Good afternoon, and warm welcome to Marimekko's Capital Markets Day. My name is Anna Tuominen, and I'm the IRO of Marimekko, and your host today. We have gathered here in the middle of our fabric printing mill here in Helsinki, but we also have viewers all around the world through our live webcast. Today, our management team is going to give you an update on our progress of the SCALE strategy execution, originally published two years ago. Our speakers will focus on the most important growth drivers in our different market areas and their role in the company's growth strategy, as well as, the enablers of growth.
We will start by our President and CEO, Tiina Alahuhta-Kasko, recapping the SCALE strategy and the key growth drivers, and after that, our Senior Vice Presidents of Sales, Noora Laurila and Natacha Def rance, will walk you through our global key city thinking and our ecosystem approach. They will then deep dive into different market areas to show the steps we have taken during the past 18 months of the SCALE strategy, as well as present the growth drivers for the future across market areas. We will then have a short break, and in the second part of the day, we will elaborate on the enablers of international growth. We will hear presentations from our Creative Director, Rebekka Bay, who will tell you about the work we're doing to reinforce our product relevance and desirability internationally.
Our Chief Marketing Officer, Sanna-Kaisa Niikko, will explain how we increase our international awareness, which is a key requisite for the growth, and finally, our Chief Technology Officer, Mikki Inkeroinen, will walk you through our approach to end-to-end digitality to boost both omnichannel growth as well as efficiency. We will have a few questions during the presentations, but we have reserved time for your questions at the end of the event, both here at Helsinki, as well as online, and online, you can use the chat function to type in your questions at any time of the event, and before we begin, just a short reminder from our legal team about any forward-looking statements today. I'm sure that we're all eager to get going, so I would like to invite our first speaker, President and CEO, Tiina Alahuhta-Kasko, to the stage.
Thank you. Thank you, Anna, and welcome, warmly welcome to the Marimekko Capital Markets Day, here to the heart of Marimekko, our own textile printing mill in Helsinki. We are thrilled to be here today to give you an update on the progress of our exciting SCALE strategy, and we're also very excited to be here with our fantastic Marimekko team that you will get to meet. So before we get started, I would like to briefly introduce you my lovely colleagues. So if you can kindly stand up, Noora Laurila, who is the Senior Vice President of Sales in Region West, then Natacha Def rance, who is our Senior Vice President in Region East, then our Chief Creative Officer, Rebekka Bay.
Then we have our Chief Marketing Officer, Sanna-Kaisa Niikko, our Chief Business Development Officer, Riika Wikberg, our Chief Technology Officer, Mikki Inkeroinen, our General Counsel, Essi Weseri, our Chief Financial Officer, Elina Anckar, our Chief Product and Supply Chain Officer, Tina Broman, and our Chief People Officer, Tanya Strohmayer. So we're all here for you today. But to get started, at Marimekko, we started our new strategy term back in 2023, spanning until the end of 2027, focusing on scaling up our growth, especially in the international markets, by further building on and reinforcing our already proven success recipe. We are very excited to be on this scaling up journey, and we see that the continued strong performance...
Financial performance, paired with the constantly increasing interest in Marimekko around the world, really demonstrates the unique growth opportunities for us to be captured. As a profitable company with a very strong balance sheet, we also have the possibility to make these long-term investments required to fuel the long-term international growth, despite the generally weaker microenvironment, providing us a competitive boosting edge, given that not so many players in our industry at this time are necessarily able to do so. So in this first section today, I will walk you through our SCALE strategy, and I will summarize some of the key elements and components of our long-term growth. Let's get started. So Marimekko is, of course, a Finnish design house and one of the world's first real lifestyle brands.
Our story began in 1951 by a visionary woman, Armi Ratia, who had this dream and vision of wanting to re-energize the country and bring back optimism after the difficult time period in our history. Her husband, Viljo, used to have an oil cloth producing factory close by where we're located today. So what she did, Armi, she started to gather around herself this group of young artists and creatives, and invited them to create avant-garde prints for her husband's factory. People admired the vibrant printed cloths, but didn't really know what to do with them. So therefore, back in 1951 , in the spring, the married couple decided to organize a fashion show. Just to give people ideas of what they could make out of the vibrant fabrics.
Ironically, the idea was not to sell anything, but when people saw these liberating, bold dresses on the catwalk, it was something completely different to the fashions of that time, and they wanted to start ordering. That then marked the birth of Marimekko, what is translating from Finnish as Mari's dress, which is said to be one of the world's first real lifestyle brands. While the dress was our first product, actually, since the get-go, our product portfolio and offering included also home, and bags, and accessories. So ever since the beginning, since 1951, our mission has been to empower people to be happy as they are, and bring joy to their every day lives through our bold prints and colors.
We're proud to have always been an antidote to the often exclusive and superficial world of fashion, with our authenticity, inclusivity, and empowerment exuding philosophy. And in the world that we're living today, we feel that this mission is probably more meaningful than ever. Art of printmaking is our key vehicle, our key language for fulfilling our mission of bringing joy and empowerment to people. And it is our unique DNA and differentiating factor that we have accumulated over the course of the seven decades of our history by working and operating in the intersection of art, design, fashion, and architecture. Today, we have an archive of over 3,500 prints, and we're very proud about the fact that we print around one million meters of fabric here in the Herttoniemi Printing Mill, catering for all of our product lines.
Not only is this an industrial printing facility, but this printing mill plays an even wider strategic role as the creative hub for our creative community, really enabling us to innovate in what sets us apart from everybody else. Further, our design philosophy has always been founded on timelessness and long-lastingness. Since 1951, we've always wanted to provide our customers timeless, functional, and high-quality products that bring them long-lasting joy that they will not want to throw away. We have never been following trends, but always walked our timeless path. As we are a very expressive brand, so are also our target customers. Our target customer is best defined by values and attitudes, not by traditional demographics. Our customers are empowered and open-hearted urban explorers, people who live lives that look like them.
They are what we call conscious consumers, so people who want to reflect their own values through their consumption choices, and overall make mindful consumption choices. Today, the Marimekko lifestyle comprises three product lines: fashion, bags and accessories, and home. And typically, if we look into the past, roughly around 55% of our net sales has come from the fashion components, so ready-to-wear, and bags, and accessories, and 45% roughly from our home products. Today, our key markets are Northern Europe, North America, and the Asia-Pacific region, and we approach these key markets through key cities. Today, there are roughly 170 Marimekko stores around the world, with Marimekko e-commerce serving customers in already 38 countries, and in total, our products being sold in around 40 countries, making our operating environment already a truly global one.
Then, when it comes to our performance, compared to competition, on this slide, on the y-axis, you will see the revenue development of in the years 2023 versus 2022, and on the x-axis, you will see the EBIT margin of 2023. So what you can see on this slide is that Marimekko's relative profitability is very high. It's just below our luxury players, and at the same time, we have been continuing our net sales growth, despite the weaker macroeconomic market context, especially in our home market, Finland. So I think this slide really truly speaks for our underlying competitiveness in the global market context.
Within the past years at Marimekko, we have found a good success recipe in translating our beautiful heritage brand to speak to an even wider group of customers today and tomorrow, in a way that is relevant, but still always true to our original brand DNA. And this has then translated into strong performance throughout the years, showcasing really our ability for profitable growth, even in a weaker macroeconomic environment. So looking at our brand sales, starting from 2019 until 2023, we have been growing with a CAGR of 11%. In the net sales, our CAGR between 2019 and 2023 has been 9%, and at the same time, we have been increasing our relative profitability to high levels, in spite of the fact that we have been continuously investing in fueling our long-term growth.
So the continued profitable growth and strong financial position enables us to make these investments in our long-term growth and, at the same time, stable dividend payouts. We are very happy about how our return on capital employed has increased, and we wish to develop this further as we scale up our business. When we look at our net debt to EBITDA year-end ratio, that really shows that we are, in essence, debt-free, and we have been a stable dividend payer, and as you can see, from time to time, we have been also paying out an extraordinary dividend, so with this proven success recipe, our next phase is really all about scaling up growth to bring joy and empowerment to even more people around the world, in line with our mission.
So in order to capture the unique growth opportunities of Marimekko, that are supported also by mega trends that have been shaping already for some time our industry dynamics and consumer behavior, we have identified five key strategic success factors, by focusing on which we believe that we can capture these growth opportunities. These strategic success factors, each representing a letter in the strategy theme SCALE, include: firstly, S standing for sustainability. We are a value-driven company and really want to be at the forefront of developing products, and processes, and practices, based on our ambitious sustainability strategy comprising our entire value chain. We very much believe that determined sustainability efforts strongly support our long-term success, and as one measure to show our dedication, we have also committed to the Science Based Targets initiative. Then, secondly, the letter C stands for creative vision.
Rebekka will soon talk to you about it, but we are very much in the business of desirability. So in the coming years, we will continue to reinforce our sharp and creative vision to speak to an even wider global audience, with ready-to-wear as our communicational spearhead of our lifestyle brand. Then, moving on to A, representing accelerating growth in Asia. As mentioned, Northern Europe, North America, and the Asia-Pacific region continue to be our main markets, but we focus on Asia as the geographically most important area for future international growth. Then, the letter L represents love. So we grow and foster our customer community by always connecting with our customers, with our unique value-based brand story, with art of printmaking and optimism at heart.
L also stands for love within our Marimekko organization, as we believe that our meaningful purpose and strong values create a strong foundation for our organization internally for our future success. And then finally, end-to-end digitality, standing for the letter E. We are working actively on multiple fronts to accelerate the wider digitalization of Marimekko, as we see the new technologies and data offering us interesting opportunities to boost our omnichannel growth and efficiency, and Mikki will talk to you more about that in a moment. When we introduced our SCALE strategy back in the fall of 2022, at the same time, our Board of Directors updated our long-term financial targets, as we had by then exceeded all of our previous long-term financial goals.
So just to walk them through in brief, our annual growth in net sales targets is 15%, before it used to be over 10%. Our comparable operating profit margin target is 20%, it used to be, before 15%. And then we kept intact the ratio of net debt to EBITDA year-end as at maximum 2x, and our dividend policy, with an intention to pay a yearly dividend with a minimum 50% of EPS, was also kept intact. Here, good to keep in mind that while these targets were announced at the same time as our new strategy term, these represent long-term goals. As it then pertains the key elements for our long-term growth, due to our unique value proposition and highly differentiating value proposition, there are multiple levers for sizing up Marimekko.
Firstly, direct-to-consumer, or D2C, is our core distribution channel, with e-com providing high scalability opportunities and there being significant room still to grow the number of Marimekko stores, in particular in Asia. Secondly, to complement the Marimekko D2C business, we see great potential in scaling up our sales and brand reach via wholesale, including e-tailers with wide market span. Third, while we focus on our growth in our existing markets, we see and will explore capturing growth opportunities also in new markets that benefit from the already built-up awareness, for example, through our brand collaborations. Then fourth, in addition to our current loyal customers, expanding our community to include also new customers, also the next generations, represents another important growth lever.
And then finally, being a lifestyle brand renowned for our art of printmaking, there is a longer-term possibility to scale up our brand through also new product categories, for example, through licensing. In summary, we're scaling up by both accelerating international sales across markets, as well as gaining market share in our strong home market in Finland. To simplify, in the international markets, we focus on growing our customer base, including the next generations. The D2C channels owned by us or by our loose franchise partners are really at the heart and core of our distribution strategy, and in the Western part of the world, we complement this by wholesale to scale up reach and volumes. We focus on the existing international markets, with Asia as the most important geographical area, supported by then select new market openings....
Then moving on to our strong home market in Finland. Here, we already have a very strong, loyal customer base that we focus on nurturing, and at the same time, we work to further widen this customer base with also the next generation of audience. Here, we already have a true omnichannel approach with wide D2C and wholesale presence. Then as to the product mix, both in the international markets and in Finland, we serve our customers with the Marimekko lifestyle assortment across all markets for brand consistency, which is key. But we ensure local relevance by optimizing the local product mix weightings based on customer behavior, channel profile, and market maturity. In a moment Noora and Natacha will be elaborating to you on the key, kinda market-level, most important growth anchors and strategies.
