Bimba Y Lola to Launch in China With ImagineX Joint Venture

LONDON — Spanish contemporary fashion label Bimba Y Lola is launching in China with a joint venture with ImagineX, Lane Crawford Joyce Group’s distribution and brand management arm.

With a corporate office to be set up in Shanghai, the brand aims to establish a retail presence on Alibaba’s Tmall and Tencent’s WeChat, and physical pop-ups by 2022, to ramp up brand awareness and customer following.

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It will be followed by store rollouts, with plans to open 30 points of sale across 15 major cities in China, including Shanghai, Beijing, Shenzhen, Chengdu and Chongqing in the next five years.

Founded in 2005, Bimba Y Lola targets fashion-forward Millennials and Generation Z with ready-to-wear, jewelry, and accessories. It operates more than 290 stores across 20 countries, including the U.K., France, Singapore and South Korea.

According to researchers at SEMrush, Bimba Y Lola’s website traffic saw some of the biggest surge pre-pandemic, outperforming traditional retail fashion leaders such as macys.com and online giant Amazon.

Last month, Madonna’s daughter Lourdes Leon made her fashion campaign debut with the brand’s fall 2021 campaign, a jaunt through a digital landscape.

Uxia Dominguez, founder and president of Bimba Y Lola, believes that in China, a market of strategic importance yet one that is unique and complex to navigate, ImagineX has the right channels to unlock the potential of the brand.

Alice Wong, president of ImagineX, thinks that the brand will resonate well with “Chinese consumers, especially the Gen Zs and Millennials.”

“[They] have an increasing appetite for international accessible-luxury and affordable brands with cutting edge design, which truly stands out from the crowd,” she added.

ImagineX manages 25 brands, including Salvatore Ferragamo, Canada Goose, Ba&sh and Club Monaco, with 448 points of sale across 48 cities in the Greater China region.

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