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The Shanghai-listed Peacebird, based in the traditional garment manufacturing stronghold of Ningbo, said in its first quarter earnings announcement that net profit had risen to 203.3 million yuan ($31.29 million), a jump of 2,222.25 percent year-on-year.
Sales revenue for the quarter also surged 93.1 percent year-on-year to 267 million yuan ($41 million). Womenswear saw the biggest growth, up 120.42 percent year-on-year, while menswear sales rose 77.2 percent over the same period in 2020.
As with many other Chinese fashion companies reporting strong first quarter growth in recent weeks, Peacebird acknowledged that these numbers come off the unusually low base of last year’s first quarter, which coincided with the worst of China’s Covid-19 outbreak.
China’s high street retailers, including Peacebird, were particularly hard hit over that period because they have traditionally been reliant on brick and mortar retail stores (their current network stands at 4,632 stores), many of which were closed or saw extremely limited footfall due to restrictions in place in China in the first few months of last year.
This being said, Peacebird was also quick to pivot to e-commerce and saw a significant rise in online sales over the course of 2020. In the first quarter of 2021, e-commerce sales revenue rose 51.7 percent year-on-year.