So despite the high growth potential of Marimekko, it's thanks to our scalable business model, it's good to know that we also have a low-risk profile. What do I then mean by that? Firstly, in Asia, the most important geographical area for our future international growth, we operate and expand through a loose franchise business model with low risk and CapEx needs. Secondly, we have low volatility of the business, thanks to the strong brand heritage that we have been building for over 70 years. Then, our customer community is built over decades. It is loyal and constantly growing. Then, our lifestyle concept with three product lines, both seasonal and continuing collections, as well as wide price point span, provides a diversified approach that balances through seasonality and economic cycles.
In addition, our wide geographical spread of our business, as well as the globally versatile channel mix, also balance general economic fluctuations, and finally, we have a low net debt, which also decreases volatility, but then, if we look at the key elements for reaching our long-term annual net sales growth target of 15%, on this slide, you can see an illustrative composition of the roles that the different markets and channels play on this journey for us, so starting with Finland, our strong home market, here we focus on further increasing our market share. When it comes to Scandinavia, EMEA, and North America, they all contribute both to our sales acceleration, as well as on building our global positioning, really anchoring through some of the leading global fashion cities like New York, Copenhagen, and Paris.
Then finally, Asia- Pacific really represents our key growth-generating market and strategic focus area. Then, when it comes to the distribution channel choices and priorities for each market, they are determined based on local end consumer insight on the channel's role and relevance. Noora and Natacha will also elaborate and deep dive on this, and the kind of market-specific distribution channel ecosystems in a moment more in detail. Then, when it comes to the key elements for achieving our long-term comparable operating profit margin target of 20%, clearly the most important driver for relative profitability improvement is sales growth. It's good to remember that scaling up growth also requires investments in areas like marketing, to constantly fuel our awareness.
Investments are also needed, for example, in our material transformation, in line with our ambitious sustainability strategy, and also general trends in material and logistic costs also affect product costs. We're working actively to develop our end-to-end digitality, boost both growth and efficiency, seeking a positive impact on our relative profitability, and naturally scale benefits in supply chain as well as in fixed costs, paired with the continuous tight cost control, support relative profitability improvement. All these elements in this illustrative example are consistent with the ones that we walked through in our previous CMD as well. Then, as it pertains the product portfolio with which we aim to scale up, ready-to-wear, as mentioned, plays a really important role in our-- as our communicational spearhead, enabling us to maximally leverage the entire lifestyle concept.
We see our lifestyle portfolio catering for different moments in everyday life as a major strength. The versatility in products and price points allows us to serve a growing global audience, and the three product lines, as well as the seasonal and continuing collections, provide stability across season and cycles. It is also good to note that there are no significant differences in our margins per product line. So we can also take an end-customer-centric approach to optimize our product line mix per market and channel to maximize both our local relevance and, through that, our revenue. We do not estimate major changes in our product line split over this strategy period, so good to remember that as well.
Then, looking into the longer-term future, as our key differentiator in our recognizability is our recognizable art of printmaking, our brand is not constrained into any specific product line or product lines, but there is a possibility to expand our lifestyle into new product categories, for example, through licensing. As it then is to our distribution channels for scaling up, they each contribute to sales and profitability in different ways. Due to the nature of omnichannel retail, the net sales per product for Marimekko are the highest in this channel, while then in wholesale, we gain the wholesale price, and in licensing, a licensing fee. Then again, licensing provides the highest operating margin percentage, whereas while the net sales per product in our own omnichannel retail are the highest, the operating costs and CapEx are also covered by us impacting the operating margin percentage.
On the other hand, then, in wholesale, which includes both traditional wholesale as well as our business to the loose franchise partners in Asia operating the Marimekko stores there, we carry only limited operating costs, and therefore gain a good level of operating profit margin. Noora and Natacha will in a moment elaborate more also on the role of each of the different distribution channel in our SCALE strategy. So with this overarching recipe, we are thrilled to work towards our mission and vision to be the world's most inspiring lifestyle design brand renowned for bold prints.
As a next step, I would like to invite with me on the stage my dear colleagues, Noora and Natacha, who will be walking you through our global key city ecosystem and key city strategy, as well as giving you an update on how we are progressing on our SCALE strategy execution, and what are the different growth levers and strategies in each of our key markets, so welcome.
Thank you. Thank you, Tiina, for the inspiring introduction. We are so happy to be here, so good afternoon also on our behalf. My name is Noora Laurila, and I'm the Senior Vice President of Sales for Region West.
Good afternoon. I'm Natacha de France, and I'm the Senior Vice President for East Region. During the next hour, we will go through our global sales ecosystem and how we accelerate growth in our key markets. As Tiina mentioned in her introduction, our key markets are Northern Europe, North America, and Asia Pacific region. We have some 170 Marimekko stores around the world. The Marimekko online store serves customers in 38 countries, and we sell Marimekko products in approximately 40 countries. Our distribution strategy is built on three legs. So the core is the direct-to-consumer channel, meaning both physical and online stores, operated either by us or our loose franchisee partners. We complement the direct-to-consumer business with our wholesale partners, meaning physical or an online retailer, to gain access to new customers.
We use brand collaboration, such as IKEA, Adidas, Uniqlo, to further build our global brand awareness, and we also do more traditional licensing to complement the offering.
Each of our key markets play a distinct role in the global Marimekko ecosystem. Finland is our strong home market. In addition to capturing the domestic growth opportunities, success in Finland also allows us to further fuel international growth. North America, Scandinavia, and EMEA have an important role in contributing to sales growth. This will be achieved through serving our existing loyal customers and introducing our brand to the next generations. In addition, key cities in these markets are integral in building our global image and positioning. The Asia Pacific region, our second-largest market area after the strong home market, Finland, is the key growth generator in terms of sales and our gateway of tapping into broader target audience. We approach our main markets through key cities with global relevance to build both local and global demand.
We know that in the retail and fashion context, there are cities, such as New York, Paris, Copenhagen, and Tokyo, that are opinion leaders with global impact. Presence in these cities serves not only the local audience, but builds credibility for the brand and fuels sales also in other geographies and channels. In our key cities, we create ecosystems of Marimekko stores with seamless digital experience, complemented with wholesale partners to capture sales. We create impactful marketing activations, community events, and collaborations to build awareness and positioning. Concentrating our activities in key cities allows us to have clear focus in our strategy execution and to maximize the impacts of our efforts. Sanna-Kaisa, our CMO, will elaborate how we build international awareness through key cities with more details in her section. Now, I will talk more about the SCALE journey for Finland, Scandinavia, EMEA, and North America.
I will walk you through each market area, focusing on the latest steps of our SCALE strategy journey, taken in these markets, as well as the key growth drivers for the future. After that, I will hand over the stage back to my colleague, Natacha, who will do the same for the Asian markets. So thank you, Natacha, at this stage.... Okay, let's start with our strong home market, Finland, where we have been demonstrating continued sales growth over the past years, and where we plan to continue increasing market share. This will enable us to further accelerate international growth. Finland is the market where Marimekko brand story began more than 70 years ago, and where we have since built our very committed and ever-growing community.
We have an established distribution network of omnichannel retail in prime locations and online, as well as strong wholesale partnerships to cater both for the wide domestic consumer base, as well as to capture sales from brand lovers visiting Finland. During the first part of the SCALE strategy period, we have focused on growing our brand story even further in Finland to capture sales and to continue recruiting new generations to our community. Some of the highlights in this work include continuing our strong tradition of brand-building events, such as Marimekko Day, which gathered more than 10,000 people to watch it live in sunny Helsinki in May, and more than 17,000 through live streams. This year, we have also celebrated our Unikko anniversary year with impactful activations across all our channels.
The continued development of our collections, such as the launch of Maridenim, our first-ever denim line, launched in August this year, is one of the important enablers in our SCALE journey. Rebekka will elaborate more on the collection development in her part. With our unique brand position, strong activations, and relevant product offering, we have been able to grow our omnichannel retail sales consistently, despite the challenging macroeconomic climate in Finland. This truly showcases the strong desirability of the brand. Going forward, we will focus on three key elements to further grow in Finland. First, we will continue to nurture the Marimekko brand phenomenon. We will do this by fueling brand desirability, by creating and investing into exceptional brand experiences that speak to our ever-growing community.
Our textile printing factory here in Helsinki offers us a unique opportunity to further build global brand phenomenon by expressing the art of printmaking, which is the key differentiator of the brand. Secondly, we will continue to fuel our direct-to-consumer business by capturing retail network development opportunities, leveraging our community program and service concept, and by maximizing revenue growth opportunities through modular product offering. Thirdly, we will continue our mission to democratize the art of printmaking and to serve even wider audience by developing our strong wholesale partnerships with exciting brand expression, curated product offering, and select tailored campaigns to provide access of Marimekko products to all households in Finland. Now, let's move on to discuss Scandinavia and EMEA and the growth opportunities in these two market areas.
Let's start with Scandinavia, which is a market where we have long history, Sweden being one of our first export markets since the 1950s . At the end of 2023, Scandinavia represented 9% of our net sales and has demonstrated consistent growth over the last years. Our omnichannel retail footprint includes pointed physical store presence, with five stores and three shop-in-shops, as well as e-commerce, serving across the full market. Wholesale represents a significant proportion of our sales today and remains important source of growth in the future as well. As for EMEA, this is a market that represented 8% of our net sales at the end of 2023. Here, our key focus is in Central Europe. In this market area, we do not currently have our own physical retail, but we serve our customers through e-commerce and wholesale across more than 20 countries.
Already today, wholesale is our biggest sales channel, and we see great growth opportunities for wholesale through brand and distribution modernization. Central Europe also has one of the main fashion capitals of the world, Paris, which has a major role in the global fashion industry. Marimekko's presence in cities like these has a wider impact, not only for the local market, but on global level and across channels. As part of our global key city strategy, we are looking into the right timing for entering Paris. While Scandinavia and Central Europe have differences, our actions in these markets are targeted to build brand awareness and hype in order to fuel growth across both market areas. In the past 18 months, our focus has been in increasing our brand presence and impact in two of our global key cities, Copenhagen and Stockholm.
In 2023, we rolled out our latest store concept in both of these cities. The new flagship store offers a more experiential and engaging brand experience to our growing community and fuels growth across all channels. We have also developed our wholesale to widen our brand reach. One of the ways for doing this is by creating capsules, meaning mini collections, exclusive colorways, or certain styles for some of our wholesale customers. In addition, we have strengthened our presence in important industry events, such as Copenhagen Fashion Week, Milan Design Week, and 3d ays ofd esign. These events are perfect opportunities to drive brand visibility and connect Marimekko with press, influencers, customers, and wholesale clients from across the world. In the coming years, we will scale up by continuing to focus on building brand awareness and desirability to increase our customer base.
We will do this by, first, continuing to strengthen our omnichannel retail experience as heart of our consumer activation and storytelling. Next focus will be on establishing key city ecosystem in Paris. At the same time, we will continue developing our e-commerce experience and leveraging our community program across different markets in Europe to scale sales. Secondly, we will continue fueling brand awareness and brand hype through community activation, relevant industry events, as well as interesting brand collaborations. And thirdly, we will continue to modernize and expand our wholesale business, including e-tailers. We will do this by both strengthening our existing partnerships, as well as acquiring new wholesale accounts to scale sales and build overall brand awareness across Europe. Now, let's move on to the other side of the Atlantic and talk about North America.
North America is another one of our first export markets, alongside with Sweden, and represented 5% of our net sales at the end of 2023. This market has been growing at a good pace over the first part of the SCALE strategy period. The role of the market is to drive sales growth through expanding the customer base to new generations, as well as to drive Marimekko's global brand positioning through our activations in New York. This market overall offers significant scale-up opportunities, especially in wholesale, due to its large size. In the past years, we have focused on laying the foundation for future growth by solidifying our brand positioning, both locally and globally, and scaling sales through wholesale and e-com. We have been building our new flagship store in SoHo as hub for our global community and industry events.
We have, for example, used it as the global launch venue for our New York-based artist collaboration, and done impactful Fashion Week activation, such as turning it into a vintage pop-up during the February Fashion Week, curated by Jenny Walton. Through interesting events, we have been building our community of local and global influencers, and gain PR visibility with global reach, and we have been expanding wholesale with increased distribution in, for example, e-tailers and department stores, such as Nordstrom, where we launched our fashion line Spring-Summer 2024, and Holt Renfrew in Canada, where we celebrated the Unikko anniversary year with pop-up cafes in Toronto and Vancouver during summer 2024. We will continue to fuel our growth in North America by widening our distribution channel reach and seizing global brand positioning opportunity through New York. Main drivers for growth will be, first, scaling up sales in wholesale and e-commerce.
