JNBY held on.

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Author | Wang Xiaojuan

Editor | Huang Yu

The clothing industry in 2025 can be described as a tale of two extremes.

Sports and outdoor brands are marching forward triumphantly, while traditional fashion apparel is facing huge challenges. According to analysis by Galaxy Securities, the outdoor sports industry is in a period of steady growth, with a market size in 2024 reaching 408.91 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 5.95%, with a growth rate higher than other apparel tracks. On the other hand, many traditional urban women's wear brands have begun to see declining or stagnant performance.

Even so, Jiangnan Buyi, which positions itself as a brand for urban living, has delivered a different report card.

Recently, Jiangnan Buyi released its annual financial report for the year ending June 30, 2025 (“FY2025”), showing a year-on-year revenue increase of 4.6% to 5.548 billion yuan and net profit growth of 6% to 898 million yuan. The most impressive is its gross profit margin performance—remaining stable at a high level of 65.6%, demonstrating strong brand premium capability and cost control ability.

By brand, mature brand JNBY’s revenue grew 2.3% to 3.013 billion yuan, accounting for 54.3% of total revenue; the growth brand portfolio (CROQUIS, jnby by JNBY, and LESS) saw a slight revenue decrease of 0.5% to 2.174 billion yuan, accounting for 39.2%.

Jiangnan Buyi’s newly acquired emerging brand portfolio in recent years (POMME DE TERRE, JNBYHOME, onmygame, and B1OCK) performed most impressively, with revenue soaring 107.4% year-on-year to 361 million yuan, and the share rising from 3.3% to 6.5%.

What supports Jiangnan Buyi’s high-quality growth is its highly sticky core membership system.

According to the financial report, member sales contributed over 80% of Jiangnan Buyi’s retail sales in FY2025, with the number of active member accounts rising to over 560,000 (FY2024: over 550,000). The number of member accounts with total purchases over 5,000 yuan in FY2025 exceeded 330,000 (FY2024: over 310,000). Their consumption retail sales reached 4.86 billion yuan (FY2024: 4.49 billion yuan), contributing over 60% of the offline channel retail total.

Jiangnan Buyi’s Investor Relations Director Qiang Yilan pointed out at the performance briefing: “Through self-incubation or acquisitions, we will further optimize our designer brands and product mix, continue to enhance forward-looking design and R&D capabilities, comprehensively improve brand power, and continue to cultivate new fans.”

Of course, although the core membership system is solid, high customer spend and fewer discounts have to some extent limited user base expansion. However, Jiangnan Buyi does not intend to attract customers through price.

Qiang Yilan said: “People may worry that in an uncertain economic environment, one must offer more discounts to attract more fans. But our understanding of our core users is that they are not people who are willing to shop just because of special deals and discounts; they would rather the brand offer garments of higher quality.”

Jiangnan Buyi’s Corporate PR GM Zheng Dandan also believes that price cuts are not a good way to pursue growth. She gave an example: “Gucci has opened many outlet stores and offered a lot of discounts in the past two years, but actual operational results were not good. If this is the case for luxury brands, then as a growing brand, we should cherish our own brand power even more.”

Even facing changes in the industry landscape, Jiangnan Buyi is still firmly marching toward the goal of 10 billion yuan in sales in 2026. At this performance briefing, Jiangnan Buyi’s CFO Fan Yongkui said this target aligns with Jiangnan Buyi’s current overall strategic plan.

He believes that in terms of motivation for development, for the past 30 years, Jiangnan Buyi has always focused on the domestic market, cultivating the domestic retail market intensively. In the future, the main battleground is still domestic, but there are also opportunities overseas, and they hope to gain more growth overseas in the future. On the other hand, emerging and growing brands represent the second growth curve, incubating new power and providing future opportunities and space.

Of course, for apparel retail, to achieve growth, efficient operations are required, with growth realized through adjustments in channel strategy.

Over the past year, Jiangnan Buyi’s number of channels grew further. Financial data shows that as of June 30, 2025, Jiangnan Buyi operated a total of 2,117 standalone retail stores worldwide—up from 2,025 on June 30, 2024. Of these, 2,099 were in mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, and the rest spread across 8 countries (Russia, Germany, Malaysia, Australia, etc.).

