Petit Bateau teaming up with Fung Retailing to launch in China

By

Anaïs Lerévérend

Published
Nov 21, 2014

Petit Bateau is going to be able to take its first steps in the Chinese market. As we announced at the beginning of 2014, negotiations were underway to make China the next target for development of the French brand, owned by the Yves Rocher group. Petit Bateau has thus confirmed the fulfilment of these discussions and the signing of a partnership with Fung Retailing.

The Li & Fung group's distribution branch will thus be allied with Petit Bateau for its Chinese deployment. Only the brand's children's clothing will be sold at first, as this historical segment for the brand should appeal most to this market.

The first openings of the Petit Bateau stores are scheduled for 2015, but with no dates specified yet, in Beijing, Shanghai and Qingdao. When the discussions were first started, there was talk of a target of opening some one hundred stores throughout the country.

In 2013, Petit Bateau had a revenue of 300 million euros, 45% generated from exports. With this Chinese agreement, the brand hopes to make it so that more than half of its earnings come from sales abroad and to increase its number of stores outside of France to 300.