Good afternoon. This is the Chorus Call conference operator. Welcome, and thank you for joining the Moncler Full Year 2018 Financial Results conference call. As a reminder, all participants are in listen-only mode. After the presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. Should anyone need assistance during the conference call, they may signal an operator by pressing Star and Zero on their telephone. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Ms. Paola Durante, Investor Relations and Strategic Planning Director of Moncler. Please go ahead, madam.
Thank you. Good afternoon, everybody, and thank you for joining our call today on Moncler's full year 2018 financial results. First of all, as usual, let me introduce you to the executive team on today's call. Our Chairman and CEO, Mr. Remo Ruffini, Luciano Santel, Chief Corporate and Supply Officer, Roberto Eggs, Chief Marketing and Operating Officer, Andrea Tieghi, Head of Retail, and Sergio Buongiovanni, Executive Board Member. Before starting the presentation, I need to remind you that this presentation may contain certain statements that are neither reported financial results nor other historical information. Any forward-looking statements are based on Moncler's current expectations and projections about future events. By their nature, forward-looking statements are subject to risks, uncertainties, and other factors that could cause results to differ materially from those expressed in or implied by these statements, many of which are beyond the ability of Moncler to control or estimate.
I finally remind you that press has been invited to participate in this conference in a listen-only mode. Let me now hand over to our Chairman and CEO, Mr. Remo Ruffini.
Good evening, everyone, and welcome to Moncler's Full Year 2018 Results conference call. One year has passed since we presented the Moncler Genius project, and 15 years since I bought a small brand, I believe a lot on it. Today, this brand has reached results it was not expecting when we start this journey. In 2018, Moncler generated more than EUR 1.4 billion in revenues, reached EUR 500 million of EBITDA, and had in its balance sheet more than EUR 450 million of net cash. Last year, around these days, we were having our capital market day to explain Moncler's future strategy, and in particular, the Moncler Genius evolution. Now is the time to draw some comments on the project. Before, let me say again something very important. Thank you.
Thank you to all our stakeholders, to our shareholders, to our board, to our suppliers, and to all our partners. In particular, thank you to the over 4,000 Moncler people around the world which made all this possible. Thomas Edison said, "Vision without execution is just an hallucination." I believe we must be really proud of what we achieved. Moncler Genius has been a success. All collections have been highly appreciated. Of course, some of them had wider audience, but with all of them, we have been able to talk to many customers, 60% new to the brand, different in age, attitude, and habits. Moncler Genius is a digital native project. Collection has significantly outperformed online, generating high traffic on our website. In 2018, traffic in moncler.com increased more than 30%, with peak during all Genius launches. It has been our first omnichannel exercise.
We have been able to coordinate in a full integrated way all our division, all our distribution channel, and all our touchpoint. We have set our new standards. It has been a superior clienteling tools. Every launch generates high traffic in store. Our client advisors have been able to engage with existing and with the new clients. In sum, Genius created new energy in our brand and made it stronger. We can do better. Many things are still to be fine-tuned and improved. We need to explain more this project to our clients. We have to work more on the timing of the deliveries and on their teasing phase. We can reinforce all our digital tools to attract new customers and engaging them with the brand.
I know that the world is becoming an even more difficult and volatile place, but I'm confident on Moncler's capacity to continue to do very well. Thank you, and let me leave the floor to Roberto and Luciano for more comments. Thank you.
Good evening. Roberto Eggs, Chief Marketing and Operating Officer. I'm very happy to have the possibility to comment on the fantastic results we had in 2018. Let's start by the overall result that we had. My comments will all be made at constant exchange rate. We reached in 2018, a total turnover of EUR 1.42 billion, which is a +22% compared to 2017. The result per region have been all very positive. All region grow at double digit figures. First comment is on Italy, where the result have been of +12% for the full year, with a very good last quarter of the year, mainly driven by our retail business. EMEA in total grew 17% in 2018, with the result driven mainly by the German and U.K. market. With, as you are aware, some difficulties on the French market linked to the yellow vests.
Despite that, we managed to achieve a double-digit growth on the French market also for 2018. Asia has been, as usual, the region that has been driving the growth. Most importantly, they grow at +28%. Here also in our three sub-region, APAC, Japan, and Korea, we have been able to grow double digits, and they're also in both channels. Finally, the U.S. or what we call Americas markets, where we have two main markets, which are Canada and U.S. Here also, we have been able to grow double digit in U.S. and in Canada, both in wholesale and in retail, with a total result for the year at +23%. If we look at the result per channel, the growth have been driven on the retail side by amazing results of 18% comp sales during the year.
Big contribution has been also given by the launch of the Genius project in June last year. E-commerce has continued to outperform the retail channels with a growth rate, which is almost twice the pace of total retail. Wholesale has achieved the highest growth that we had since we got listed at the end of 2013, with a +13% driven by the e-tailers, driven by the opening of shop-in-the-shop, and driven by the overall Genius project that has also generated a lot of energy in our wholesale channels. I would like to make some comments on the opening we have had last year. In total, we opened 18 doors in retail. In the last quarter, we have had four new openings in the U.S., one in Italy, Bologna, one in Switzerland, Lucerne, which is a strong destination for Asian customer.