We will do this by acquiring new wholesale customers and expanding business with the current ones. We will continue to develop our omnichannel retail, driven by sales growth, especially from e-commerce. Second, we will continue to reinforce global credibility through our New York flagship as the heart of our consumer activations, industry events, and interesting artist and brand collaborations. And finally, we will continue to grow our customer base through events and community activations. Wider customer base and expanding influencer community will help us in growing Marimekko brand phenomenon and sales, not only in this market area, but across the world. With these words, I would like to thank you on my behalf, and give the stage back to my colleague, Natacha, who will now guide you through the SCALE strategy journey and the growth plans for the Asian market.
Thank you. So welcome to this region. I'm very excited to be there. I'm just arrived from two days ago from Singapore for this presentation. I live more than 14 years in Asia. So it's my pleasure today to share with you Marimekko story in Asia. As Tiina mentioned in the introduction, Asia is the growth generator. Much of the growth opportunity of Marimekko lie in Asia, and I will tell you why later. In my presentation, I will discuss three key factors that bring growth to Asia: building brand awareness and visibility, developing our network and growing our Asia community. I will bring you in the most iconic areas: Japan, Mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan market, and Southeast Asia. So let's start. Asia is the most important geographical area for our international growth. You can see in this slide how the brand resonates in the region.
We have three beautiful pictures. The first one was taken in Thailand Fashion Show for the 60th anniversary. The second one was a selfie of our fans during the fashion show in Shanghai, IAPM, in May 2024. And the last one, I was there two weeks ago, it was the newly opened store in Taipei, Breeze Nan Shan, iconic department store that we just opened in June 2024. This is the fuel of our growth. By the end of 2024, just to give you an idea, the fashion market is projected to reach in Asia- Pacific $346 billion. This one is due to increase in consumer spending, rapid urbanization, and rising of the middle class.
This growing market, together with the validated brand fit and our proven track record with the loose franchising partnership model, give us an excellent platform to continue our growth. Today, in Asia Pacific, we have 90 physical stores and 24 online stores. The Asia- Pacific represent 20% of the total net sales, but already close to 30% of our brand sales Marimekko. The business in Asia is mainly operated by loose franchise partner, and we see increasing growth potential for the Marimekko in this region. Let's use this Venn diagram to explain our model in Asia and how we have built relationship between our partner and Marimekko team. This loose franchise partnership is a successful model that allows Marimekko to grow a globally coherent brand with low risk and CapEx requirement. Marimekko control fully brand experience, product portfolio, marketing, store experience.
Our local partners bring their retail expertise and knowledge of the local market and consumer needs. Their work is also supported by our local Marimekko teams. Marimekko sell to its partner in wholesale, and they run their business with the retail margin. So this business model in Asia is an important point that I would like to emphasize. We are in full control of the brand experience. So now let's start with our largest market in Asia, Japan. So Japan is the reference market for the fashion industry and also for the consumer. Our local partner, LOOK, established 18 years ago Marimekko in Japan, and it's a successful long-term partnership. You will see in the coming slide how the partner has implemented and grown Marimekko by increasing brand awareness and visibility, developing the network, and growing the local community.
These three factors are key success to accelerating growth in Japan and have a halo effect. That means activities are reflected in other Asian markets. In Japan, we have 40 online stores to cover most of the region, focusing on the key cities like Tokyo, Osaka, Nagoya. We have also five online platforms, including our brand store, but also local platforms like Rakuten and ZOZOTOWN. This network brings an omnichannel experience and targets different audiences. The brand presence in Japan is strong and provides a great exposure for the whole region, for sure, but also this mature market is an important bridge between Asia and Europe, including our domestic market, Helsinki, and currently benefits also from a strong flow of inbound tourists.
So on this slide, we can see an overview of 2024 activity that happened in Japan to reinforce the brand positioning with a strong communication focus on ready-to-wear. We have had very successful event in Japan. On the left side, you can see the Rakuten Fashion Show. I would like to highlight this point. We are the first brand-- We were the first international brand to participate, was invited to the Rakuten Fashion Show with the local, Japanese brand. In May, we hold an open-air show, fashion show, to celebrate Marimekko's 60-year Unikko anniversary in Tokyo, and we have also many pop-up store have opened across Japan to celebrate this anniversary. In this slide, you can see the very colorful pop-up in Matsuya Ginza. As I mentioned earlier, the development of the footprint store pop-up is key to attracting new customer and driving sales...
In this slide, you can see also some great example of impactful marketing activation to increase brand awareness, visibility, and grow our community. First example, we did a local collaboration with Blue Bottle Coffee brand. And also you can see the local celebration for the Sakura moment, the cherry blossom we have in Japan to target new audiences. This phenomenon creating a strong engagement with local consumer and fans. To conclude, for Japan, strengthening Marimekko brand visibility and positioning with the fashion show or developing the network with store opening or pop-ups, and growing our community with local brand collaboration and celebration, as well social media, are the three key successful recipes to accelerate the growth in the coming years. So now let's move in Mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. So very happy to share that with you.
I live seven years in Shanghai, and I joined Marimekko in 2020 in Shanghai. So this area has the potential for scaling up the growth. So in Mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, we have a total of 25 offline stores and six online stores. This region is a key driver for growth in Asia due to the size of the market. Large population, you can see the data, 1.4 billion. Middle class, increasing the middle class, and young and digital generation. As you remember, I said the fashion market is projected to reach $346 million, and China revenue is targeted to reach $237 million in 2024, so 2/3 of the total.
The digital represents a crucial part of the business, 30%, and is the most advanced market in terms of social, digital, and e-commerce. Mainland China, as I mentioned in the introduction, is the growth generator for Marimekko. As you can see on the map today, we are in Mainland China, in the first-tier city. That means Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzhen, but we are also in the second-tier city, like Chengdu and Hangzhou. We have also digital presence with three platforms: Tmall, JD.com, and RED. These are local platforms. We see significant growth opportunity to accelerate growth in this area by expanding omnichannel network across key cities. We operate in Hong Kong and Mainland China with our long-term partner, Sidefame. You will see very soon a video, which is expanding Marimekko in the key premium shopping mall.
In this slide, you can see, for example, a new open store that we opened in July 2021, Grand Gateway, reinforcing our key strategy. In the past 18 months, we had in Mainland China and Hong Kong, opening five store and also certain pop-ups and display points. We have also launched RED in April 2024. And last year we had JD.com or Jingdong in February 2023. Directly, these platform are directly operated by Marimekko. We have also very impactful local moment activation, such as, I'm sure you know, Lunar New Year, it was Dragon year. As a result, we capture new customer and drive sales. In Mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, we create excitement and find attractive angle to engage a new audience with, for example, the fashion show in Shanghai IAPM, just talk at the beginning in May 2024.
IAPM is one of the most trendy, young. Lots of traffic in this shopping mall. The local collaboration, so in Japan, you have Blue Bottle with the coffee. In Shanghai and Hong Kong was Heytea. Heytea is a bubble tea. I'm a true lover of bubble tea, so you know that now, and generated, so I think it's important to highlight that, 100 million viewership, including RED, Weibo, WeChat, and Douyin. This is our local platform in Asia, in China, supported by local influencer and social media in June 2024 . In addition, two weeks ago, and we can see in the middle, the picture, in Taiwan, we celebrate with our partner in Taipei, Breeze Nan Shan, the fashion show for the Maridenim launch. Breeze Nan Shan is one of the best shopping mall in Taipei.
Here, I would like to summarize in this slide, the three key drivers to scale up growth in this area. We continuous omnichannel footprint expansion, we see with the new store, Breeze Nan Shan. Increasing brand awareness through the creative marketing activity and collaboration. Look how Sidefame wrap up our cable in Hong Kong. And the last one, growing our customer community. So now let's have a few words from our Sidefame partner, operated Hong Kong and Mainland China markets.
... Hey, I'm Rachel So of Sidefame Hong Kong Limited. We are a franchisee of Marimekko retail business in Hong Kong and China. Currently, we have seven shops in Hong Kong and 14 in China, covering Beijing, Shanghai, Chengdu, Hangzhou, and Shenzhen. Sidefame Limited is a fashion retail business operator and brand builder. For almost 40 years, we have worked with internationally renowned brands like Prada and Furla from Italy, and high-end multi-brand boutique Maria Luisa from Paris. Halfway through our endeavors in this fashion business, our grown vision and knowledge of the fashion trade led us to pursue partnership with brands that excel through their heritage, uniqueness, and long-lasting cultural value to the world.
Hence, in 2012, we started Marimekko, in which we saw tremendous market potentials, thanks to its rich design and cultural heritage, that we believe will fit in the global changing consumer needs and aspirations, including ours in Hong Kong and China, and we are right on. It's been an incredible 13-year journey of making explorations, sometimes going off track, doing lots of honest reviews, and stepping up efforts again, with Marimekko HQ guiding us all along. Marimekko and us, in terms of management, share our common values as regards the way we work with our people. While we strive for excellence at work, we also respect our staff's demands for open-mindedness, apt rewards, and above all, fun. When it comes to serious business, Marimekko and Sidefame share equal ambitions.
Our SCALE business strategy rigorously brings in new product designs and branding initiatives that are indispensable for asserting the development of our brand business here in Hong Kong and China. Looking back, the turning point to our business came in 2018 when Kioski was introduced. So many customers, young plus the young at heart, have been attracted to the new, now iconic Unikko placement tees and hoodies. Still today, they have always been our top sellers throughout the year and throughout Hong Kong, China. Kioski just keeps getting stronger and stronger. Fast-forward to last year, when we celebrated our 10th anniversary in China with a cozy, super interesting exhibition in Beijing, and launched our Marimekko pop-up café in an art gallery. To commemorate the 60th anniversary of Unikko, we staged an outdoor Unikko Forever fashion show in the most popular shopping mall of Shanghai in May.
The iconic Hong Kong tram was again adorned in beautiful and brightly colored patterns of Unikko, ding-dinging their way in on Hong Kong Island, and Marimekko's Instagram post about the tram has garnered over 30,000 likes. That makes us very proud. In July, we collaborated with over 3,000 Heytea, meaning Happy Tea Group, to serve specially flavored Marimekko teas to our fans in China and Hong Kong. People were all raving about the specially designed gifts for the event. Now, we are welcoming tourists and locals alike at the Murray Hotel in Hong Kong to enjoy Unikko Forever high tea set. It's so popular that the hotel asked us to continue it for another month, till the end of September.
The highly anticipated Maridenim is on its way to China, and has been successfully launched in Hong Kong on August 6th, same day as in Helsinki. There are lots of happenings surrounding the brand, which provide ample opportunities for us to reach out to ever more and newer customers, and enable us to build an energetic community of happy Maries here. Finally, I'd like to congratulate Marimekko's beautiful flower parade at the Copenhagen Fashion Week, as well as the launch of Marid enim. Here, I want to send lots of cheers and [Foreign language] to the very talented design, marketing, merchandising, and sustainability teams of people at Marimekko. Your continued support has been very crucial to our positive growth. Thank you so very much. We shall together continue to bring lots of joy, optimism, and beauty to our everyday life in Hong Kong, China, and the world.
You can see the beautiful view of Sidefame office based in Kowloon, facing Hong Kong Island with The Peak. So thank you to our Sidefame partner, who implemented Marimekko in the most iconic location in Hong Kong and Mainland China. So now, let's move to Southeast Asia region, a growing market full of opportunities and diversities. So we have in this region a total of 19 offline store and eight online store. The biggest markets for us is Thailand, with 14 store, mainly concentrated in Bangkok, and we have also four platform, our brand side and local platform like LazMall, Central Online. Last year... So our partner, Tanachira, has built, since 2015, a Marimekko phenomenon in Thailand. Last year, we opened three new market: Singapore, Malaysia, and Vietnam, and we are exporting the recipe of Thailand's success in this market.
In less than one year, we have opened nine offline and online stores. Together with our partner, we have accelerated the development of this region with impactful marketing activation, such as a Bangkok fashion show. So in 2024 in-store activity, we have been increasing the brand awareness, a key to growth. At the same time, new Marimekko store have been opened in the key iconic shopping malls, such as ION in Singapore. It's one of the most international shopping malls, KLCC and TRX in Kuala Lumpur. In this slide, you can see the launch of Marimekko in Kuala Lumpur, Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City, and also our cafe store in Singapore, in ION. We have been constantly building a fan base and excitement around Marimekko brand through engaging activities, cafe experience, and social media.
