With increasing disposable income and growing discerning taste, more consumers in the Mainland are yearning for stylish apparel imported from the West. Eyeing this expanding lucrative market, retail branding specialist Handsome Hero Holdings (HK) Limited (HH) and its parent company, an OEM veteran Brightex Industries Ltd have successfully leveraged on HKTDC Business Matching Service to achieve a jump start with the building of its retail kingdom in China.

Established in 1989, Brightex manufactures a wide array of fabrics with major markets in the US, Europe, South Africa, and Asia, supplying to international brands. To facilitate the sourcing needs of buyers, the company also offers garments to a global clientele encompassing premier US department stores and brands.

"HH and its parent company Brightex is among one of the investment projects of Camden Rich -a private equity company focusing on investment opportunities in China, specifically in consumer-related sectors spanning retail and manufacturing operations. Instead of concentrating solely on OEM garment production, we have planned to venture into the retail sector some time ago," explained Mr. Timothy Shen, Managing Director of Camden Rich Limited and CEO of HH.

The company took the first step in December 2008, meeting up with Amsterdam-based Ontfront at the HKTDC Inno Design Tech Expo under the arrangement of HKTDC Business Matching Service. After viewing Ontfront's chic menswear design showcased at the exhibition, Brightex speedily reached verbal agreement with Ontfront on site. One month after their meeting, Brightex became Ontfront's sole distributor of its collections in the Chinese mainland.

"The negotiation process was amazingly smooth, thanks to the Business Matching Specialists' professional screening; in fact, after studying Ontfront's comprehensive profile provided by the Specialist before we met, we already felt Ontfront was the right one and over 80% we would collaborate with them," noted Mr. Shen.

Mr. Shen further added that Ontfront has been keen to work with HH and Brightex because, like many European brands, they want to make inroads into the huge China market which now has a crave for European fashion.

"China is such a vast market that it is not easy to break into, yet with our readily established retail platform, they can save a lot of marketing efforts and cost. And of course, to a certain extent, similar factor also applies to us," continued Mr. Shen.

The first Ontfront collection was shipped to China three months after their first encounter. For the preceding collections, Ontfront has chosen to design the collection and exports fabrics from Europe to Brightex for their production in China for better cost control. Today, Brightex is manufacturing Ontfront's collections for its Mainland's retail network which are managed by HH as well as for the brand's sales points in Europe.

At present, HH has four fashion brands which are distributed at over 50 retail points in shopping malls scattered in the mainland's first-tier, second-tier and third-tier cities. With the successful launch of its debut brands including Ontfront, HH aspires to spot 20 to 30 more US or European brands that can appeal to the mainland consumers, and is targeting to set up a hundred retail points comprising self-operated stores and franchisees.

"The collaboration with Ontfront is an important inauguration for us and has given us great confidence in using this service. The business matching service is specifically helpful as we seldom work with European brands and are not accustomed to their way of doing business. This will also certainly facilitate our future cooperation with other European brands as well as boosting their confidence to team up with us," enthused Mr. Shen.

In fact, the partnership of the two companies is further developing. At the HKTDC World Boutique Hong Kong 2010, HH was in prospective negotiation with Ontfront to represent their brand as well in Hong Kong and the South East Asia.