We opened Printemps du Louvre in December. We opened a new market, Mexico. This is the third market we opened in 2018. You remember probably that we opened the Middle East with a store in Dubai in March. We opened at the end of August, our Norwegian market with a store in Oslo. In total, this has been 18 openings. We have had 16 openings in wholesale with shop-in-the-shop. I would like to make some comments on the fact that we will report during the course of 2019, a double counting on the U.S. and on shop-in-the-shop. You see, we had a way to count until end of 2018, where each single corner opened in a department store or in mall as it was a single store.
What we have been doing in the course of 2017 and 2018, we have changed the way we manage those stores. Where we had before three store managers, for example, in Galeries Lafayette, where we had a corner for the enfant, for the women, and for the men. We have rationalized this through one head, unique head, which is one store manager. We believe, according also to the rules and the way this is accounting with other companies in the luxury sector, that will be better to account for just one door when we have multiple store at the same address and with the same department store or mall. The impact, as you see, is a reduction into a new way of counting of roughly a little bit more than 20 doors when we account with the new accounting method.
If in the past way of counting, we had 219 retail stores. With the new way of accounting, just having one store for one address, we will have 193. The same similar impact, we have it at wholesale level with shop in the shop, where the previous way of accounting, we had 75 shop in the shop. Now having just one store with one store manager at one address, we will have 55 at the end of 2018. We will continue to report these two ways of counting for the full year 2019, then switching definitively at the end of the year to the new way of counting for it. I pass the word to Luciano for the financial comments.
Thank you, Roberto, good afternoon, everybody, thank you for attending our call today. We are now at page 11, where we report our income statement that shows a top line of EUR 1.4 billion already presented by Roberto in full detail. The gross margin, for the first time ever, over EUR 1 billion, EUR 1.1 billion gross margin with a margin of 77.4%. Better than the 76.9% we reported last year, not only because of the channel mix as usual, but also because each individual channel reported a slightly better gross margin. Very healthy gross margin. Notwithstanding, not to forget, the negative impact of effects that impacted our top line, as you know, for about EUR 40 million. Selling expenses are very healthy. Unusually better than last year, 30.2% against 30.6%.
I say unusually because you know that selling expenses include, mostly the expenses associated with our retail network. Considering that our retail business grew significantly, we could expect a higher percent. Because a strong part of our retail growth came from organic growth, from a strong comp, that as you know was 18%, this helped our stores to improve their productivity. G&A 9% substantially in line with last year, but with about EUR 20 million more in expenses, all of them invested in our organization to make it stronger and ready for the challenges we face. Marketing expenses. We barely touched the EUR 100 million, with 7% incidence higher than the 6.7% we spent last year, already planned by the management team and anticipated to the market.
Because within this amount, we include all the communication expenses we incurred in 2018 for the launch, for the implementation of our Moncler Genius project. Stock-based compensation, more or less in line with last year, at 2.1%. An EBIT of 29.2%, that net of stock-based compensation, that is non-cash expenses, would have been over 31%. Financial results, I would say in order with a much better control on effects on currencies than last year. Taxes with a very low tax rate of 19.3%, much lower than what we planned at the beginning of last year, but in line with what we communicated in November after we signed the patent box agreement with our fully controlled subsidiary, Industries S.p.A. You may remember that in December 2017, Moncler signed the patent box agreement, in 2018, in November, also Industries S.p.A. signed the equivalent agreement.
Of course, the taxes for 2018 include the benefit for the previous four years. This is the reason why tax rate is particularly good. At the end, a net income of EUR 332.5 million, 23.4% margin with a growth rate of one third, 33% as compared to last year. Last, not least, our EBITDA. Probably we report this year EBITDA for the last time after the introduction of the new IFRS 16. We will talk about in a couple of minutes. EBITDA of EUR 500.2 million, 35.2% margin higher than ever. Let's go now to page 12 where we report our CapEx. CapEx EUR 91.5 million, still in the region of 6%. It is EUR 20 million higher than last year and also on a percentage basis, a little bit higher, with expectations that we can anticipate now to the market to spend over EUR 100 million in 2019.
This is because, as you may see, looking at the number of 2018 and 2017, we keep spending a significant amount of money in our retail network. The segment of CapEx that is growing more significantly is the so-called corporate CapEx, which include several projects. One very important is in the expansion and automation of our logistic hub in Italy. We anticipated that to the market. It is a project that is worth in three years about EUR 15 million, and about EUR 8, EUR 9 million of this amount has been posted and spent in 2018. There are really several information technology projects and a new omnichannel project. The project to develop our own online platform in Korea first, then we will see that start in 2018. It is included in this number for a couple of EUR million.
In 2019, the amount we are spending will be much more important. Now let's go to page 13, where we report networking capital. Still good, in the region of 7%, slightly better than last year. Very strong credit control, very good inventory management. Something to highlight is that inventory is growing significantly as compared to last year. You may see that a great part of this increase is offset by an increase of payable. This is because the increase in inventory is in great part associated with the anticipation of the production cycle related to the upcoming fall/winter 2019. We are ahead as compared to last year, which is very good for our business. Page 14, net financial position. As we anticipated before, EUR 450 million, with a net cash of almost EUR 550 million.
The financial debt that, as you may remember, is not a financial debt with banks, but with our partners in our joint ventures in Japan, in Korea, in Turkey. Cash generation for the year has been very strong, EUR 145 million after the distribution of dividends for EUR 70 million and after two important buyback programs for EUR 148 million. Something important to highlight is that the board held today. We propose to our shareholder meeting a distribution of dividends on the earnings of 2018 for EUR 100 million, 30% payout, and EUR 0.40 dividend per share. Page 15, we report the balance sheet. I don't have any comment. Of course, if you have questions, we will answer your question later. Page 16, cash flow statement. The cash flow statement is the summary of all positive events over the year.
