China Market Research and Entry Preparation for a Nordic Outdoor Clothing Brand

Opportunity

The client, a Nordic outdoor clothing company, had with great success been using European social media for brand marketing. The Chinese market and its online landscape was, however, uncharted territory for the client. The competition, the e-commerce channels, the social media platforms and the complexity of legal setups were all different in China compared to Western markets.

The client hired ARC Consulting to conduct a customized market research project according to the client’s needs. The main aim was to understand the Chinese outdoor clothing market better in terms of stakeholders, entry mode, market segments, preferred e-commerce channels, target customer groups and pricing strategy.

Approach

The project started by setting up a kick-off meeting between ARC Consulting´s team and the client in order to determine the time plan, focus areas and expected outcome of the project. During the process of the project, ARC Consulting held bi-weekly project reviews with the client in order to ensure that all communication was timely and that the deliverables were meeting the client’s specific needs and expectations.

The project team gathered necessary data by two ways:

1. Desktop research on various e-commerce platform websites, sales databases, governmental websites, and secondary industry reports;
2. Interviews with related stakeholders such as major platforms, industry experts, public officials, registration agencies and potential customers.

The collected data was then analyzed and summarized in a report covering the following parts:

1. Outdoor clothing market overview including market trends and segmentation;
2. Sales channel review, in particular Chinese E-commerce platform evaluations including comparison and analysis of entry requirements, advantages and disadvantages of major platforms and recommendations;
3. Benchmarking major competitors in terms of sales channels, marketing channels and pricing on the Chinese market;
4. Cost build-up analysis of both fixed and variable costs in order to determine the optimal pricing strategy in China;
5. Administrative process, required timeline and costs of platform registration, legal entity setup, trademark registration, logistics & warehousing, office & operation.