VF Corporation (VF) is the latest global apparel brand in China to source market expertise and insight provided by GMAP Shanghai, part of Callcredit Information Group.
　　
VF, a global leader in branded lifestyle apparel, has currently over 30 brands under their umbrella sold in more than 150 countries worldwide. As popularity increases for casual fashion and outdoor apparel, the company continues to see China as a key focus area for growth. As part of their global expansion strategy, GMAP was chosen to help quantify the size of growth potential for specific sub-brands in the Chinese market.
　　
Headquartered in Leeds, UK, GMAP has over 25 years’ experience helping global organizations with retail network planning. With a strong existing client base in Asia Pacific, GMAP helps retailers identify target customers and develop optimal location strategies for store networks and expansion. GMAP Shanghai combines our global modelling expertise with a local team of analysts to help both international and domestic clients in China.
　　
GMAP already has extensive data coverage in over 100 Chinese cities, and growing, including comprehensive mapping of both current and future retail locations. Using advanced geographic modelling tools, GMAP combines market demand and supply factors in order to help retailers identify target customers and develop optimal strategies for location planning.
　　
Kirk Xu from VF said, “It was refreshing to work with a company with such a can-do attitude and who could deliver results that we could understand and act upon. In a market where data is sometimes difficult to obtain, we were impressed with GMAP’s resourcefulness and their analytical capability.”
　　
Luke Whittam, GMAP’s Asia Pacific Director, added, “There are many opportunities for retail expansion in China in the major urban areas as well as in the lower tier cities. The retail landscape is changing rapidly everywhere, so it is essential to have the well-defined approach to data assembly and analysis that we have developed over the last few years.”
　　
About Callcredit Information Group
　　
Callcredit Information Group’s leading approach to deploying consumer information brings together experts across the fields of credit referencing, marketing services, interactive solutions and consultative analytics to provide clients with a range of innovative and effective products to discover new customers and to engage with current customers to optimise and increase profitability.
　　
Products include award-winning fraud verification tools and database solutions to positively verify consumers, global operations to help expand businesses into new markets, digital solutions to improve the overall journey consumers make during interaction with a brand, customer handling to ensure consumer satisfaction at all levels and consumer marketing data and segmentation to improve understanding and targeting of customers and prospects.
　　
Callcredit also offers products to assess a customer’s credit risk and affordability and its experts in collections and recoveries provide tailored debt recovery and tracing tools. The company’s market analysis and network planning function helps organizations develop profitable retail networks, and its tools in multi bureau, analytics and metrics work to provide fully assessed bureau data.