Business-wise, strong EBITDA, very good working capital, also the tax benefit I mentioned before is particularly visible in the line change in current and non-current assets, where we report EUR 48 million positive as compared to the EUR 22 million negative last year, with a total amount of EUR 70 million. All of them, the vast majority of them, associated with the tax benefit of the patent box we said before for both companies. At the end, a free cash flow of EUR 362 million, 50% higher than last year. Again, the dividends, as we said before, at the end, a change in net financial position of EUR 145 million. Normally, with this slide, we end the presentation, this year, for the first time, we have one last slide, which is the estimated impact of the IFRS 16 revision.
We are talking about an accounting principle you all know very well that will take effect in January 1, 2019, we believe that may be helpful for you, for the market to understand how much would have been the impact of the newest accounting principle on our results. The big impact, as you know, as expected, is on our net financial position. That is EUR 500 million, which practically totally resets our positive net cash position with a positive impact on our operating margin for about EUR 10 million. The impact of our net result is slightly negative but is not material. We are talking about possibly a couple of million EUR. Okay. We are done with the presentation. Thank you for your attention, we are ready now for your questions.
Excuse me. This is the call conference operator. We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star 1 on their touchtone telephone. To remove yourself from the question queue, please press star 2. Please pick up the receiver when asking questions. Anyone who has a question may press star 1 at this time. The first question is from Anne-Laure Bismuth with HSBC. Please go ahead.
Yes. Hi, good evening. Anne-Laure Bismuth from HSBC. First of all, congratulations on your great results. I have three questions. Retail was at 26% at constant effects in full year 2018, with comps 18% implying 8% contribution from new space in full year. I know that you do not comment on a quarterly comps performance, but it implies comps up 11% in Q4 and 7% contribution from new stores. I'm wondering, do you still plan a low double-digit contribution from new space in 2019, as you mentioned in the past? My second question is about the performance at the beginning of the year.
The comps basis is particularly challenging in H1. I'm wondering if you can give us what are the initiatives, especially the Genius capsule collection that you have already launched or planning to launch in Q1, and some colors about the current trading, especially during the Chinese New Year. My third question is about the number of store openings that you plan for full-year 2019. Thank you very much.
Okay. Hi, Anne-Laure. About the space contribution, you know that there is some mechanics. Our space contribution was in 2018, more or less 10%, 11%, but the difference between our retail growth, 36%, and our comp is 8%, because as you know, our comp is related only to our regular stores. Outlet stores performed pretty well, but less well than our regular stores. This is the reason of this small difference. For the future, for 2019, our own plan is still in the region of 10%, maybe eight, nine, 10%. Of course, it is now a little bit premature, but honestly, the way we plan new openings is more or less in the region of the number I told you, so 9% or 10%.
Good evening, Anne-Laure. Your question regarding the first quarter, as you are all aware, we have a very high base of comparison with the great result we had in Q1 2019. We have also an impact of a shorter Chinese New Year this year because it has been anticipated by 11 days, so you have an impact which is shorter than last year. It's like if we had to move, let's say, the Christmas time for Europe 10 days ahead. On top, we have a much warmer winter. This notwithstanding, we are very happy about the results that we have had in these first seven weeks of the year, especially the result in China Mainland. As you know, our Chinese market is at 98% local clientele, and we have been growing at double-digit growth in China.
We have had also good growth in Europe, but to a lesser extent, with France still suffering from the impact of the yellow vests, where we had, unfortunately, since the beginning of the year, every single weekend, lower traffic in our Parisian store, especially in the store we have in Faubourg that is being so close to the Pari Élysées, that the street is closed. There we are suffering, but we hope that this is an issue that is going to be solved in the next few months. Same for the U.K., where we are with the Brexit that is in the air. There is also a little bit less traffic of tourists. This being said, we are very happy about the first few weeks of the year.
Regarding the number of openings that we have in 2019, maybe to give it some flair, I think we are still in the same area of 15 openings in the U.S., 15 renovations, and 15 shop-in-shops for wholesale. Maybe to give you some flair of what we intend to do during the year, first of all, we had signed an agreement with one of the main distributors we have in the U.S., with Bloomingdale's, to move the store we have in New York on the Fifth Avenue from wholesale into concession. This is the first time this is happening for Moncler in the U.S., and this will be followed by four openings we have with them on the ground floor in New Jersey with Westfield, also in Los Angeles in South Coast Plaza, and also in Washington and Salt Lake City.
I think this is the first good move for Moncler to go ground floor and to move from wholesale into concession. Second point is that we already opened two stores in February this year. One is a flagship store that we opened in Singapore. It's one of the largest stores we have in Asia, together with the store we have in Ginza in Japan and the one off Canton Road. We opened a second store in Sydney in Westfield. This is the second store we have in Australia after the opening we had a little bit more than one year ago in Chadstone in Melbourne. Melbourne, where we extended already the store because it's working extremely well, and the good news is that for the first month of February, the store of Sydney is working as well as the one we have in Melbourne.
Also in terms of store relocation and expansion, it's also something that we're working very strongly on this, because these are also projects that are bringing a lot to the brand. We are going to open a flagship store in Germany, our first flagship store in Germany, with a store that will be opening in September this year in Munich. This is a relocation, an extension of our store. We are going to quadruple the size of the store. We have also been able to manage, finally, an expansion with our two main department stores in Japan with Isetan, both for men and women, and also in Ginza with Matsuya, where we're going to double the space. Maybe a last point, Anne-Laure, as you know, we set when we had the capital market day, a very clear direction regarding the opening in airports.
