Japan's Zozo, Onward to tie-up as COVID-19 hits fashion sales-Nikkei
12/07/2020 05:57
TOKYO, July 12 (Reuters) - Japanese online fashion retailer
Zozo Inc 3092.T and apparel group Onward Holdings Co 8016.T
plan to tie up in custom-made clothing to help each other
survive a sales slump caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the
Nikkei said on Sunday.
Zozo, Japan's biggest online fashion mall, will offer Onward
body-size data on a million customers, the business daily
reported, without citing sources.
Zozo and Onward were not immediately available for comment
outside business hours on Sunday.
Apparel makers such as Onward are struggling with poor sales
from pandemic-related store closures and weak consumer spending.
Rival Renown Inc filed the bankruptcy protection in May.
urn:newsml:reuters.com:*:nT9N29B00R
Onward, which sells clothes under brands such as
Kumikyoku, depends heavily on sales at Japanese department
stores, which mostly reopened by late May but are still
grappling with a decline in customers amid lingering fears of
infections.
Last year Zozo was taken over by Yahoo Japan Corp, now named
Z Holdings Corp 4689.T , after Zozo made a costly foray into a
bespoke fashion service that brought little new business and
saddled it with massive costs. urn:newsml:reuters.com:*:nL3N26243X
Zozo was also hit by the departure of many brands setting up
their own e-commerce sites instead of depending on the company's
infrastructure. Onward was one of the retailers that left the
site in 2018.
The Nikkei said Onward plans to start selling 28 types of
business clothing, such as jackets and dresses, from August by
using Zozo's data, aiming to boost annual sales to 10 billion
yen ($94 million) in five years.
Zozo was founded by a billionaire Yusaku Maezawa whose plans
for a lunar flyby as the first private passenger on Elon Musk's
SpaceX mission had helped spread Zozo's name globally.
($1 = 106.8900 yen)
(Reporting by Ritsuko Ando and Yuka Obayashi; Editing by
William Mallard)
((Yuka.Obayashi@thomsonreuters.com; +813-4563-2761;))