This makes our brand locally relevant. Our Thailand partner, Tanachira, operate in Thailand and Singapore market. You will see soon in the video how this partner has built and scaled the brand in Bangkok and recently in Singapore. Looking for the next year, the growth recipe for Southeast Asia is similar, as highlighted in Japan, as well as Mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, and already demonstrated in Thailand. To summarize, the three key factors also in this area: further grow our network, continue to create exciting customer interactions, such as pop-ups, event, and activation, and increasing brand visibility to fuel the growth in this region. So now let's watch our Tanachira partner, Mr. Tan, based in Bangkok.
Marimekko in Thailand started since 2015, with a vision to introduce a brand that had fun and lively nature to the heart of Thai audience or Thai consumers. We believe in its iconic Unikko design, with a range of lifestyle products that can capture, the interest of the people. Since then, Marimekko has grown, to 14 stores across Thailand, mostly in Bangkok, with additional digital platforms from the brand.com site, live streaming, as well as third-party marketplace, and I think today, Marimekko has made its mark in Thai market already. I think the more important thing, to build the community of the user of the brand is to really have, the understanding of the product's usage.
People can love the brand because they see other people like the products or use the products, but it's different when they actually test and try the product themselves. When we talk about how do we engage them from the daily life that they actually participate, we look at mass transit, such as SkyTrain. So we had the idea back in 2020 that we wanted to wrap the whole SkyTrain in a particular color that represent Marimekko. At that time, it was a blue blue hue that was a fall/winter color in 2020. It was very eye-catching, and people were very impressed with the colorway as well as the Unikko print wrapping the whole SkyTrain. People were talking about it, and they were taking pictures.
And then again, follow up with 2020, with a year later, it was the 70th anniversary of Marimekko. In Bangkok, we wrapped the train again now with the orange Unikko print. This again led another excitement of the commuters among Bangkokians, as well as tourists who are in Bangkok at that time. It was really strengthening the brand's strong connection with Thailand, with its playful, optimistic spirit. And then again, after that, in 2022, when we progressed toward the year after COVID, we participated with this traditional wooden yacht that allow people to be renting the yacht.
The yacht actually adorned with Marimekko joyful designs, from the curtains, cushion, to tablecloths and ceramic dishes, and it actually gave people the freedom to enjoy the products in a variety setting, and it was very much a memorable journey when anyone in were part of this yacht experience. Recently, with Pride Month, we participated every year, and it's a big event here in Bangkok. It's really about diversity and inclusion. Last year, in 2023, we worked with a Bangkok-based illustrator. Her name is Juli Baker and Summer. The vibe and display of her design was illustrated on the window of Marimekko flagship at CentralWorld store.
Actually, this showcased our ethos, and how we wanted Marimekko to be part of Tanachira company in embracing diversity and inclusion, resonating local community here in Thailand. Most recently, early this year, we had a big spring/summer fashion show at ATT19 in Bangkok, where we combined both Thailand and Singaporean press, as well as KOL, to come to the event. It marked anniversary of the 60th year of Unikko print, which actually brought a lot of excitement and new design to the audience. I think it was very important to find a connection from our products to the usage to the customers. Without understanding what it meant or how it's being used, it's going to be quite difficult to gain new customer to the Marimekko world in Thailand.
So we launched Marimekko Café. It was a success when we launched it. Tanachira Group opened the first Marimekko Café in Bangkok, with the aim for a place with customer who could immerse themselves with the lifestyle of Marimekko, enjoying the brand's unique prints through practical use. It was designed to create a warm and inviting ambiance, as if dining at a friend's home, complete with careful design and curated menu. We found that this is the thing that people love, and they wanted to be part of it. They continuously telling us that it was the right setup in the right location. They were very happy in taking photos, and they continue to come back, and it's still working very well today.
Building on the success in Thailand, Tanachira Group expanded Marimekko footprint to Singapore, which is one of Asia's biggest and most vibrant lifestyle hubs. The first store opened at the prestigious ION Orchard Mall, right in the heart of Singapore's bustling Orchard Road shopping district. This store brought the joyful design and exactly, set up for the café similar to Bangkok. We found that this is the right approach to draw savvy locals, as well as international tourists. Overall, I thought it was the right timing to enter to Singapore, making Marimekko known more regionally, with our strength, of a company who, how we did, the operation, we could, replicate the success. And it's now, it is the first year, and we're soon going to have, some other excitement happening in Singapore as well.
I really believe Marimekko journey in Thailand and beyond is really a testament to the brand's ability to adapt and innovate while staying true to its core values of creativity, quality, and sustainability. We, at Tanachira, we see that as the strength of the brand and its DNA that we want to uphold and keep it forever. Marimekko has moved in itself into a vibrant tapestry of Thailand, creating spaces where people can come together and celebrate the life and design. As we look into the future, it remains the company remains committed to bringing joy and inspiration the way Marimekko does to the customers. We at Tanachira are excited about the continued collaboration and journey to grow the brand, and further strengthening its presence in Thailand, and explore new horizons around the world.
So we are proud of this success story in less than 10 years in Thailand. And also, for your information, Thailand, I think, is the reference market for the fashion in Southeast Asia, and, I'm sure you saw that on the video. So to summarize, Asia continues to provide growth opportunity, both in the existing market and in the new market. For example, in Southeast Asia, young population, highly digital, and growing middle class open a potential for Marimekko growth. When looking at the potential new market, we evaluate multiple criteria, such as brand fit with the target consumer-customer, the size of the growth opportunity, and the profile of the competitive landscape and market maturity. And naturally, it's key for us to find the right partner to scale up growth. Looking into the future, we see there are numerous fast-developing markets, such as Philippines, Indonesia, India.
They may provide interesting growth opportunities for Marimekko in the long term. In addition to finding the right partner, it is key to ensure the right timing for Marimekko to enter a new market aligned with the market maturity. To conclude, Asia- Pacific region is the growth generator. Together with our partner, we continue in this region, building brand awareness and visibility, developing our network, and growing our Asia community. I welcome you to visit our Marimekko store in Asia. Thank you, and [Foreign language]!
Thank you so much, Natacha. It's almost breathtaking to look at all the events and activations you've had in the first 18 months of SCALE strategy, and clear that there's more growth opportunities. I already have a few questions, and I would like to invite Noora on the stage as well, for the market-related questions. If I may start with you, Noora.
Of course.
Finland is our strong home market, but I'm sure that many investors at the moment are wondering about the general macroeconomic climate situation. Do you see risks related to Marimekko's ambition to grow net sales in Finland when the general economic situation is weaker?
Indeed, the general economic situation has been quite gloomy, as we all know, since the latter part of 2022. However, despite the context, we can see that Marimekko—we have been able to grow our net sales in Finland, both in last year, 2023, and the first part of the 2024. I think this really speaks to the strong brand we have, and the continued efforts we have on building the brand desirability, and also paired with commercial agility. In general, we think that strong brands are better equipped to also weather worse economic situations in general. As for Finland, for 2024, in total, we estimate our net sales in Finland to be approximately similar level to last year, 2023.
Great to hear. You also presented North America, which we all know is one of the biggest consumer markets in the world, next to China, and a market area where Marimekko would like to grow especially through wholesale. How do we plan to capture those opportunities?
Yes. As I mentioned in my presentation as well, North America is one of our first export markets, so we have had a presence there for decades. So obviously, we've been building our loyal customer base and brand awareness for decades. And now, of course, paired with the opportunity of introducing the brand to new generations, as we are doing with all the activations that I illustrated in my presentation. All of these actually fuel growth across all channels. So the efforts we do on brand marketing, building our community, building on press visibility, and so forth, these fuel our wholesale. And I illustrated certain examples already of the successes for this year.
Currently, Marimekko operates the flagship store in SoHo, New York-
Mm.
... And another store in Vermont. Over the years, there's been stores, more stores somewhere else as well. Do you see any plans to widen the store network?
Also, what we discussed in the global key city, when we were discussing the fashion and retail industry, New York is one of the main fashion capitals, in terms of, like, key cities in the world. As such, in our SCALE strategy, we are focusing on our retail ecosystem in New York. Of course, we may consider in the longer run, of complementing the New York ecosystem with another store or stores on top of our e-commerce and wholesale.
Thank you, Noora.
Thank you.
Natacha, you spoke a lot about the Chinese market. A lot of the luxury players at the moment are reporting sluggish sales in China or smaller growth numbers. Do you see that there's a risk for Marimekko in the Chinese market for this economic cycle?
Marimekko is a premium brand. I think we are different than luxury player, and I can say that because I work 18 years in the luxury industry.
Yeah.
So we are lifestyle portfolio, including different category: ready-to-wear, home, and bags and accessories, and we are also different price point. So I think today, as you can see, in Asia-P acific-
Mm.
... We are in 90, we have 90 physical store-
Yeah.
... Including 40 in Japan, 25 in Mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, and also 14 in Thailand. So I think we are very well-balanced-
Yeah.
... And also have growth opportunities in this, market.
Perfect. You also talked about the three new markets opened: Malaysia, Singapore, and Vietnam. How much of the growth in Asia is coming from the new markets?
So we opened these three markets last year, end of the year, between September to December. I think, you know, total, we have five store. Out of the 90 physical store-
Yeah.
... Is still a small proportion. So but in Asia- Pacific, we have grew our business in 2023 by 17%, and I think today, you know, all these new markets, Singapore, Malaysia, and Vietnam, they are less than one year, so I can say they are still babies.
Thank you, Natacha.
Thank you. Thank you.
We will now have a short break, and we will continue at 3:00 P.M.
... Welcome back! We will now move to talk about the key enablers for growth. So we just heard how the key growth drivers, what kind of key growth drivers we have in different market areas, and now we can deep dive into the enablers. We will first have a presentation by Rebekka Bay, our Creative Director, on the product desirability and relevance. Welcome, Rebekka.
Thank you. Good afternoon also from me. I hope you all had a nice break. I am, of course, really excited about our growth internationally, but I am even more excited today to be bringing your attention back here to the printing mill, to our headquarters, to where the design happens. I think we can all agree, or I will agree with myself up here, that it starts and ends with product relevance and desirability. I will be speaking to our sharp and creative vision, and how we have now increasingly focusing on product desirability and relevance across all our markets. We continue to reinforce our sharp and creative vision, and I think for those of you who attended our Capital Markets Day two years ago, this is not a new topic for us.
It is just that we are now speaking to a wider global audience with ready-to-wear as our communicational spearhead of the entire Marimekko lifestyle. This work will and is including, among others, developing collections with increased modularity to fulfill market and channel-specific customer needs even better than ever before. It also means leveling up the integration of sustainability in the design principles.... When I start by saying these are not new topics, it is because we have absolutely been focusing on how do we create relevance outside of our home market? How do we engage with even more customers across the world? We're doing so by evolving and sharpening our creative vision. We continue to nurture and reinforce our brand and our product desirability. We have identified three key enablers for scaling up growth around the world.
The first enabler being focusing on hero products and hero programs to continue to build the Marimekko phenomenon. The second being category ownership through lifestyle management strategies, driving volumes and growth. And last but not least, of course, this increased focus on modularity and collection building, and on developing capsules. And whenever we refer to capsules, we mean mini collections to really meet consumer needs, especially in Asia. As ready-to-wear is our communicational spearhead, I will, in my presentation today, focus mostly on our ready-to-wear, which is our fashion collections, and our bags and accessories. But this does not mean that we're not taking the exact same measures in our home collection, and it doesn't mean that home is not equally important to us in our growth. Again, I'm gonna do this. Like, some of you might have seen this pyramid before.
We shared it already two years ago, and we continue to use this method or this strategy for our collection building. As I just mentioned, our fashion collections, our ready-to-wear, is our communicational spearhead. It doesn't mean that we're not evolving the entire Marimekko lifestyle. By increasing modularity in our collection building, we can address the product desirability and global relevance to respond to all our different markets and our different channel needs. Of course, sustainability and circular design principles are embedded in our collection strategy, and something that every process, every new category, every new initiative starts with. But maybe I can talk you through a little bit what it is that you're looking at. This might be foreign language to some of you. This is where I live every day. So our ready-to-wear collections are divided into three different concepts.