We had four airports at the end of 2016. We closed 2018 with 13 airports. Half of them being in wholesale, the other half being in retail. For this year, we are planning between 8-10 openings. Two of them will be in retail, the rest will be in wholesale. We find this also, we have the first results of 2013 of the new openings are really good, and we count very much also on the additional growth that this store will be bringing.
Thank you.
The next question is from Elena Mariani with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good evening, gentlemen, and congratulations on this great set of results. I also have three questions, please. The first one for you, Roberto. I was wondering where you are right now on all the KPIs that you're monitoring in the retail network. I know that you track units per transaction, store traffic, the average ticket size and so on. Where are you versus your targets, and how much space do you think you have to further improve the store productivity, which has already reached an incredible level? That's question number one. Question number two, for Luciano, it's about the inventory. Could you clarify a little bit what you've just said before, about the growth in your inventory position?
You said that it was about the anticipation of the production cycle, and what does it mean exactly, and why this year is looking so different versus the previous year, where instead, your inventory control was very tight and you seem to be happy about the previous strategy. What has changed, and what does it mean ahead of the upcoming months? The third question, perhaps for Mr. Ruffini. I was very curious to hear what you think about the competitive environment, given that you've been so successful. The high-end outerwear category is growing very nicely. It feels like this has attracted new entrants into the market. Also some existing luxury brands have increased meaningfully, the offering of high-end products in the outerwear category. How do you feel you can maintain your differentiated positioning versus the others?
What is the key to success, in your view, for the coming years? Thank you.
Good evening, Elena. Thank you for your questions. It is Roberto. I am going to comment on the retail KPIs. You are rightly saying that is something that we are monitoring, we have the results on a daily basis. We look at them very deeply on a monthly basis, it is something that is discussed with the retail managers the president of the region, where also it is part of their management objective of the year. They are really driven towards performance also increasing the, let us say, the satisfaction of our clients. Maybe first, before we go to really retail KPIs, I think there is one thing that we are monitoring that is a little bit overall, is what we call the repeat purchase. Repeat purchase is something where I think before we really started doing clienteling, we were quite weak.
We were below 30% on repeat purchase during the same year for clients of Moncler. This has been increasing now the impact on the turnover was at 37% of the total turnover driven in 2016, was driven by repeat purchase, we have been able to go above 40%. We gained, in just three years, more than 10 points between 2015 to 2018. I think this is a sign of all the efforts and energy that has been put into the store to loyalize the clients and make them come back. Clearly also, what we have been doing in terms of action with the launch of Genius, that is also a fantastic opportunity to do clienteling, to drive our client, to do preview with them, has been also a strong factor of increased loyalty of our consumer.
Regarding what is more related to retail KPIs, as you know, we are obsessed by our sales density, something also that we are monitoring. Here we have been able to further grow this sales density in 2018. Also in the months of December, where I was personally, I had some doubts that we could be doing even better, in December was another record month in terms of sales density. Regarding unit per transaction, in 2014, we were at more or less one, people were entering Moncler to buy the outerwear. We still push them very much, we do whatever possible to keep, let us say, the outerwear as being the iconic element of Moncler. As you know, we have been able to grow the other category a lot in the course of the past few years. They quadruple.
If you remember the turnover we had in 2014, we had EUR 690 million. We are at EUR 1,420 million now. The weight of the non-outerwear grew from 12% to 24%. This grew where we multiplied the non-outerwear by four, has been helping to drive the unit per transaction that is now at above 1.3 with our aim is to be close to 1.4 next year. I think there are further possibility, the more this category will become visible in the store, the more we will sell. Clearly, we see an uplift in terms of unit per transaction. The good news is that we have been able to drive and to grow the unit per transaction while increasing the average selling price and the average transaction price, which is also something that we consider as being very, very positive.
If I may add one thing, can you remind us of where you were in terms of sales density, and where were you at the end of 2018?
At the end of 2018, we are at EUR 36,000 per square meter, a little bit more than EUR 36,000, and two years ago we were at EUR 33,000. We always said that our objective was to be above EUR 30,000 per square meter. We have been able, in the course of the last three years, to increase by 20%.
You see additional room to grow from this level?
Never say never. I think it's a very challenging figure already to replicate. All the efforts that we are doing are there to maintain this very high level of sales density. We all hope to be, again, surprised and to be able to maintain or even to further increase it.
Thank you.
Hi, Elena. This is Luciano. Thank you for your question. That allows me to clarify a very important point. No change at all in our inventory strategy. No change at all in our inventory results. You know, Elena, that our inventory management has been very efficient over the past few years. The efficiency in managing inventory translates in a KPI, which is the sell-through that you know very well. Our sell-through last year for the current or for the previous fall-winter season was over 70%, as much as it is now over 70% this year. We are very cautious in planning our inventory. Again, this is a story you know very well. We prefer to run the risk to miss some sales rather than ending up with a big leftover.
Having said that, what I said before is that this year, better than last year, because last year we started the production cycle for fall-winter 2018 late. This year, we started earlier in December, in November actually, for the raw material purchases. Also we started some production already in December, which again, this is very healthy for our business. The additional inventory you see in our balance sheet, of course in part, is driven by the additional business for the current fall-winter 2018 season, spring 2019. Also, in part, is associated with the upcoming fall-winter 2019 season. Last year it was very small immaterial amount. This year is much higher because of what I said.
