KISUA Takes African Talent Global

Two unique African voices, CEO Samuel Mensah and his partner, creative director Danica Lepen, will launch e-commerce site KISUA in early October, with the goal of bringing emerging and established African designs to the global market. “Even though we have a focus on creating globally marketable and well-priced garments, we have gone to great lengths to retain authenticity in our collections. As we expand and grow, we will look further into incorporating more and more specialized traditional African methods such as beading, dyeing, weaving and hand-printing,” Lepen tells Style.com.

For its initial launch, KISUA will offer fully funded “collaborative capsule lines” from ten designers across Africa, from South Africa to the Democratic Republic of Congo. “With these ten designers, the starting point was to take a deeper look into what each of their design features and aesthetics are, and to see what elements we could take from that in order to create something new under the KISUA brand,” Lepen explains.

Billabong Posts A $860 Million Loss as Brand Deemed Worthless

SYDNEY, Australia — Billabong International Ltd., the Australian surfwear company whose shares fell by more than half over the past year, posted a loss more than three times its market value and said its core brand was worthless.

The loss was A$860 million ($776 million) in the year ended June, compared with a loss of A$276 million in the previous 12 months, the Gold Coast, Australia-based company said in a statement today. Billabong was expected to lose A$547 million, according to the average of four analyst estimates compiled by Bloomberg.

Losses in its European division meant the company’s business costs ran higher than its sales revenue, with the company losing A$1.9 million before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization. The company’s brands, worth A$614 million at the end of 2011, were worth A$90 million at the end of June and the Billabong brand itself is worthless, the company said.

The company has been experiencing “continued difficult trading conditions, particularly in Europe,” Michael Simotas, an analyst at Deutsche Bank AG in Sydney, wrote in a note to clients Aug. 7. In Billabong’s home market, “consumer sentiment continued to weaken and warm weather weighed on winter apparel sales,” he wrote.

The stock closed at 56.5 Australian cents in Sydney trading yesterday, extending its decline this year to 32 percent. The S&P/ASX 200 index has gained 10 percent.

Chinese Shoppers Set to Become World Leaders Online

SHANGHAI, China — China’s e-commerce market is expected to leapfrog that of the United States this year to become the world’s largest by total customer spending, management consultancy firm Bain & Company says, and could account for half of all Chinese retail spending within a decade.

The change in shopping habits comes as almost half of the country’s 1.3 billion population now have direct access to the Internet, and of that number nearly 80 percent own smart phones or tablets.

China’s e-commerce market has grown at an average rate of 71 percent from 2009 to 2012, versus 13 percent in America, and its total size is expected to reach 3.3 trillion yuan ($539.07 billion) by 2015, Bain & Company said in a report released on Wednesday.

Total spending by Chinese consumers on online shopping reached $212.4 billion in 2012, compared to $228.7 billion in the U.S., the report said.