If you look to the top of the pyramid, that is our premium concept. It is home to our artist collaborations, and it is where we have the Artist Series living. It is also where we have our most premium qualities and our most premium price points, to be honest. This is a real opportunity for us to celebrate the thought leadership in the art and science of printmaking, and this is really where we utilize the dress as a canvas for democratizing art. In the middle, you have the collection concept. This is really home to our full ready-to-wear bags and accessory expression. And again, you might remember, or I'll remind you, two years ago, we spoke to how the importance of us building better recognizability, not just in our prints, but also in our silhouettes.
In order to do so, we really focused on three archetype silhouettes: the A-line, the straight, the fit-and-flare silhouette. We continue to do so today, but now we're building upon that, so starting to sort of establish more hierarchy, we are now starting to launch the idea of hero product and hero programs. We will be building the A-line mini, and I will deep dive that in a moment, called the Mari Mini. We will be building that into a true icon, a true hero product for Marimekko. We're also focusing on how to build hero programs, and I will give you the example of the Wear All Day bag family or bag program, and explain a little bit more what it means to our growth strategy. Then, last but not least, in this segment is Maridenim.
I think already mentioned several times. I will also give you a little bit more insight into what it means for us to really launch category ownership in our ready-to-wear collections. And then, at the bottom of the pyramid, we have Kioski. I think both Rachel from Sidefame mentioned it. I think Natacha has mentioned the importance of Kioski, especially in our new markets, especially towards our Asian consumer and to our new consumer. Kioski is our most democratic concept. It speaks to next generations of consumers, regardless of age or gender. And Kioski is not only our most democratic concept. It is also addressing the need for genderless fashion. It is developed for the next generation of consumers that are looking for something that has more of a unisex, an oversized or more democratic fit.
We are, in the Kioski concept, utilizing our most recognizable and beloved prints, because this is often the concept that new markets and new consumers will experience first, and we want to create a strong recognizability through our prints. In Kioski, we're focusing on volume creation, so we really here focus on our easy entry, entry product categories: T-shirts, sweatshirts, small, fun, joyful bags and accessories. But when we refer to Kioski as our most democratic concept and our entry concept, we're not only referring to entry price point, we're also referring to entry into the Marimekko brand or entry into the Marimekko lifestyle. Because Kioski is an easy entry into the Marimekko brand, almost like a gateway into the brand, and then over time, you will evolve and mature with the brand. Kioski is also more often than not where our market-specific modules or capsules, the mini collections, live.
I think you already saw examples in Natacha's presentation for the Lunar New Year capsule, where we're celebrating Chinese New Year or the Sakura moment in Japan. It is also where we create wholesale exclusive capsules, as Noora shared with the Zalando capsule, and it is also where we can really activate, like, specific cultural or market-specific events. That's the collection structure. Let's deep dive a little bit into what it means to really create these hero programs, hero products, category ownership as the true enablers for growth. Before I talk about the Wear All Day bag program family, let me dive a little bit into the role of a hero program in our collection building.
A hero program is a family of products where we consistently use the same materials, the same details, the same branding, in order for us to create both recognizability, but also strategically increase the number of styles over time and of course, increase the volumes. The Wear All Day bag program that you see here on this slide was only launched a few years back, but actually one of our most successful functional bags programs since its launch. We are methodically expanding the program with functionality, modularity, and relevance to a wider global audience in mind. As an example, it might be that Asia are looking for a smaller bag because of a different need or different lifestyle, and then we can add that in as a specific exclusive Asia style. The program offers variation in style, size, colors, patterns.
It has really strong branded elements, ensuring this, consistency in recognizability. As you see here, it has the Marimekko name tag on the strap, it has the little M logo, it has branding on the hardware, and then it has... It is utilizing, again, our most recognizable pattern, Unikko. I think we have probably said Unikko hundred times today already. But the Unikko pattern that is woven into, with a jacquard technique, woven into recycled polyester. Jacquard simply means that you can weave a pattern, so that you don't print it, you weave it into the fabric. Hero programs, such as the Wear All Day bag program, are managed through these lifestyle management thinking.
This is allowing us to take the most commercial styles, sizes, and colorways, and add them to our continuous collection, meaning that we will not review them as often as our seasonal collections, but we then use the seasonal collections to inject newness, addressing consumer preference or market or channel needs or trends. Whereas a hero program consists of a family of products, then a hero product is focusing on one silhouette or one style that is repeatedly and consistently communicated under one name. This is building not only ownership and recognizability, but also higher volumes over time. It also take a little bit of the guessing out of collection building.
We are building the Mari Mini, this is our A-line mini dress, as a hero product by repeatedly and consistently multiplying colors and prints, and we're creating not only desirability, but also relevance through various materials, and therefore price points to a wider global audience. It is no coincidence that we're utilizing our most recognizable A-line silhouette, because we have not only been establishing recognizability in that specific silhouette over the last couple of years, but that silhouette, the A-line mini, was already made famous when Jackie Kennedy wore it on the cover of Sports Illustrated in 1960, so it feels like we have a lot of permission to take ownership here.
The Mari Mini is the first Marimekko hero product in the ready-to-wear collection, in our fashion collection, but soon to follow could be the Mari Maxi, as well as other product heroes across our different product lines. The second enabler, category ownership. Unlike the hero programs, which are families of products, or the hero products, which are consistently utilizing one style or one silhouette, then developing category ownership means utilizing one material across one category, increasing flexibility, supporting our inventory and lifecycle management thinking, resulting in bigger volumes to support our overall growth. We have previously successfully established category ownership in our home category. I think a really good example of that is our Oiva series, our ceramics, for table setting.
But our most successful ready-to-wear category launch to date is without doubt, which is also why we all speak to it, the Marimekko Maridenim. It was launched to press and buyers back in February during Copenhagen Fashion Week, and then a month later in Tokyo with the Rakuten Show, and then followed now with the global consumer launch taking place now, starting in August, trickling all the way into September. Maridenim does not only mark a new chapter for us, because it's a category with the ability to bridge our three ready-to-wear concepts, so it can literally bridge our most premium product, our full fashion collection and our Kioski. But it's also, denim is also the most democratic, it's the most timeless, and to some extent, the most genderless category that we can have in our collections.
It is designed according to circular design principles. We've been utilizing organic and recycled mono material cotton, and I'll tell you why mono material, because the sooner you start to mix materials, it becomes difficult to separate the product and recycle the product. But by utilizing only cotton in the make, it is very easy to recycle or upcycle the product. Therefore, we have also used less hardware than in conventional denim, meaning that the upcycling and the future lifespan of the product has a really high potential. Of course, we launched Marimekko Maridenim with our most beloved Unikko pattern as the signature print for the collection. But maybe I should stop and elaborate here, because some of you might have noticed that the Unikko printed denim is actually not printed.
The pattern is instead lasered or burned into the fabric, which actually means that we reduce the water consumption compared to conventional printed denim production. We are intentionally using the same base fabrics for all our three fits. We have just launched with three fits: a straight fit, a wide leg, and a barrel. You can see a pattern here when I talk about silhouettes. Increasing our flexibility in terms of replenishment, volume, and finishes, because it actually means that we have the fabric, but we can call the fit and the wash or the pattern at a later point. Maridenim is strategically built and managed also through lifecycle management, with the most commercial fits and washes already now being part of our continuous collection.
This allows us to inject the seasonal newness, securing bigger seasonal newness based on the same base fabric, so securing bigger volumes to support our overall growth. We will be launching new styles according to the industry calendar, which means that we will be launching in January and in August. The third enabler, I was jumping to this too early before, is our last but not least. It is that we have recognized that connecting with consumer moments in our main markets adds to local relevance. We are increasingly focused on modularity in our collection building, and this is across all our product lines, not just in ready-to-wear, not just in bags and accessories. So we are adding market and channel-specific capsules or mini collections that allows us to connect with local consumer moments, again, especially in Asia, but actually across the world.
The Lunar New Year capsule that is on the slide here is a great example of that. It responds to Asian consumer wants and needs in terms of creating culturally relevant products. It's addressing the need for giftable items, but more importantly, it's also creating exclusivity and immediate product desirability. The Lunar New Year is just one example. I already mentioned the Sakura capsule for Japan. Another module or other modules or capsules can also address wholesale needs, for example, exclusivity, whether that being a department store or a platform. It can be seasonal needs. It might be that in the Nordics and Scandinavia, we need to extend our outerwear assortment, or it can be very specific market preference in terms of, you know, color, print, scale of a print, length of a dress.
So this really allows us to sort of tailor portions or modules or mini collections of the collection to specific markets. These modules are addressing not only market-specific needs and preferences. They are true growth enablers, as they fuel both product desirability and relevance, building the Marimekko phenomenon on a global scale. That was the last slide for me.
Thank you, Rebekka.
I can hold it.
There's a lot happening also on the product side of things, and Marimekko has this wide lifestyle portfolio. As a creative director, how do you focus the creative and design work so that best serve enabling growth?
As a creative director, of course, I align our priorities with our overarching SCALE strategy.
Mm-hmm.
So the priorities are really focusing on the true enablers of growth, and I think I just-
Mm-hmm.
... Sort of took us through the three of them. You know, really creating ownership in product, hero product, hero product families. Really focusing on how to develop stronger category ownership. I think here, you know, now we're focusing on denim, but we have category ownership in several categories, and I think those of you who are joining the or who have the ability to join the showroom tour later, we can sort of speak to more of those. And then last but not least, and I think maybe most importantly now, to ensure our continued global growth, are the modules or the mini capsules really sort of servicing local wants and needs?
And how do you keep those modules sort of in hand or in control? Because of course you want to have a collection that still speaks one message.
Actually, and maybe this is the science part. I think there's art and science in collection building. We really try to build all the modules based on existing styles or existing colorways or prints that are already in work. So it's more the tweaking or sort of adjusting them to specific market needs. So I think the... A great example is the Lunar New Year capsule, because you see the sweatshirts-
Mm.
... And the T-shirts and the socks. We have all of those in the collection already, so we are addressing the subject matter, if it's the Year of the Dragon or the Year of the Rabbit, the subject matter and the colorway to local preference. So we really try to sort of work into our fixed SKU allocation or SKU count, because our store is, of course, not bigger just because we add more modules. So really working into what's already in the collection-
Yeah.
... And then creating market-specific versions.
Perfect. Thank you.
Thank you.
After products, of course, another enabler of growth is the brand awareness. And next, we'll have our Chief Marketing Officer, Sanna-Kaisa Niikko, talking about the international awareness and brand love, and how do we build that?
Thank you, Anna, and good afternoon, everybody. Today, I have the pleasure to talk about the really exciting strategies we use to create brand awareness and brand love, and of course, these are two things that really enable our growth and scaling up. Let's start by looking at the cornerstones of our awareness-building strategy, and how we really phenomenalize Marimekko in the hearts of our customers around the world. At Marimekko, we are proud to be world leaders in the art of printmaking and print design. Our art of printmaking is our unique design language, and it really sets us apart from all the rest, from all the competition. This is, of course, a heritage that has been created over seven decades already in creative collaboration with artists and designers from different parts of the world.
It is also a heritage that we continue to build every day, so it is not only a heritage that we share from the history, but something that we built for the future as well. Our art of printmaking is very much known for its versatility, optimism, and also artistic integrity, and it really offers us a natural way to connect with different creative communities and also, of course, the art world. For us, the art of printmaking is about democratizing art, as has been mentioned earlier today. We continuously innovate to bring art into the context of the everyday life of our customers through our inspiring products, where the artworks come to life.
But most of all, we want to bring joy to our customers' everyday lives, and our optimistic lifestyle philosophy really offers us a way to engage with the consumers on a very kind of emotional level. And I think in this time, consumers are really looking for meaningfulness and optimism, and that we are able to offer, and that is truly a strong, authentic, competitive advantage for Marimekko. We, of course, leverage creative marketing strategies to build brand hype and accelerated growth across all markets. The art of print, printmaking is the foundation of a differentiation for Marimekko, and we spearhead our communication with ready-to-wear, as mentioned earlier today already. And this has a halo effect on the rest of the product portfolio, and it is really logical from the customer's point of view to spearhead with ready-to-wear.