This is the reason why you see also a high amount in the payables, because all these raw materials inventory, which is fresh, which is new, which is good, just to clarify that, and was still at that time to be paid. It was still in our accounts payable. Again, important to clarify, we maintain still the same prudent strategy in managing our inventory.
Thank you. This is very clear.
Hi, Elena. Talking about the competition, honestly, if you think about the specialist, we don't have much. For sure, the few we have, they're growing very fast, but I think they take a totally different street than our strategy. The rest, if you think about the luxury market, everyone have outerwear in the collection, more or less as before. For sure, I respect everyone. I really don't feel big competition. I think the big competitor is ourself. We have to make the best strategy, the best product, the best quality. I'm very confident of that. Talking about the future, we feel that, as you know, we changed the business almost one year ago. We changed the strategy, we changed the way to work. Honestly, after one year, I'm very satisfied. I feel a strong energy in the company. I feel strong energy in my store.
I feel a strong energy from my customer, I really feel like a new company. I really feel we are like a startup everything new, everybody is very happy. Again, I really feel every day in the office and when I travel in all our store, a lot of energy. Honestly, I don't want to be pretentious, I feel again, as a product and as a brand perception, we really have in that something very strong. Moncler Genius help us a lot to demonstrate to the market we are really able to make different product, different ideas, really have the possibility to talk with different generation. We really attract a lot of young kids that we always looking for because I think energy comes from the young market.
We have to work for sure in quality. Quality is really one of the first points we always have in mind for sure in the product. I think we can have better and better product. Quality for us is quality 360 degrees. I think we're looking for quality every day, everywhere, in the company, the people, in the stores. I think quality is really what we have in front of us every day. In distribution, again, I feel we have a very good distribution, both in retail and wholesale. Working the last 10 years in retail, as you know, we try to find always the best location. We have some old stores, but we're relocating. We're starting, as you know, three years ago, two years and a half ago, to relocate stores. We try to keep the location or we try to find even better location.
We really feel that we have now a very strong chain. Right number of doors, especially in Asia, where we have 30, 33 doors in China, I think is a very good number, so we don't have to grow much more. I think we have the best place, the best location. It's already sometimes we have to relocate in some department stores and some mall in better location. We find also, I think, a new language in the digital world that is something, as you know, especially not only for sell in e-commerce, not for talking with the customer, I think today is very important. We have to fine-tune, we have to do much more.
I think this type of communication, to talk with the customer every month, every day, to have a new editorial project, to have new ideas, to really stimulate the customer in this way, to attract them every month into the stores, I think is really new way to work. Is for sure, a new way to work in the luxury market. I feel Genius was something strong for our company. Thank you.
Great. Thank you very much. The next question is from Luca Solca with Bernstein. Please go ahead.
Yes, good afternoon. Talking about Genius, I wonder, Roberto, if you could possibly go through the impact on the revenue drivers, especially the retail performance, KPIs that you're looking at, and the impact of Genius in particular. I'm toying with the idea that we're actually looking at a relatively subdued effect of what this idea could generate, considering the weather. I have the idea that it could have been much stronger and that you're producing fantastic results even with weather, which is slightly adverse or quite adverse for your product. Interested to know what the impact of Genius on traffic and how this has been benefiting the average basket size or the frequency, and the overall traffic flows.
As a second question, I was wondering whether you could potentially elaborate a bit more about the demand dynamics by nationality, looking at Chinese consumers and American consumers in particular, but also the European consumers, trying to move away from the geography, which is sometimes difficult for us to reconcile. Thirdly, I thought the preamble today was very appropriate and very well deserved. What you achieved as a team with Moncler and what Mr. Ruffini has achieved is outstanding. Is there a Moncler method or is there a Remo Ruffini method that could potentially be applied elsewhere?
Good evening, Luca. Thank you for raising the question. I think you almost know the answer because I think we had the opportunity when I was visiting you in Paris to have an in-depth discussion in Genius. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to reexplain what is the objective behind Genius, what we are trying to achieve. First of all, we always mention that this is a fantastic communication opportunity to become, and as Remo Ruffini was saying, it's the first digitally native project that we have. Clearly, we can talk about the impact on turnover and so on. There are some figures I would like to share with you, and this is mainly driven by each post that has been done regarding Genius.
The number of impressions we had in 2018, with impressions, I mean the number of post visualization, increased by +43% last year. The number of reach, by reach, I mean unique visitors to the moncler.com, increased by +59% last year. I think this would not have been possible if we had a traditional way of communicating with our consumer. I think this is an energy that is coming every single month through different drops. We had already one first drop this first quarter, which was 1952 at the beginning of the month of January. Just yesterday we had the launch of the new collection of Simone Rocha, which is also driving additional traffic in the stores and also on moncler.com and on the website also of the retailers, because we are leveraging also
Both channels, retailers, our wholesale channel with the best stores, and also our stores. We had a fantastic presentation this year. Again, I would say, after the presentation last year of the Château de Chantilly, the new collection that we presented with two new stylists, Richard Quinn and Alyx, had a tremendous success when we did our show last week in Milano. We had almost 5,000 people attending the show. I think it has been the show with the largest attendance in Milano on the Milan Fashion Week. It was also a fantastic idea and initiative that Mr. Ruffini had to say, it would be fantastic for Moncler to be the first brand to open a show to public.
