After experiencing the "horror design" controversy, Jiangnan Buyi has chosen to make a fortune in a low-key manner in recent years.
Jiangnan Buyi, which is listed on the Hong Kong stock market, announced its results for the first half of fiscal year 2026 (July 2025-December 2025) at the end of February.
The financial report shows that in the past six months, the clothing company's total revenue reached 3.376 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 7%; gross profit was 2.246 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 9.2%; net profit was 676 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 11.9%; net cash flow generated from operating activities was 996 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 21.1%. In addition, the company's gross profit margin also reached 66.5%, an increase of 1.4 percentage points from the same period last year.
Although the growth rate is not significant, in the fiercely competitive clothing industry, especially the women's clothing industry, Jiangnan Buyi seems to have stepped out of the shadow of the "horror design" that once caused an uproar among children's clothing brands, and has experienced upward performance for two consecutive years.
The company's CFO Fan Yongkui said at the interim fiscal year results meeting that the "10 billion retail" target remains unchanged for the time being, but it does not purely pursue digital growth and does not intend to rely on mergers and acquisitions to increase scale. He also said that based on the performance in the first half of the year, the full-year net profit target is expected to be exceeded.
Men's clothing is still "underperforming", LESS and children's clothing have strong growth
A careful look at Jiangnan Buyi's performance will reveal that although revenue and performance are still growing, the growth rate is very difficult.
Although everyone is already familiar with Jiangnan Buyi's brand, Jiangnan Buyi has actually positioned its internal brands in three directions: mature brands, namely the main brand JNBY; growth brands, namely men's clothing sketch, children's clothing jnby by JNBY, and high-end women's clothing LESS for working women; and emerging brands, including POMME DE TERRE (Pengma), JNBYHOME, onmygame, and B1OCK.
In addition, Observer.com noticed that Jiangnan Buyi also successfully registered the trademark RERERE RERERE in February this year. The categories include jewelry and watches, furniture, fabrics and bed sheets, material processing and other fields. It does not rule out the establishment of new brands in new fields.
The mature brand JNBY is still the main contributor to performance. The revenue of a single brand of 1.86 billion yuan accounted for nearly 55.1% of the total revenue, and it is still growing based on the 2025 fiscal year. However, mature brands are also the slowest growing among all distributions, with a year-on-year growth rate of only 5.7%.
Despite this, based on the huge base of the main brand, this part's proportion of the company's performance is still expanding.
The "growth potential" of growth brands is better than that of main brands. The revenue of this part of 1.279 billion yuan has a year-on-year growth rate of 6.3%.
Among them, LESS, a brand targeting women in the workplace, is growing the fastest, with revenue of 390 million yuan growing 16.3% year-on-year, much higher than jnby by JNBY and Kuaishou. Fan Yongkui said that LESS's brand growth is the result of coordinated promotion of multiple strategies, not a single measure.
Children's clothing jnby by JNBY still has the highest revenue among growing brands, reaching 495 million yuan, with a year-on-year growth rate of 4.1%.
The most “lost” performance is the men’s clothing brand Sketch. Its revenue of 389 million yuan has been ranked at the bottom of this series, with a year-on-year growth rate of only 0.4%, which is almost negligible.
Although the retail sales of the men's clothing market have been increasing year by year in recent years, Jiangnan Buyi does not seem to have captured this wave of demand. On the contrary, sketches that emphasize the literary and youthful style are not as affordable as Uniqlo and more suitable for casual workplace needs, nor are they more functional than outdoor brands with a surge in demand. They have not been able to successfully seize the limited equipment budget of male consumers.
What surprised the market was that in terms of growth rate, the fastest growing revenue came from emerging brands. Revenue of 237 million yuan increased by 22.42% year-on-year based on last year, which is the fastest growing part of each segment.
Among the emerging brands, POMME DE TERRE and onmygame are mainly for children's clothing, JNBYHOME is for home and lifestyle, and B1OCK is a boutique fashion department store brand acquired in 2024.
It is not difficult to find that both jnby by JNBY and children's clothing brands among emerging brands have shown strong purchasing power in the context of overall sluggish consumer demand. Jiangnan Buyi also captured this and opened a new store type "jnby+ children's clothing imagination collection store" at the end of 2025.
Executive Director and CEO Wu Huating emphasized the importance of the children's clothing field at the interim results meeting, saying that the new store types the company is exploring in the children's clothing field are not just in the retail field, but also the exploration and innovation of the relationship with consumers, and create a full-scenario experience space around the children's clothing brand.
With 281 million yuan spent on land to build a base, can the “10 billion retail sales” goal be achieved?
Although the consumer market's impression of Jiangnan Buyi is still a fashion apparel company, judging from its past investments, it is no longer limited to the apparel industry.
Jiangnan Buyi made a large expenditure last year when it won the bid for a land parcel in Shuangpu, Hangzhou, for 281 million yuan in July. This industrial land is located in the hinterland of the Shuangpu unit of Zhijiang in Hangzhou, covering an area of 200,000 square meters. It is intended to be the global digital base for Jiangnan Buyi in Hangzhou.
According to the project registration form, the total investment in this base is US$306.16 million (converted to approximately 2.18 billion yuan). The construction content mainly includes factories, R&D headquarters, living facilities, etc., and is required to start construction in May 2026 and be completed in April 2029.
Fan Yongkui also gave a detailed explanation of the project at the performance meeting, saying that the original Xiaoshan site can no longer meet the business scale. The base is not only a traditional logistics park, but also positioned as a national goods distribution center. It will realize the sharing of all products online and offline nationwide channels: "According to business planning, outsourcing logistics costs are high, and self-construction is more cost-effective than leasing."
According to public information, the land will be divided into two phases, one of which covers an area of 72,000 square meters. It is also positioned as focusing on logistics functions as mentioned by Fan Yongkui, and has been basically finalized. The second phase covers an area of approximately 131,300 square meters. The current plan is to serve as a cultural center, including a creative research incubation base, brand marketing venue, etc.
However, the positioning of the second-phase land parcel is also the most controversial part among investors. Supporters believe that investment in digital research can produce exclusive, high-quality fabrics through independent research and development and strengthen the product moat; but opponents believe that from land to factories to fabric production, the company will increase the proportion of heavy assets and drag down funds and finances.
In fact, the management also revealed that this base is based on the Xiaoshan Logistics Center invested in 2019, which will pay back the capital in about 20 years, and is focused on the asset value after 20 years. This aspect is an advantage for the company's major shareholders, but it is difficult to say whether it will not have a negative impact on the income of small shareholders.
In addition to acquiring land last year involving factory construction and future park operations, Jiangnan Buyi also jointly acquired the British furniture company Established & Sons (E&S) in 2024 with the Contemporary Art and Design Brand Management Agency (GDD), which can be said to be both overseas and cross-border.
However, after nearly two years, Jiangnan Buyi’s overseas business performance does not seem to be eye-catching. The financial report shows that in the first half of fiscal year 2026, the company's revenue from non-Mainland China businesses was approximately 19.792 million yuan. Although there was a 14.57% growth rate over the previous year, it only contributed less than 0.6% to the overall revenue.
Jiangnan Buyi's management emphasized in the financial report that the company is "China's most influential designer brand fashion group" and will further optimize designer brands and categories, as well as continue to improve forward-looking design and R&D capabilities, as the company's focus. Fan Yongkui also emphasized that he will strive to make the company an enterprise that can survive economic cycles.
A specific time node is that by the middle of 2026, it will also be the target node of Jiangnan Buyi’s “10 billion retail sales”. The market will also wait and see whether he can complete the goal he set seven years ago.
