Jumei sales soar

Jumei International, the Chinese online retailer of beauty products, has revealed a 61.8 per cent increase in first quarter sales to US$250.6 million.

Gross merchandise volume lept 20.3 per cent thanks to a 14.3 per cent increase in the number of active customers to 5.6 million, and an 18.4 per cent increase in total orders.

Gross profit was US$78.7 million, an increase of 15.2 per cent from the first quarter of 2014. But expressed as a percentage of sales it decreased from 44.1 per cent to 31.4 per cent, largely due to the company’s shift in strategy from pure play beauty marketplace to a broader merchandise offer.

Founder and CEO Leo Chen said the growth rate was stronger than expected for the first quarter.

“We successfully completed our transition for beauty products from marketplace sales to merchandise sales at the end of 2014, and our new business initiative – Jumei Global, took off early this year and experienced high growth in terms of sales volume. Jumei is currently one of the leading players in cross-border eCommerce in China.

“We expanded into cross-border baby and maternity category in mid-April, 2015 and quickly achieved market leading position in this new category in China. Our target for 2015 is focused on top line growth and expansion into other cross-border categories as we look to expand our customer base and significantly grow our order numbers. We are confident that we can achieve our quarterly and yearly sales target for 2015,” he concluded.

For the second quarter of 2015, the company projects total net revenues to be between US$270.1 million and US$277.8 million, representing a year-over-year growth rate of between 75 per cent and 80 per cent.

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