As you know, usually when you have a show, it's really meant for professional people from the luxury industry or from the fashion industry. We open it on Sunday. On Sunday, we had more than 10,000 people coming to see the show that we had close to the Milano railway station. The fantastic thing about this was that I think 80% of the people that were coming, they were proud to show their Moncler jacket. Some of them had even vintage jackets from the '80s or the '90s and came to attend the show, being very proud. Now, this being said, in terms of traffic, as you know, we say it's a communication project. This being said, we are not against doing some business.
We said, and we maintain that our objective is to be with a figure that is close to a high single-digit growth, not far from 10%. Each time we have a drop, we increase the traffic in the stores in the few days following the launch of each collection. As you can imagine, this has been something that was compared to the way we were doing things before, because now it's a launch at the very same date throughout the world with support on digital. This has been additional traffic that we have been generating to the store. We can say that overall, this business has been generating between 5%-8% additional traffic on a worldwide basis in 2018.
Starting from June now, we have in 2019 the full year effect because we started from very beginning of January, while last year it was starting from June. In terms of average ticket, the average ticket is slightly higher for the collection of Genius. This always depends on the collection. Of course, Simone Rocha, for example, was more expensive. When we had Palm Angels, it was slightly below, but on average, it's slightly above the average price of the main collection of Moncler. Unit per transaction is very similar. We are at the same range of the main collection. The other things that is positive for us on this Genius project, that is that we have seen that the clients coming to buy and see the collection of Genius, 50% of them are also interesting to buying to the main collection.
We had also on new clients that discover Moncler for the first time through Genius, already some repeat purchase that will be in the range of 20%-25% that are going to come back to buy either a Genius collection or the main collection. I think on top of generating a lot of energy in the store, fantastic tools to communicate, higher leverage on the social media. It has also been a generator of traffic and business for us. The second question, I think it's also from Luca. Your question was related to the full year 2018, or it was more related to the current trend?
If you could comment on both, that would be great.
In 2018, the two region with the highest growth have been Japan and APAC, especially mainland China. You know that we have a limited number of stores in China. We have 31 stores. There is still a strong demand and people eager to find Moncler. These two nationality has been growing over proportionally, but not so much above and slightly above the average of the rest of the nationality. What has been interesting in 2018 compared to the previous year is that we have been able to grow our business mainly with locals or more with locals. The weight of locals increased in 2018 compared to the growth that we had, which was also double digit on the tourists inside region and outside region.
I think this is also probably one good sign of all the initiatives we have been doing in terms of clienteling, where we are able to grow the business also with our locals, with a strong impact on the Italian, on the Korean, on the Japanese, and the mainland Chinese, but also with the Americans that have been growing, in the U.S. market and in Canada. This trend at the beginning of this year continues. We see a trend which is more a growth with locals, compared to tourists. If you have been looking at the result of Global Blue, there is a slight decrease of traffic of tourists in Europe. This being said, we have been positive with Chinese tourism.
We have seen a Chinese tourism that has been more moving in their neighboring country, especially Singapore, also supported for us by the opening of the flagship store of Marina Bay, and also to Australia, and to a lesser extent, to Hong Kong and to Taiwan.
Hi, Luca. I don't think we have a formula. I think, a couple of years ago, we felt that the world was changing in our industries. We felt that it was quite boring when we walk on the luxury street around the world. Actually we said we have to do something, we have to change something, we have to attract new customer, we have to talk with new generation, with young generation, we have to talk with old generation. We start thinking how we can change our business model, and as you know the story, one year ago, we changed everything, more or less everything. We changed the culture in the company, and we say we have to give different ideas, different way to work and give more energy to our customer. We start the project and everything in one year is changed, basically.
I think today we can attract new customer, we can talk with new customer, with new generation. We can have a project every month. We can have editorial project every month, so that are able to talk with the customer every day. I think this is the key why the brand have, I think today, very strong energy. Having said that, I think we are quite a good team. We did a incredible good job in some area of the company. Supply chain did incredible good job, and surprised also myself. We delivery every project in the same day, at the same hour, in every our stores, in all our partner, retailers, wholesalers. The marketing area did quite a good job. I think we are able to organize all the project around the world. We have still a lot of thing to do.
We have a lot of fine-tuning to do. We feel we are in the right street for the luxury market.
Thank you very much indeed. Thank you.
The next question is from Janet Kloppenburg with JJK Research. Please go ahead.
Good evening, everyone. Congratulations on a great quarter and a great year. I just had a couple of follow-on questions. I was wondering if you could talk about the size of the new store openings for 2019, given the success of Genius and the newer categories and the flagship stores. I'm wondering if the square footage per store is moving higher. My second question is on the gross margin opportunity as we look out into 2019 and 2020, if we could see further expansion there, what should we expect? Lastly, I just wondered about the Genius program on two fronts. One, if you could talk a little bit about the performance of the high fashion designer products versus the more commercial Fragment Grenoble lines. Also if the flow of the product will be relatively similar in 2019 versus 2018. Thank you.
Good evening, Janet. Thank you for your question. Regarding the size of the store, the average size of the store currently is at 160, which is higher than what we had four years ago. We were at 110, so the new openings have been driving further up the size of the store. Each time we do relocation, and we are talking about 15 relocation, we try whenever it's possible, not only to go and touch the look and feel of the store and the material and the design, but always to take the opportunity either to relocate in a better location or to expand. This is what is driving us. On that side, you can expect some slight higher for the relocation and some of the new openings of a larger store. We have Singapore that is a larger store.