We leverage brand collaborations both with global and local top players of their field to grow brand awareness in new, but also then, of course, existing markets. And this supports the growth acceleration in the core business as well. Then, we also, of course, build industry relevance and positioning by taking part in global key fashion and design events. And these events really enable us to build earned media visibility globally for all our audiences and, of course, engage also on social media. And finally, as the foundation of building brand hype, we constantly innovate creative brand marketing strategies to connect Marimekko to local creative communities.
As my colleague Noora previously mentioned today, we drive brand awareness building and positioning, especially, through certain global key cities of our industry, and this has a wider halo effect and a trickle-down effect for the rest of the markets. Certain cities like New York, Paris, Milan, Tokyo, Copenhagen, they have a larger, kind of, influence on the rest of the world, so they really act as tastemakers, for the rest of the world. So it really makes sense for us to be really active in these cities. Often, the foundation for activating in these cities is our omnichannel retail experience that anchors us in that city. We build both, global and local brand moments, to leverage our community program, and, we use these to grow and engage customer communities.
The global key cities typically host some of the most influential, key fashion and design events, and design weeks and fashion weeks. We tap into selected ones, not of course, all of them, but to selected ones, to really grow our industry relevance. And finally, we embark on enriching collaborations with brands, but also individuals, with influence, to grow brand awareness and relevance in order to fuel further growth. The home of the Marimekko lifestyle is our omnichannel retail. Marimekko stores really anchor Marimekko into the everyday lives of our customers. And of course, they invite them to discover the world of Marimekko again and again, through the product assortment, customer service excellence, and consumer activations.
The modular store concept that you see some examples of here, lends itself to different purposes, all the way from customer events to, for example, product launch parties. Our online store is, of course, the seamless extension of the physical retail, and serves customers seamlessly wherever they are. Most importantly, this is where the daily encounters with our customers happen every single day, and this is also where the retail sales are realized one purchase at a time. The significance of creative retail concepts that really surprise and engage the customers has grown, in the past years, especially during the pandemic or after the pandemic. Of course, our brand, with this rich visuality that we have, really lends itself to very, creative and impactful solutions also at this front.
Popping up in surprising commercial locations inspire existing customers, but of course, first and foremost, they invite the new customers to discover the world of Marimekko. And actually, only in H1 this year, we had 25 pop-ups and display points around the world, to celebrate, especially the Unikko anniversary. Creative and impactful global and local brand moments build brand hype and eventually, of course, then commercial success. And this, on this slide, you see here an example of, what we have been doing, this year. Not only this, of course, a lot of things we have been doing because the Unikko anniversary has really, given us the kind of permission to really turn this year into the brand, or brand marketing year of all years, I would say.
We have really leveraged the anniversary to create visibility, activations, and brand engagement to support sales in all markets. During the year, we have, for example, invited our community to join fashion shows in different parts of the world, in Helsinki, Tokyo, Shanghai, Taipei, Bangkok. We have executed different creative brand takeovers in several cities. As an example, what Natacha already shared earlier, this wonderful example of the Hong Kong tram, but also the Art Light installation during Lux Helsinki in our home city. We have also actually created some very entertaining fake out-of-home solutions to surprise and inspire our customers, and this one that you see here has been now viewed already 650,000 times.
Our inclusive brand philosophy comes to life in our community approach, and there are kind of two parts to this. Our community program is a key anchor for driving customer loyalty, as well as commercial success. Our community members receive special rewards, for example, access to limited editions and so on. We also, of course, foster them with different kinds of creative brand events. I think the most famous one would be the Espa Fashion Show here in Helsinki, a tradition that we've had already since 1992, where we every year invite the whole community of Marimekko to celebrate the beginning of the summer with us. This year, we had around 10,000 participants on-site during the day and 17,000 online.
The other, strategically important way for us to foster our community is our social media approach. The engagement on Marimekko social media channels is exceptionally high, and this is, of course, a strategic decision we have made to foster the engagement because we really, truly believe that this engages our customers and it really, in an authentic way, brings them into the heart of the Marimekko brand story. Of course, then the other part of the community, on social media, but not only, is influencers. We collaborate with influencers globally in all of our key markets, and they, of course, help to make the Marimekko lifestyle even more approachable, to both existing but especially new customers. Here on this slide, you see an example, we did this spring with this California-based couple, Aki and Koichi.
So far, we have reached already nearly 11 million views for this one post on social media. Actually, this is Instagram only. Then, if we look at the kind of industry side of things, Fashion Week presentations cement our positioning in ready-to-wear and generate a lot of earned visibility in key industry media. These international fashion weeks gather top industry journalists, influencers, other tastemakers, all into one place, and they are also very crucial for us to secure wholesale relationships. During the past years, we have participated in Copenhagen Fashion Week, which is the leading fashion week in Scandinavia, but also gathers a lot of press from all the other markets as well, and they are also known for their very kind of advanced sustainability approach.
This, of course, is then seen all over social media as well, once again, allowing us to kind of extend the impact even further. Marimekko also has a very unique positioning in the world of design, in the design industry. Our playful, yet artistically very incredible and credible, brand lends itself to very surprising executions that are very shareable and earned media friendly. One of the key annual events here is Milan Design Week, which really gathers press influencers, tastemakers from all around the world. This year, our solution at Milan Design Week was Bar Unikko, of course, to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the Unikko print.
This bar that we run for one week gained around 10,000 visitors during the week, and actually in media impact value, we were third after Thom Browne and Bottega Veneta, who are obviously very much industry leaders in their own right. Now this week, we are leveraging a similar concept during Helsinki Design Week, so if you have a chance, please go check it out. The creative culture of Marimekko is founded on collaboration, and collaborating with different artists and designers has really been part of Marimekko's story since the very beginning. This is what Armi already did.
To further build our thought leadership in the art of printmaking, and really to also push our own boundaries in the art of printmaking, we collaborate with top talent from different parts of the world to bring something new into the Marimekko design language, and as part of this, we have a concept called Marimekko Artist Series that we have now rolled out for some years already. This, of course, also allows us to connect very naturally with the world of arts, then on the other hand of collaborations, brand collaborations with the top players in their field, both on a global and local levels, drive brand awareness and positioning in a very impactful way.
Our art of printmaking, combined with our very topical value base, makes us a very attractive brand collaboration partner, which is, of course, something that we're very proud about. And, these collaboration partners really admire our creative power, but also the way that we're able to commercialize prints, which is, of course, at the heart of Marimekko. These collaborations help us build brand awareness, both in existing markets, but also perhaps in completely new markets where we don't yet operate, but could potentially be interesting for Marimekko.
To recap, the foundations for building brand awareness and brand love to scale up our sales are: leveraging the art of printmaking as the key differentiator, and ready-to-wear as the communicational spearhead of the Marimekko lifestyle, amplifying the global halo effect of key cities in our industry and ecosystem with impactful fashion and design industry events that really drive earned media, establishing meaningful brand and creative collaborations to reach new audiences globally, and finally, leveraging creative and surprising brand marketing strategies that build brand awareness, foster our community, and fuel growth. Thank you.
Thank you, Sanna-Kaisa. The team has really been working hard with all these events and activations-
Yes.
... And moments during the year. I think that the investors are also interested in the marketing costs. We've been discussing that in our market outlook, we say that the marketing costs for this year are expected to increase. How do you see it going further, when we are targeting growth, do we need more marketing investments as well?
Well, of course, scaling up Marimekko and building this brand awareness is long-term work.
Mm.
It will require investments, but these are investments that we plan to do in a controlled way, and as Tiina mentioned earlier, we are in a very solid financial position, and we're confident that we can make these investments as we see needed.
Mm.
But I think already now in past years, we have really shown that we're able to make the needed marketing investments and at the same time grow profitably.
Unikko's 60th anniversary provided an excellent brand moment for the world this year. How do you phenomenize Marimekko in the coming years?
Well, Marimekko is really a house full of stories, so we will not run out of stories. That's for sure. It is all about storytelling and making sure that we are able to engage with the customers with whatever feels relevant in that time and age. So I feel very confident that we're able to build a similar phenomenon also for the future.
Thank you, Sanna-Kaisa.
Thank you so much.
Now, for the third enabler, end-to-end digitality, and how we boost our omnichannel growth and efficiency through that. And we have Chief Technology Officer, Mikki Inkeroinen, to tell us more.
Thank you, Anna. All right, so now for the icing on the cake, the digitalization presentation. One of the most potent levers for both growth and efficiency at Marimekko is leveraging digital technologies and data throughout the value chain. My name is Mikki Inkeroinen. I'm responsible of technology, and I'm very, very excited to be the most recent addition to the great team we have here at Marimekko, and to be here today talking to you about end-to-end digitality. Marimekko has a true omnichannel operating model, providing a most interesting landscape to work with digitalization in various different aspects, ranging from the printing mill here at Herttoniemi, their own digital and physical frontends, and partner-operated solutions. We are, by nature, already truly digital and global, and our digital-first mindset in market entry is a really, really important driver for growth.
Our focus on ensuring that our customers get inspiring, frictionless, and tailored omnichannel experiences wherever they meet us is a key paradigm in our business development. Alongside with accelerating growth, our strategic objective of end-to-end digitality with leveraging new technologies and data brings us efficiencies. So being data-enabled throughout the value chain improves our agility, productivity, product market fit, allowing for constant customer success. As you saw in the previous presentations, especially by Noora and Natacha, Marimekko is really, really all about growth, and therefore, building capabilities geared for growth is a cornerstone within our SCALE strategy, and when it comes to capturing growth specifically, we have formulated three objectives to base our next initiatives in end-to-end digitality. Most importantly, of course, we seek to grow sales, where gaining global traffic and increasing conversion in all channels is paramount.
Especially when it comes to the more mature Marimekko markets, our work with customer lifetime value, it's a true testament to end-to-end digitalization with touchpoints to retail excellence, brand, and experience. None of this would be, of course, possible unless our capabilities, both technological and human, are in shape, and with our recent infrastructure improvements, we've made it possible to increase the speed of innovation dramatically. Capturing growth with our omnichannel capabilities requires, but simultaneously makes possible, inspiring, frictionless, and tailored omnichannel experiences. Let's now spend a moment to have a look at what we have accomplished during the first 18 months of our SCAL E strategy period. In an omnichannel environment, and especially when running a global e-commerce growth business, building capabilities is important. And again, by capabilities, I mean both the technological ones, but also the human resources and culture around the business.
In all of these three key areas, I'm actually very proud of our progress. We have recently renewed our global commerce platform and launched it into production first for our B2C operation. The platform has a modern, composable architecture, improved marketing technology tools, improving return on investment, and it's geared to perform fast, in both terms of, the consumer experience, but also from a developer experience point of view, which is increasing the speed of innovation and allowing us to attract high-quality talent to our teams. We've proven this to be true already by implementing new features, like a large language model-based an AI Q&A service, AI-driven visual merchandising, and by really tangible results like increased conversion, a record-breaking NPS score, and a high-speed experience.
Like we heard from Sanna-Kaisa, during the beginning of our strategy period, we've also launched a new Friends of Marimekko community program, which provides a home for our loyalty actions with the aim of providing deeper love for the Marimekko life, bringing the customers basically closer to the brand. We have launched a new retail POS system globally, with modern omnichannel features and ease of use in critical retail processes. One of the most interesting products we've rolled out is our second cycle marketplace, called Marimekko Pre-loved, which provides our customers with a new consumer-to-consumer experience, prolonging the life of our products. Pre-loved highlights the timeless value of our products by showcasing the longevity as well as the resale value.
Finally, as a testament to our end-to-end vision, we have also included now a new content orchestration model as the foundation of our commerce and marketing operations, which is a really critical capability for our next endeavors in, for example, improving the B2B experience we have. That said, our next initiatives are tightly connected to the major growth opportunities, where the applications fuel growth throughout the value chain. Firstly, we continue to seek opportunities with understanding and activating our customers to increase the purchase frequency. Secondly, we remain ambitious in delivering tailored, frictionless customer experiences with features and activations planned in order to increase conversion by being more tailored towards the customer expectation. With utilizing data, tools, and channels, especially new channels, we aim to be even more relevant, inspire, and excite our customers with brand and product experiences.
We see a big opportunity in further modernizing our wholesale tools with, for example, digital showrooming. We constantly explore new channels and markets, and as we already have a digital-first mindset in our go-to-market toolkit, we're confident that we can actually unlock more localization opportunities with the utilization of AI-based tools. At Marimekko, our technology team has a high score for employee engagement, so we are able to support growth with innovation with an increase in speed, supported by the new architecture. I think I've now managed to go through the growth part of my presentation, which is basically half of the header, and if that was the icing on the cake, let's now go for the cherry on the top. The second focal point for activities, that said, is to boost efficiencies across the value chain.