At the same time, facing the many uncertainties of the retail environment and consumer market, Jiangnan Buyi is also increasing brand exposure and providing more growth services. So far, they have successfully established 22 “Jiangnan Buyi+” multi-brand collection stores.

Despite industry uncertainties, there will always be consumers willing to pay for good quality and design.Brands like Jiangnan Buyi need to keep renewing their designs and improving quality to have the ability to withstand economic cycles.

Below are edited conversations between Wallstreetcn and Jiangnan Buyi’s CFO Fan Yongkui, Investor Relations Director Qiang Yilan, and Corporate PR GM Zheng Dandan:

Q: According to the financial report, Jiangnan Buyi’s annual revenue was 5.548 billion yuan, up 4.64% year-on-year. Under consumer pressure, which categories or regions mainly contributed to this growth rate?

Qiang Yilan: I understand your question and you want to know where this 4.64% growth comes from. In summary, on one hand, it's from our organized store openings, and on the other, from our rapid online growth. Across all channels, we achieved this 4.64% growth. In our core distribution regions, some new malls opened, and after considering fit, we worked with distributor partners to seize opportunities to enter. Growth brands also expanded into blank markets in an organized way—this is the store expansion part. As mentioned earlier, online saw over 18% growth, and its contribution to total revenue exceeded 20%. So these two are the main sources of growth.

Q: Jiangnan Buyi is known for a highly sticky member system, but high per customer transaction value and less discounting may limit user base expansion. How will you balance member loyalty with expanding market share? Will you consider more flexible pricing strategies to reach wider audiences?

Qiang Yilan: People may worry that in an uncertain economic environment, one needs more discounts to attract more fans. Our understanding of core consumers is that they are not people who shop because there are many specials and discounts. Based on our knowledge of them, they want the brand to offer higher-quality clothing, keep innovating and upgrading products, and offer a good experience, thus attracting more fans who like personalized apparel and expanding member base.

Overall, attracting customers is not by discounts and low prices, but focusing more on quality and experience, which is also our long-term direction. We are not a very aggressive company; our style is steady, and we will not take a short-termist approach for short-term goals but work on long-term brand strength and member experience.

Zheng Dandan: As a growing fashion brand, we really cherish our brand strength. The media cares about this a lot—you can research the industry, for example, Gucci opened many outlet stores and ran many promotions in the past two years, but achieved poor actual operational results. If even luxury brands are like this, as a growing brand we must cherish our own brand power more, nurture it, and let it go further. That’s our more determined direction.

Q: The overall gross profit margin is 65.6%, down 0.3 percentage points year-on-year, mainly due to channel adjustments. What strategies will the group adopt to balance self-operated and franchised stores going forward?

Fan Yongkui: Let me share about our self-operated and distributor strategy. The company has a unified standard: in first-tier and key second-tier cities we go with self-operation, because these cities are at the forefront of fashion trends, and investing in facilities, management, etc. is generally high, so the self-operation model is better for long-term investment and the brand development.

In third- and fourth-tier cities, we mainly use a distributorship model. As for the word “franchise,” let me explain: our distribution system is somewhat different from what you might imagine as “franchise.” We don't allow distributors to simply acquire an agency right and then develop their own secondary or tertiary sub-distributors. All our distributors must have strong local retail capability and manage the stores themselves, not just hold an agency. For openings, from location to store design and decoration, our company participates uniformly throughout, ensuring all store images and services are consistent with self-operated stores. For consumers, when entering the store they cannot tell whether it's a distributor or direct store—the experience is the same. In the future, this strategy will be maintained and the ratio between self-operated and distributor stores will remain basically stable.

Q: Revenue from emerging brands surged 107.4% year-on-year to 361.3 million yuan, with the acquisition of B1OCK costing only 1.672 million yuan. Will you continue to expand your emerging brand matrix via acquisitions or incubation, and what are the current plans?

Fan Yongkui:As for B1OCK, the cost was indeed very low. This brand was acquired from the controlling party, after being incubated at Tianmuli for three or four years. When it was ready for scale and profitability, it was transferred to the listed company. In the future and in the past, we have always actively watched for external brands, such as onmygame. We will continue to look, but generally, whether through M&A or incubation, Jiangnan Buyi is quite cautious—this may be due to the nature of designer brands. When we make a brand, we first sort out its positioning, core philosophy, consumer profile, etc., before incubation and growth. You won’t see the company churning out three, five, or ten brands in one year. It is a long, sustained process.