We have Munich that is also a flagship that is going to be a larger store. At the same time, this will be in a way slightly mitigated by the push we had at airport level. We are planning between eight to 10 openings in airports, and we know that, for example, for airports, it's difficult to reach an average size of 160. We're expecting a slight growth of the average size of the store, but not to the extent of a double digit. Probably something that is going to drive us to 165 to 170 sq m for 2019 on average.
That's great. Thank you.
Hi, Janet.
Hi.
Yes. Hi, Janet, this is Luciano. About your question on gross margin. Honestly, as I said before, you know that our gross margin in 2018 was particularly strong, and I'm not talking about only the gross margin we report, but also the gross margin for each individual channel, which was even a little bit better than last year when it was already very good. Opportunity to further increase the gross margin may come only by the increase of the retail business.
If you consider that we reported a 77.4% gross margin and our retail margin is more or less 80%-81%. Even if our retail business, should it be 100% of our business, the maximum we can have is in the region of 80%. Honestly, I don't think that we can expect material significant expansion on our gross margin also because, again, in 2018, inventory management, everything was particularly good.
Okay, great.
I'm coming back. It's Roberto. Regarding the collection launch in 2019, of course, we'll have more collection launch than we had in 2018. Just by the fact that we have started with this monthly drop only in June last year, we did the presentation in February, and we did the first launch in June. This year, we are benefiting from having had the show in September of the spring-summer collection. We have started already at the beginning, first week of January, with the launch of 1952. We have now the second one with Rocha. There will be 3 other launch, March, April, and May, before going into, I don't want to call it routine, because each time it's very exciting for us, and we are far from having this as a routine.
There will be 12 launch of collection this year compared to the 7 launch we had in 2018. Grenoble is one of the key pillars on which we are really counting because it's representing really the DNA of the brand. We further continue to develop also the renovation and relocation of our resort store in the mountains. I'm happy also that we'll have now the opportunity to open an additional one in Val d'Isère. We continue to work also with ski schools, equipping new ski schools that are dressed in Moncler, because I think that for all these new people coming to the ski, and there are a lot of new Asians that are coming to Europe or to Japan, and are initiate to ski, it's nice to see that the reference for them, which is the school teacher, is dressed in Moncler.
This is something that we are going to continue. Regarding the Genius launch, the objective, like for last year, is also to have, at a given point in time, all this collection under the same roof in what we call the House of Genius. Last year we had one in New York, in Soho, and one in Aoyama in Japan. We are working, and there were also a certain number of shop in the shop that presented the full collection in October. We have decided this year, because we have new collection arriving and the new designer coming a little bit later, to have the same approach with shop in the shop. Well, let's say with a pop-up store, but that will start on the 7th of November and touching a little bit more the peak season. We are planning to have two new House of Genius.
Their location still needs to be confirmed, the intent is to have one in Europe this time and to have, again, something in Japan, because it is something that has been working extremely well in 2018.
Thank you. Good luck.
The next question is from Omar Saad with Evercore. Please go ahead.
Thank you for taking my question. Great year. Another great year. Congratulations.
Omar, sorry. Omar, we don't really hear you well. Can you just talk a little bit closer to the mic?
Absolutely. Sorry about that. Congratulations on another great year. It's great to see. I wanted to ask, it looked like in the fourth quarter, the Asia revenue line slowed down a bit. Still very strong and a great year, but you saw this huge acceleration in Italy and Europe as well in the fourth quarter. Maybe you could talk a little bit about what the underlying dynamic is going on. Is that tourism shifts or Chinese tourist shifts going on? In a related question, have you seen big changes in Chinese tourist consumption patterns since some of the luxury VAT tax changes went into effect last summer? I guess my last question would be around the supply, maybe a little bit of an update on the supply chain, how you're evolving it.
Especially with a year of Genius under your belt, adjusting the supply chain for those types of collections, presumably more in the future. How are you thinking about the supply chain, the way it's set now? Thank you.
Good evening, Omar. Roberto, thank you for your congratulations. Regarding some of the assumptions you had in your question, I do not have exactly the same reading. The Italian market grew. In fact, it accelerated in the last quarter because we grew at 26% in the last quarter. We have not seen any slowdown. If any, it was an acceleration on the Italian market, especially with the local clients. Regarding China, but also the other country, what we always said is that what is driving the performance for us at the end of the year is the sales density. It is the first time that we overpassed the 80,000 EUR per square meter in December in our retail network.
I think we will all be dreaming to grow 20%-25%, but I think that when you are at 80,000 EUR per square meter, on average, you are number one in the industry. Or if not number one, it is number two. We are ready to take the challenge for December. We know that our opportunity to further grow our sales density is to work on the first three quarters of the year. The base of comparison of December is very, very high. I do not read that as a deceleration, but more as the fact that as we are best performing, there is a kind of saturation effect in our store, and honestly, I was not expecting to have a double-digit growth in December in our sales density.
I think this is all the good work that we have been doing to create the desire for the brand. I think creating the excitement, creating the emotion around the brand is what is driving this company. I am so very, very happy about the performance of our people in the store that are there every day and have been really outperforming, in my opinion, in the last months of the year.
Understood. Yeah, go ahead, Luciano.
Are you okay with the question to Roberto or?
Sure, yeah. Sure.