Marimekko's operating model encompasses three strong product lines with specific needs, our own printing mill here, and multiple different sales channels globally. Therefore, the opportunities in utilizing technology to improve agility, productivity, and product market fit, allowing for constant customer success, is a key part in supporting the whole SCALE strategy. The objectives we have set for our work with capturing efficiency in the end-to-end process are that we seek faster time- to- market, unlocking time for creativity with digital tools. We are to increase the operational efficiency and productivity across the value chain with AI and automation. We, of course, want to reinforce the product market fit further with improved data and AI utilization. We improve our decision-making capabilities with reinforced analytics tools and data literacy.
The latest steps in our SCALE strategy execution reveal pilot projects, through which we can show that we can actually unlock productivity opportunities through a more integrated workflow. We've implemented a process of 3D design, which is used for product design and development, as well as creating sales images. 3D design has multiple benefits for designers, merchandiser, and for sales teams. Here, we've already managed to reduce the amount of physical samples used and sell items with only digital images. Marimekko Studio was a pilot project where we piloted a new business model, and it also proved true our B2C platform capabilities, where the consumers could design their own T-shirts and have them customized to their own style and liking.
We have implemented full funnel marketing analytics and optimization, including first-party tracking, which is tracking without external cookies, on an item level to enhance our understanding of consumer trends faster to fuel the collection and assortment planning. Finally, we have made improvements in our product and material data management to be able to provide customers with a better understanding of the journey of an item, also noting our objectives within sustainability and striving towards creating digital product passports with clear consumer benefits. Going on, we have identified a wide range of efficiency opportunities to improve. With design, we're focused on improving time to market and reducing development cost with, for example, the help of 3D design and 360 spins. Here, of course, data plays an important role as well with improving our decision-making capabilities and streamlining the creative and product development process, optimizing our collections and buys.
Of course, this also helps supply chain and merchandising in improving the product market fit, where we also have a sizable opportunity to use AI in shortening the feedback loops. Again, better understanding our customers and developing collections then accordingly. For logistics and warehousing, we work with process automation in the back end, with pretty clear scale benefits. And as creative work is our core value generator, many of these actions actually aim to support designers, marketers, and creatives. All in all, our efficiency improvement initiatives, which are then complemented with striving towards localized and tailored experiences at scale and a more automated sales process, they're excellent examples of how seeking efficiencies often equals to enabling growth. Thank you very much. It was a pleasure talking to you today. Now we talk more.
Just a few questions.
Good.
You listed a lot of things that you're working on in the digitalization of the whole value chain. What would you say is the biggest benefit for our customer on this digital path we're on?
Yeah. Going back to my presentation, I'm actually the most excited by the fact that we can be faster in terms of delivering brand and product experiences. So in other words, we can be more relevant with our content and products, and deliver them to you with a great frictionless experience.
There was also a multitude of opportunities to capture, efficiency improvements.
Mm.
Where would you say lies the biggest opportunities in boosting the efficiency?
So I need to choose one? Okay. Well, I personally think that even as we push really, really hard on the efficiency levers with development projects, enabling technology, let's say especially in the-
Mm.
... Supply chain and merchandising, I would still insist that the biggest efficiency lever for Marimekko is growth, and that's what the platform is really geared towards, and a lot of the capabilities are actually already in place.
Thank you, Mikki.
Thank you, Anna.
We will soon open up the floor for questions, but before that, I would like to invite Tiina Alahuhta-Kasko and our CFO, Elina Anckar, on the stage to quickly recap the day.
All right. Thank you, Anna, so to summarize the day and summarize the Marimekko story, with Marimekko, there is the opportunity, attractive opportunity, to scale profitable growth of a global brand with low risk and CapEx. We are a global lifestyle brand with recognizable and world-renowned prints, and a strong and very topical value-based story. We have also proven a success recipe, for profitable growth, with a target and history of stable results and returns. There is a lucrative opportunity to scale Marimekko Global, as we've heard throughout the presentations today, in particular in Asia, that is supported by megatrends shaping consumer behavior and preferences... and we are growing our brand story together with our customers, and our customer community is loyal and constantly increasing around the world, and last but not least, we operate through a scalable business model with low risk and CapEx needs.
With those words, I would like to end the presentation section. I believe we are ready for questions.
Yeah. For those of you watching online, you can use the chat function to type in your questions, and for questions here in the room, we ask that you please use the microphone for your questions. While we wait for the first questions in the room, Tiina, I could start by asking, with a lot of discussion today about the growth, what kind of investments are needed in the coming years?
So first of all, it's good to remember that as we have been presenting today, when you look at our performance, we have already showcased that we're able to show profitable growth even as we've constantly been fueling our future long-term growth with investments. When I look into the future, in order to ensure and foster and nurture and reinforce our competitiveness, of course, we will be continuing to fueling marketing investments to further developing our omnichannel digital experience, to overall update our kind of IT to be even more competitive, and so forth, and sustainability, not to forget about sustainability.
At the same time, it's important to remember that, in our business model in Asia, which is the most important geographical area for our future international growth, we operate through the loose franchise partnership model, which provides low risk and CapEx requirements, for us. And then, last but not least, it's important to remember that the theme of our strategy is SCALE, and with scaling growth, we also seek scale benefits, not only in supply chain, but also in fixed costs that then allow balancing-
Mm.
... These growth investments.
Thank you. Do we have questions here at the printing mill? Yeah.
Good afternoon, this is Atte Jortikka from Evli Research. First, kind of on the APAC, you showed the kind of interesting markets going forward, but on the medium, short to medium term, do you think that it's kind of more of scaling the ones you're at at the moment or going into new ones?
Yes. Thank you for the question. So when it comes to our strategy in the Asia- Pacific region, we are principally focusing on the existing markets. As our dear colleague, Natacha, explained very well, today we have around 90 Marimekko physical stores, and then an abundance of online stores and platforms already in the region. But when you think about the sizes of the markets, and Natacha also threw in some great numbers in terms of the size of the potential and the expected general growth, we still have a lot of room to grow, even in the existing markets. And Natacha also walked you through how we anchor and focus our expansion in key cities, and you can just imagine that many of these key cities in Asia, there are populations of, you know, 10+ million people in one city.
By building our ecosystem with a very focused approach in the existing markets, in the key cities, then later also exploring new key cities in the region, and eventually also exploring new key markets, by focusing first on the existing markets, but also exploring new markets, is then a supporting measure.
Okay, thank you. Understood. Then, thinking of the kind of... Of course, the growth comes from like-for-like sales and things like that, but do you think that the current kind of your openings are enough to kind of reach the long-term revenue growth, especially on APAC market?
Yes. So as some of you might remember, that we always give a market outlook in terms of... at the beginning of the year, in terms of the estimated number of new stores openings that year. And, for example, this year, we have communicated since February that our plan is to open some 10-15 new Marimekko stores, mostly in Asia. So we believe that the growth will come not only, you know, through the like, further productivity of the existing points of sale, but also by opening new stores. But then I will highlight the word e-com, high scalability of the e-commerce. So that, of course, plays a really important role, also in our future growth.
It's good to remember that when we look at Asia and the different markets that Natacha also walked you through today, we have different levels of digital penetration in different markets. We have Mainland China, extremely high advanced level of digital penetration and competitiveness of the market. Then in some of the newer markets, the digitality in terms of our industry is now developing. So we're always looking at the best timing, the right timing for us to build our presence in different digital channels, in different platforms, and this is, of course, a normal part of our kind of go-to-market strategy work.
Okay, thank you. Then, into a kind of whole other topic, on the Pre-loved, you launched a couple of years ago, do you see it as more of a kind of tool to strengthen your brand equity, or is it already a viable business at the current scale?
... So, the Pre-loved that Mikki also presented, a little while back in his presentation, you're right, we launched that two years ago. We just celebrated the second anniversary of Pre-loved. For us, Pre-loved is walking our talk in terms of our values, in terms of our commitment to sustainability. We know that when we talk and discuss sustainability, circularity is integral. And the fact that Marimekko has been committed with our philosophy in design and operations since the get-go, to timelessness and long-lastingness, I think that the Pre-loved is a true testament of that. The fact that we are a premium brand, not a luxury brand, but a premium-positioned brand, and in the markets where we have the most maturity as a brand, there are tremendous inventories of also second-cycle or even vintage Marimekko products.
It means that people actually really, first of all, use Marimekko products in for many, many years, but they also then keep it or want to pass it to the next generation. So this is exactly, of course, the work that that we want to promote in terms of promoting circularity. So Pre-loved is a platform for us to encourage consumers to do that, to further increase the life cycle of the product. At the same time, we do see, and there are a lot of statistics out there, when it comes to the overall expected growth of the second-cycle business. I think this is really healthy in the context of our industry.
We also know that the fashion industry has a lot of work to do, in general, to further advance sustainability, and also educate the consumers into even better ways of mindful consumption. So of course, we see that there is an opportunity for us to tap into this part of the business already now, and then be on this journey together with the whole industry and customers.
Okay, thank you.
I think we had questions there.
Hi, thank you for the presentation. Sanna Perälä from Nordea. I had a couple of questions also regarding the APAC region. What is your aspiration about the role of APAC region, like, in terms of percentage of sales, for example?
So already today, the Asia-Pacific region is our second-largest market after our strong market, home market, Finland. What is good to remember here is the choice of the business model. So in our home market in Finland, we have a vast network of our company-owned retail stores and online stores, which is then complemented by a wide kind of reach generated or built through important wholesale partnerships. In Asia-Pacific region, for the good reasons that Natacha walked you through, basically, the requirement to understand in depth the local consumer, the local market, paired with the strong kind of negotiation power of the partners, understanding that their business model is actually running multiple brands in that specific market, providing them better negotiation power for the best retail locations.
We have chosen the loose franchise business model for our expansion model in Asia. So when we look at the sizes of the markets, it's good to remember that today, a big portion of our APAC sales are wholesale sales because of the choice of the business model. If you translate and look at the brand sales, share of APAC, it's already close to 30% of our total brand sales. So when we're looking to the future, we have already mentioned that Asia represents the most important geographical area for our future international growth. I think that gives a good indication of our ambition level. We see increasing interest and demand for our brand in the region, and as Natacha very well explained, we're now focusing on these particular markets, but it's a growing market. The...
For us, it's more about the time and pace. We want to ensure that we create sustainable, profitable growth.
Right. Thank you. Then you mentioned the loose franchise partners, and regarding them, you have many different online platforms in Asia-Pacific region. Are those loose franchise partners also running those online platforms, or are you in charge of those?
So when it comes to the online presence in the different markets in Asia, for most parts, it is our local loose franchise partners who run it. And actually, maybe just to contextualize this a little bit more, so when it comes to the platforms in Asia, when it comes to our distribution channel choices in each market, we always take the position of our end consumer in that local market. We analyze which channels are the most relevant, for that local customer in that specific market, what role does the channel play, in the total kind of consumer behavior for our end consumer in that market, and that's how we kind of make our omnichannel choices.
So, for example, in some of the Asian markets, like, for example, in China, the online platforms like Tmall, JD.com, and RED, they are actually where the e-commerce business happens. The Marimekko.China site would not be relevant because of the consumer behavior. Similarly, for example, in Singapore, there's already a Marimekko.Singapore, but, similar to China, with the platform online business, there is Marimekko presence also in the LazMall, in the Singaporean market. The only market in which we actually run the business, the digital business ourselves, is China. And the reason for that is-...
Some of you might remember that originally when Marimekko launched our e-commerce business, we decided consciously to launch it in the U.S. back in 2010, because the U.S. was the most advanced and competitive e-commerce market in the world, so that we can take the learnings and sort of advance our competitiveness to the best. Similarly, we know that today China is one of the most competitive online markets in the world. So we wanna be there ourselves with our own local team, run the business, grow the business, and similarly take the learnings that we can then adopt and leverage in the rest of the world where we operate online store.
Right, thank you. Then you showcased a lot of different pop-up cafes and fashion shows, for example. How do you turn these visits, for example, in these cafes into sales? Do people realize that you are also a fashion lifestyle brand?
