 months also plummeted from 14.1% to 38 billion 700 million yuan. As of Tuesday's closing, Est e e Lauder Cos.Inc. (NYSE:EL) Estee Lauder group, L 'Or e al SA (OR.PA) L'OREAL group has fallen by about 25% and 16% respectively this year.

Looking forward to the future, Lin Tao, director of the Department of foreign trade and economic affairs of the State Statistics Bureau, said, "the impact of the epidemic is short-term and external, and the foundation for long-term stable growth of the consumer market still exists. The internal development trend of the continuous transformation and upgrading has not changed." Mao Shengyong, a spokesman for the Bureau of statistics, said at a press conference on Monday, "during the epidemic prevention and control period, the basic livelihood of the 1 billion 400 million people has been effectively protected, and the overall consumption of consumer goods has maintained a relatively good growth. For example, retail sales of meat and poultry increased by 37.8%, vegetable sales increased by 27.1%, and frozen meat and instant noodles increased to two digits.

In 1-2 months, the total retail sales of consumer goods amounted to 52130 billion yuan, down 20.5% from the nominal level, and the actual price dropped by 23.7% after deducting the price factors. Among them, the retail sales volume of consumer goods excluding automobiles was 48476 yuan, down 18.9%.