Okay. Omar, about supply chain. You made a point, supply chain, of course, is very important, extremely critical for everyone, but specifically to implement and to make this kind of project, the Genius project, happen. As we said before, we are very happy about how the supply chain responded to this project that was really a change in our culture, in our methodology to implement production. We made it. It was very successful. We have really, as our chairman did, to thank our people because they themselves, I think, made it happen and made the difference. Having said that, we keep investing in our supply chain.
The most important investments are not financial investments, this would be much easier, honestly, not only because we have cash, we have money, the most important investment in our supply chain, which is much more difficult, is the investment in the culture. As you know, a few years ago, we have invested a small amount of money but a big effort in our own factory in Romania. That factory that was, still is, a manufacturing factory. Now it is really a technological hub where we develop technology that is then spread over the regions where we make production in third-party factories. This is something very important, it's a long journey. It's a never-ending story, we keep investing in culture, in developing new people, new methodologies, new technologies.
Another important piece of this mechanism is the size of our production capacity that to respond to our growing volumes is something that we have to look after permanently. This is something that is not easy. Again, it's not easy, but it's something that we are totally under control. Again, to give you a simple answer, very difficult, but we are totally aware about the difficulties and all our supply chain team, and not only also the strategic team, is looking after this point.
Thank you.
I think we have time Sorry, just interrupt. I think we have time for one follow-up question or one person, maybe a couple of questions.
The next question is from Susy Tibaldi with UBS. Please go ahead.
Hi, good evening. Thank you for taking my question. I have three, please. I wanted to ask with Moncler Genius now, clearly, you are attracting more and more younger consumers. I was wondering how your consumer base is changing. If you can give an indication of the, for example, the percentage of sales to millennials. Secondly, on the wholesale, clearly, Q4 was very strong. I guess some of that was driven by the online e-tailers. I was wondering if that is really something that you are seeing growing really fast, if you can give some color around that. Lastly, still related to the e-commerce, I was wondering if you can give an update on your progress, both with Tmall, and also with the pilot in South Korea. Thank you.
Good evening, Susy. Thank you for your question. I start with the first one, with the question related to Moncler Genius. In the choice we made of the different stylists, we wanted to touch not only millennials but to touch all segments of the database. Every single designer is coming with his own universe that is talking to a very different people, and it is this diversity that we like in the Moncler Genius project. This being said, some of the stylists that we have been choosing are driving younger generation. If I make a comparison, because it is too early to have an impact on the global database, but if we just look at the, let us say, the demographics of the Moncler Genius consumers, we have a higher penetration on the millennials, which is to the extent of 42%-44%. This is really changing from, each time there is a launch, depend.
1952 is younger. Simone Rocha is now that we are launching now, is slightly older. The demographic has shifted to a little bit more younger generation, and we have with the new stylist. Especially with Alix, again, somebody that will drive additional millennials to our stores when it will be launched later on this year. Regarding the wholesale, the performance of the last quarter was very good. There was a strong demand also from the U.S. market to have some anticipation regarding the spring-summer collection because of the very high level of sell-through that we had with the fall-winter.
The performance is driven partly by the very good performance of retailers, also by the further expansion that we have with the shop in the shop, and also by the expansion, the opening that we have with the airports, because as you know, the business model in airports is not defined by brand, it is defined by the choice of the airport to have either an operator or to work directly with brand. The reality of this market is that two-thirds of the airports, they are working with operators. This is also further driving the growth of the wholesale. The growth that you have seen, this 13% has been an exceptional growth, very strong growth. It has been driven by the very good performance we had also in terms of sell-through in 2019.
We have, of course, retailers that are growing at a pace that is above 30%. Clearly this is helping. We take advantage and we continue our selection of doors and reduction of number of doors that we have in wholesale. This does not mean that we are not opening new ones. I think we are now also in, thanks to Moncler Genius, in more edgy distributors since now more than one year. In total, last year we closed more than 100 doors. We are now at below 1,400. We were 1,500 the year before. The +13% has been done despite the closure of more than 100 doors in 2018. I give maybe the answer and, Luciano Santel, feel free also to comment on the approach on the e-commerce. The project internally, the code name of the project is One. The project for Korea, it is advancing very well.
I think this is another initiative that is driving a lot of energy in the company. This is being helped and driven today by our head of omnichannel because we changed also our structure to be more focused on this omnichannel. Also thanks to the arrival, the person that joined the company, the chief digital officer, four months ago, that is also helping us to drive the development of the e-commerce for Korea. The launch is foreseen at the beginning of the second semester of this year in two phases with a full implementation of omnichannel before the end of the year. Regarding China, we are also, of course, assessing the different possibility of further developing our presence online in China.
We have strengthened the collaboration that we have with WeChat and with the mini website in order to drive, let's say, the development of our online business in China. Tmall is also part of the assessment. We really want to focus on something that is going to help us, and we plan to launch the omnichannel with our website before the end of this year. You are probably aware, we launched what you call light omnichannel with return in store, with exchange in store, with click from store, on which we believe a lot. In Europe in June this year, we have had the full rollout of the 75 stores we have in Europe in 2018.
Now we are working for the launch, and the pilot is now in the U.S., and we plan after that to launch Japan, Korea with our own website, and China also before the end of this year.
Great. Thank you very much.
Ms. Durante, I give you back the floor for your final remarks.
Thank you. Very briefly, first of all, thank you very much for your participation and for all your interesting questions. I'm sure some of them has some leftover questions, We are at your disposal anytime. Please call us. Myself and the IR team will be available. We thank you and good night to all of you.
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining. The conference is now over, You may disconnect your telephones.