Thirteen years ago, Cassandra Rhodin started a children's clothing brand named Mini Rodini. Today, the brand has several of its own physical stores and its own e-commerce platform selling children's clothing worldwide. Furthermore, the brand is available at over 500 retailers.
When the first collection was released in a few select Stockholm stores in 2006, it sold out immediately. Everything happened very quickly, and what started with piles of boxes in Cassandra’s Södermalm apartment quickly became a store a few blocks away, Mini Rodini writes on its website.
During its tenth year of operation, Mini Rodini generated nearly 150 million Swedish kronor in revenue, while also delivering improved positive results. Ehandel.se met with the company in 2017 to learn what the secret to its success was. At that time, the company stated that its own e-commerce platform accounted for around 35 percent of its revenue.
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At the end of 2018, Cassandra Rhodin, who is now the company's creative director, told Breakit that the company was approaching 200 million Swedish kronor in revenue.
Now, Mini Rodini announces that it is ready for the next step. The Swedish children's clothing brand is opening an e-shop on the e-commerce site Tmall, which is one of Alibaba’s marketplaces for B2C sales in China. According to Mini Rodini, Tmall currently accounts for 60 percent of China’s online consumption and has over 550 million active users.
Mini Rodini has taken Swedish parents by storm and we have had incredible growth in Sweden. Now is the time to give international customers even better conditions to discover Mini Rodini’s products, says Håkan Ström, CEO of Mini Rodini, in a press release, adding:
The Chinese market is perfectly right for us. T-mall.com gives us a fantastic opportunity to reach out with our strong brand. The potential with T-Mall.com is enormous. At the same time, we are humble in the face of competition and the effort required.
According to the company, establishing itself in China is part of Mini Rodini’s strategy to focus internationally. The company will launch its online store on Tmall in May.
READ ALSO: H&M opens on Chinese Tmall
But Mini Rodini is not the first, and probably not the last, Swedish brand to open an online store at Tmall. Last year, we reported on H&M doing the same. And just a few months later, the H&M group also added its other brands such as Monki, Weekday, Cheap Monday, Afound and Cos to the Chinese e-commerce platform.
Sweden has quite a few brands that Chinese consumers can relate to. There is a strong interest in quality products and Swedish brands, said Mei Chen, Alibaba Group’s Senior Manager for Great Britain and the Nordics, to Ehandel.se in a previous interview.
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