Own-Brand Clothing Etailer Crucco Hopes that “Slow Fashion” Brings Quick Growth

Combining e-commerce with building your own fashion brand is one massive task – and so it’s perhaps with quite some relief that the Chinese B2C clothing site Crucco is celebrating its first anniversary online today.

Crucco.com sells only its own-brand clothes, shoes, and some household goods. Its approach is quite minimalist and organic with mainly earthen tones – all of which resemble the signature style of the Japanese retailer Muji (TYO:7453). Founder and CEO, Xu Xiaohui, calls it “slow fashion” and believes that a lot of urban Chinese will appreciate a more relaxed and less showy mode of clothing.

Click to enlarge to see the tweet.

To mark the anniversary, Xu Xiaohui said today on his Sina Weibo page [1]:

Today is your birthday, our first moment. Pictured is the site last year on April 6th, which we glimpsed fleetingly. Life is short, run a little slower.

Xu’s background in tech covers stints at Lei Jun’s Kingsoft, Yahoo China, and Vancl. Crucco is in many ways like Vancl: a B2C etailer that sells only its own fashion brand. The more mainstream Vancl is now one of China’s top 10 e-commerce sites, and the largest that’s engaged solely in fashion.

Talking to Chinese media, the founder said that his company is not yet seeking a new round of funding. Shortly after the site’s launch, Crucco reportedly received somewhere in the region of 10 million RMB ($1.58 million) in seed funding from unknown VC sources. Despite those protestations, some in the industry believe that some major series A investment is under negotiation.

[Source: Donews – article in Chinese]