Two white shirts were lying on the back of a chair in the office. "You can wear them right away. Just shake it out! Look," Chen Nian said, as he gently shook one of the shirts out. Not a single wrinkle could be found. The highlight of this 129-yuan shirt is its combination of non-ironing, crease-resistant quality and high performance-price ratio.

A commercial advertisement of VANCL on the first China Beijing International Fair for Trade in Services in Beijing on May 30, 2012. [Photo/Asianewsphoto]

But it is merely the tip of the iceberg in one of China’s online retailing platforms, VANCL's transformation to develop and promote white shirts as its flagship product.

A month ago, at the 798 Art Factory, Chen Nian, founder of VANCL, held a four-hour launch conference for his new product - a white shirt.

The history of Chinese clothing seems never to have witnessed a presentation for a white shirt. In spite of its extremely simple content and form, this was a show of transformation and comeback after one year of silence.

Last summer, in VANCL’s headquarters located at the Yonggui Center, in Beijing’s Dongcheng district, there were various T-shirts, POLO shirts, skirt hangers and shoes spread all over the floor like in a big fire sale at a night fair.

Those were part of all the existing categories of VANCL. At that time, VANCL had 190,000 types of products with different styles, colors and specifications.

"Can you select a piece of clothing with which you are most satisfied?" Lei Jun, founder of Xiaomi Technology and one of the investors in VANCL, asked on his visit to VANCL on being invited. Faced with the question of Lei Jun, Chen Nian discovered to his embarrassment that among the thousands of his products, he could not find a "masterpiece".

"It's more like coming into a department store instead of a brand store." Lei Jun's straightforward remark aroused Chen Nian to reflect on VANCL's operational strategy of "large and comprehensive" and "to cast a wide net".

In 2007, VANCL started its direct sales business of men's shirts and created the phenomenon of his brand's growth on the Internet, and the sales volume went up to 6 billion yuan ($980 million). In 2010, a series of slogans featuring the personality and positive spirit of VANCL made a splash on the Internet, and VANCL's brand influence reached its peak at that time.

Meanwhile, under the leadership of Chen Nian, VANCL began rapid expansion. The sharp expansion of categories and inventory backlog frequently made the company beset with many crises such as the dismissal of senior executives and huge losses.

Last August, the news of VANCL’s upcoming move created a Big-Bang-like explosion in the office building. "VANCL's headquarters will move from the tall building beside the East 2nd Ring Road to a small yard off the South 5th Ring Road!"

As predicted, this move had a knock-on effect on personnel. The 5,000 employees of VANCL dropped by half.

"There are 200 kinds of shoes, and I'll buy one pair of each kind, Size 40!" Determined to streamline the business sector and focus on fewer products, Chen Nian used his own money to buy all styles of men's shoes at the time.

After work every day, he began to try on these shoes pair by pair. He picked and weeded out all the shoes that chafed, press against or pinched his feet, and finally only a pair of canvas shoes were to his liking. A year later, VANCL's number of product categories dropped from the original 190,000 to 300.

Meanwhile, Chen Nian began to call on the suppliers and discuss directly with them how to tackle the quality problem covered under the previous rapid growth and blind expansion.

"Three years ago, it was so 'easy' to fulfil VANCL's order that I even felt 'uneasy'." A supplier's words sent shivers down the spine of Chen Nian. The supplier recalled that each time he received the order and set to work, VANCL rarely discussed the details with him.

Starting from last year, Chen Nian changed the past working mode of debriefing in the office; instead, he went to Japan to call on the shirt makers with hand-made clothing techniques, reengaged suppliers across the country, and cut off all advertisements and endorsements. The former boss has become a product manager.

In this transformation process of sacrificing the past achievements, the challenges Chen Nian has to face are not small.

In the second half of 2011, several senior executives of VANCL chose to leave.

After the product conference held in August of that year, the industrial circle's worry about VANCL's transformation also focused on its profitability. The tactics of Chen Nian to conquer the market with few competitive products are quite similar to the quality line of Xiaomi in the mobile phone industry.

"We now do not consider the matter of making money, as making good products is the key." Earlier this year, VANCL got the seventh round of financing since its founding.

Q&A

Q: What are the reasons making you believe that VANCL will turn over a new leaf with a small number of high-quality products?

Chen Nian: In the past, our idea of making products was "budget - category - color and style", but now we have reversed the order: "user demand - style and color", and the user demand becomes our first starting point and we will certainly succeed.

Q: What are your plans for VANCL over the next five years?

Chen Nian: When I make a style of shirts or down jackets that chain brands like Uniqlo would never dare to tailor, it means we have taken a big step toward our successful transformation. What we want is to become China's Uniqlo. But the difference is we are going to work as a dot-com company rather than run physical stores.

Backgrounds:

VANCL, one of China’s online clothing vendors, is a company from Zhongguancun Science Park in Beijing.

Its products are mainly designed by famed designers in Europe and America and made from selected fine fabrics to be tailored for Asian customers, who are able to enjoy high-quality services at a relative low price. VANCL promotes its ideas of simplicity, relaxation and environmental friendliness.

In October 2007, VANCL established an online sales channel – vancl.com – under its own brand.

Reputed as an e-commerce innovation, VANCL is also seen as a leader in the traditional garment industry for its outstanding achievements. In May 2009, it was recognized as a national high-tech enterprise.