Q: Growth brand revenue fell slightly by 0.5% year-on-year, mainly due to fluctuations in offline traffic. How will the company respond to offline channel challenges?

Qiang Yilan:Indeed, growth brand revenue declined slightly, mainly due to channel structure adjustments. As mentioned before, in offline self-operated and distributor layout, first- and key second-tier cities are mainly self-operated, the rest use distributors. Based on this, some non-core cities shifted from self-operation to distributor model.

Meanwhile, some new distributor stores also opened in those regions, and distributor revenue is recognized at wholesale price, so the revenue seems to decline year-on-year. From an operational perspective, except CROQUIS saw a slight decline, the other brands’ retail sales continued to grow. This is one reason. Of course, media also mentioned offline traffic is falling, which is true. To cope, we do the following four things:

1. Continue to strengthen brand power, using product innovation and design premium to boost consumer recognition and repurchase intention.

2. Expand retail touchpoints across all domains, vigorously developing sales channels to break physical space limitations and reach wider customer groups.

3. Develop our own intelligent recommendation system, using it to integrate centralized operations with personalized service to greatly improve the efficiency of private domain conversion.

4. Further refine member operations based on the membership system, constantly expanding the scale of high-value fans and boosting their loyalty.

Overall, we use a four-wheel drive model of brand, channel, technology, and membership to cope with a more volatile environment and offline traffic declines.

Q: This period’s inventory increased 24.2% year-on-year to 932.6 million yuan. What caused the rise? Is it due to sales pace or supply chain issues?

Qiang Yilan: Inventory did rise and there are two reasons:

On one hand, to support business growth, more new product stock was prepared, so the storage of 2025 autumn/winter products increased compared to last year. Meanwhile, we acquired two new brands that are growing very quickly, pushing inventory higher. On the other hand, due to last year’s mild winter and volatile retail environment, sales rate of 2024 autumn/winter products did not match last year’s, resulting in increased accounting inventory. Currently, we are also offloading these seasonal products, with outlet anniversary in August driving inventory offloading much better than expected.

As a designer brand, our product lifecycle is four years, not that after season one, products become permanent inventory—that’s not the case. They can still be profitably sold off via outlets and online as off-season products, so we don’t pursue too high an inventory turnover. Sometimes, a turnover that’s too fast might indicate shortage. For our model, a 150-200 day turnover is healthy.

Q: How do you plan to focus the development of different brands in the future, especially the scaling path for emerging brands?

Fan Yongkui:If you look at our brand matrix, each brand has its own DNA, though a commonality is their association with art and aesthetic expression. For emerging brands’ scaling, as mentioned, first we polish product and image. Let’s take onmygame, the newly acquired kids’ sportswear brand, as an example. It is currently purely online, but after entering Jiangnan Buyi’s system, we empower it with our experience and understanding of product; in FY2026, we will open its offline stores. Moving from online to offline and scaling up with more stores, though this requires constant refinement on the way.

Q: Where does the company see the main growth engine in the next three years—deeper value mining from existing members, new customer acquisition, or fast expansion of the brand matrix via M&A? Please talk about specific strategic priorities and metrics.

Fan Yongkui:You can see that for so many years, we have been very cautious with M&A. We’ve always looked at many opportunities but proceed with real M&A very cautiously. For the next three to five years, overall growth will still be led by existing brands, both growth brands and emerging brands—the latter may have the fastest growth rate.

For the original brands, people may be concerned about our store opening speed. Historically, our expansion has been steady; more channel planning to improve the whole retail network. In the future, wherever consumers are, we will expand there. If store number doesn’t grow fast, we have to consistently and rationally improve per-store sales—meaning per store performance. We do things such as continuously optimizing diversified consumption scenarios, upgrading and empowering store tools, and improving the store experience to deal with sector volatility.

Second, we are actively promoting omni-channel integration. More and more, consumers cannot be labeled as only online or only offline; they are dynamically switching. We are building an integrated online-offline shopping experience for a seamless shopping field, which fits our omni-channel strategy.

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