So, excellent question. Typically, these cafes are in connection or next to our flagship store, so it's a very natural flow. And I think Mr. Tan from Tanachira also very well explained that actually, a few years ago, we together decided to do a pilot first on the Marimekko Cafe. The pilot actually ended up being such a success that I believe it's still there. And we have actually been opening new Marimekko Cafe experiences in Thailand as well. By the way, Thailand is... If you look at also luxury brands, you will find out that that's quite an interesting market in terms of this kind of experiential retail. So for example, the first pilot cafe in Bangkok was located in Central Embassy, which is one of the leading shopping malls in Bangkok.
It's located in front of the Marimekko flagship store there, next to also Prada and other luxury brands. It's a fantastic way for us to increase awareness among also new customers, deepen loyalty within our existing fans, and actually export that experience through social and earned channels in much widely in the region, and typically, when you engage with the product, you kind of like to then go to the store and continue that engagement, so of course, you know, we are a lifestyle brand selling these products, so with that experience, of course, we also aspire to inspire our customers to make their own Marimekko purchases.
Right. Thanks. That's all from me.
Hi, my name is Matias, and I'm from [audio distortion], and I had a follow-up question on the loose franchise partners. So on the same time as clearly understanding the benefits of local knowledge or tapping into the local knowledge and minimizing capital requirements in order to grow there, looking at the maps of, for example, Japan, China, and Thailand, we see tens, I don't know, I don't remember, 40 stores, and what we learn, that they also kind of, I don't know if the right word, is control the online platforms. But mirroring the benefits of choosing this local franchise, loose franchise partners, sorry, how do you manage the risks of becoming too dependent on them, you know?
Thinking that, if I understand right, they might have Marimekko as one of many brands, whereas Marimekko has them as the only partner in that geographical area.
Yeah. Okay. So, thank you for the question. When it comes to... So I'll just maybe recap, in short, the loose franchise business model, what each party brings into the mix. At Marimekko, we are the experts in our brand and in our business. So as we also, in the western part of the world, we actually run the omnichannel retail ourselves, so we're also experts, and we have accumulated for decades best practices in how to best and most productively run Marimekko stores and online business and then, of course, in the western part of the world, also the wholesale business. So in the loose franchise business model, we, the Marimekko brand, we control, as Natacha explained, the full brand experience. We are in charge of the store concept, the store design. We are in charge...
I mean, we create the product. The product offering is the global Marimekko offering. Then we can, you know, consider local modules. We create and are in charge of all of that. We are in charge of the marketing, the brand assets. So actually, for the end consumer, the experience in the Marimekko partner-operated stores is totally the same as if you would walk into one of our own company-owned retail stores. What the partner brings into the mix is the local consumer in-depth knowledge, the local market in-depth knowledge. I think one of the key things to be a successful brand internationally is to have the humbleness to understand in depth the local consumer and local market. Asia is a multitude of very different kinds of markets and consumer behaviors.
Brands need to have the humbleness to understand that and do the work. We do the work together with our partners by the partner fueling that insight to us, that we feed into our product development, into our marketing, experience development, and then the partner operates... Their business model is about operating also other brands, so they have a strong negotiation power towards the landlords to say that, you know, "Hello, I'm here with five brands, and these are the locations I would like to get them." It's, it's a powerful negotiation aspect... Then, to your question about would we become dependent? So as a brand, again, we are in control of all of this, and it's also good to remember that we also run our own company-owned retail.
So from that point of view, it's not that we I mean, we have accumulated strong expertise to do that. We just feel that in this phase of the expansion in Asia, it's beneficial for us to use the partnerships to go to market and accelerate and scale up the growth. In the context of our of the fashion industry, it is quite typical for brands from the western part of the world to operate in Asia through partnerships because of exactly this reason, which is that we need to understand the local consumers in depth.
In the context of our industry, sometimes it is then possible that when a brand reaches a certain maturity, and sort of own gained knowledge of the market, that they might then want to actually take over and run the business themselves. However, at Marimekko, we are very happy with the loose franchise partnership model for this phase in our growth story for the aforementioned reasons.
You. Yeah.
Calle Loikkanen from Danske Bank. Thank you for taking my questions, and also thank you for the presentations. Just a couple of questions on growth and maybe starting with Finland. You mentioned that you expect sales in Finland to be flat this year, but I was thinking more about the kind of rest of the strategy period. What sort of growth rate in Finland would be realistic to assume during the remainder of the strategy period?
As mentioned, I walked through in the first part of my presentation about the kind of different growth lever. So in the strong home market, Finland, our focus is in further gaining market share. And for example, if we look at this year, and we look at the current market sentiment, macro market sentiment in Finland, that has been gloomy, we have been still growing in the first half of the year by 11%. So we believe that in this market, a strong home market, we have a super high recognition, a lot of high brand hype, also, within the next generation of consumers, that we're able to further build our market share.
When it comes to then our growth targets, the guiding target for us as a team and as a company is the long-term total net sales growth target of 15%. And in my presentation, I also walked you through an illustrative composition of the role of the different markets, market areas, in that, in that stream. And what you could see from that slide is that, of course, Finland will play an important role as well, but the most important geographical region for the international growth is APAC. And then actually, the other international markets like Scandinavia, EMEA and North America, will also have an important role in accelerating international growth.
Absolutely. Thank you. And then I was wondering about the 15% kind of annual growth target. Obviously, the last couple of years have been very challenging from a demand point of view, but when do you kind of see that 15% growth for the company could be realistic to assume?
As mentioned in my presentation, the long-term financial goals were updated by our Board of Directors at the same time as we actually launched this strategy period, which was in the fall of 2022, and as mentioned, those are long-term financial goals. We are working towards these goals every day, and we are very confident and excited about this journey, and for example, within the last 18 months, I think that we have been able to showcase very convincing progress on this journey, despite the weaker general macro sentiment.
Okay. Thanks. And then lastly, Asia or APAC, sales growth has been, for the past few years, maybe around 17% or something in that ballpark. I was just wondering that how much of that is actually like-for-like growth, and how much has come from new store openings?
So when it comes to kind of the market where we actually disclose the like-for-like numbers is Finland, because of the large size of the market and because of the fact that here we actually run the omnichannel retail business by ourselves. So for example, in the first half of the year, our retail sales in Finland grew by 4%, if I remember correctly. The like-for-like figure was slightly lower. When it comes to the other regions, we don't disclose, unfortunately, the like-for-like growth.
But then I think that it's good to remember that we always, in our interim reports, we also sort of update the progress in terms of new store openings and also if there are store closures, that's also part of the normal kind of network management to ensure that we have the right, network serving our customers at all times. But overall, I can just say that we're happy with the development with the Asia Pacific region, as Natacha mentioned last year, with 17%, net sales growth, and, we're on a good path to continue.
All right. Thank you. Thank you. That's all for me.
...
Hi, Rauli from Inderes. One question from me: it seems from the presentations that you are pretty much progressing on the lines you laid out two years ago with the strategy. So the question is that has anything changed regarding the strategy?
No! And I think that that's also a sign of a strong, relevant, exciting strategy.... Today we wanted to take the opportunity to update in a transparent way about the progress, and also to sort of elaborate a little bit more on the key growth anchors, the key distribution channel ecosystems in different market areas, as well as also, like, give a little bit more of the big picture to you. But overall, we are very excited about the journey we are on, and we are progressing in a good manner.
Very clear. Thank you.
All right, thank you. It's Joonas Häyhä from OP Financial Group. Maybe a couple of questions, firstly regarding the brand collaborations you've had. You've had plenty of those in recent years, and I'm just wondering to what extent do you get contacted by potential partners, and to what extent are you kind of proactively seeking these yourself?
As Sanna-Kaisa very well mentioned in her presentation, because of the fact that our design language is a highly recognizable and also world-renowned due to its strong artistic integrity and sort of recognizability, and paired with the fact that the value world that we represent is extremely topical, if we think about authenticity, inclusivity, empowerment, the commitment to sustainability, those two things combined make us a very attractive companion for some of the leading brands in their own respective industries to collaborate with. So we get contacted all the time. Of course, now we are also speeding up our international growth, so we are also dreaming of, like, who could be an interesting partner for us?
Who could be a partner through whom we could tell the Marimekko story and complement the Marimekko lifestyle or bring to life the Marimekko lifestyle in an exciting, surprising way, and in a way that becomes the talk of the town? Because being the talk of the town then creates awareness, which creates traffic, which then supports our core business model, so in both ways. But we are definitely a lucrative brand that gets a lot of contacts, but we are also very selective with whom we want to collaborate.
All right, thank you. And maybe another one: you mentioned that the entering new markets remains one source for growth, and you've entered Vietnam, Malaysia, and Singapore during the past maybe one year. So, obviously, early days still, but can you talk a little bit about how has the entry been so far?
Yeah.
... And, what kind of learnings have you had in these markets?
I had the pleasure to actually join Natacha and Rebekka and a few other members of our team last October to be there in the market and cut the ribbon to open the first Marimekko store. So I saw it in my own eyes and ears. It has been a very warm welcome for Marimekko in these markets, in Vietnam, in Malaysia, and in Singapore, and we're excited to now start building together with the partners our presence in these markets. So good to remember, Singapore, as also Natacha and Mr. Tan explained in the video, Singapore is already a very sort of important hub market in the Southeast Asia region. We know that by building our presence in Singapore, it has also echo impacts more widely in the region for brand awareness and positioning.
When it comes to Vietnam and Malaysia, they are more developing markets. We felt, together with our partner, that now is the right time for us to enter, start building the brand story through the first stores. Then we have also opened the online stores this year. In terms of the size of the market today, I mean, they were just opened less than a year ago, so as Natacha said, they're still in the baby phase. But they are growing, and we are growing them, together with our partners.
At the moment, we don't have any questions online, but we still have time for a few questions here in the room.
Thanks. Henry [audio distortion], it was good presentation, but I would like to ask about that competition environment, because there has not been so much about competitors. It sounds good that you have cooperation with bigger companies, but how do you see. Has it been strengthening, or it's more easier when thinking about competitors of your size?
A good question about the competitive environment.
Of course, you have many areas, but-
Yeah.
... Maybe you can tell.
Yeah, and I think that that's also a really good point. Because we have three product lines, we also have competitors in the fashion segment. We have also competitors in the home segment. I think in one of the slides that I presented in the early part of the presentation, we had sort of compiled the performance of, you know, some of the key players in the competitive environments, part luxury players, some e-tailers, other, like, big brand houses, and I think that overall the holistic picture is that we are performing well. I mean, our Marimekko's relative profitability is high. It's actually just landing right after the luxury players. And when it comes to growth, understanding that there has been, like, in general, a more muted macroeconomic environment, we are being constantly growing our net sales.
When it comes to competitive environments in different markets, I think that there are then very different kinds of sort of stories. I think that we have all been reading the news in Finland, which is of course really sad to hear, that many players, maybe smaller players, in our industry have been financially struggling in this market. At the same time...
You know, we as a company operate in a super dynamic and highly competitive fashion and design industry, but we firmly believe that regardless of any kind of macro environment, when you have a strong brand that has a meaningful and unique differentiator as a value proposition, and when you're able to kind of cultivate and nurture that kind of brand desirability, that makes you also a very competitive brand in a weaker macro environment. So I think that we can all read the news overall in the context of our industry, but similarly, as in the pandemic, there are some players that are struggling in their financial performance, and then there are always the ones who succeed.
Of course, at Marimekko, we were one of the winning brands during the pandemic, and we intend to be the winning brand also during this kind of macroeconomic environment that we're in today.
Okay, thanks. Then one more question. What do you think about that, how could I say? Secondhand market, is it more strength or is it possibility? Because there are many perspectives, like sustainability and competition point of view. How could you tell about that?
I think that the secondhand market is an opportunity. I think it's an opportunity to advance sustainability through circularity and advance in circularity, but it's also, especially in the longer term, it's a possibility from a business point of view, and I think Mikki, my colleague, also explained it very well in his presentation, that what the Marimekko Pre-loved second cycle platform also does is that it also showcases to customers what, that even when they buy a new product, that the new product will have a high resale price, so it's sort of a good investment from that point of view. At the same time, so it sort of increases and strengthens the perceived value of the product and the brand.
Then, at the same time, when we are in this weaker macroeconomic climate, the Pre-loved second cycle platform offers also an even lower entry price point to customers, to our brand. So we see that as only a positive opportunity.
Thanks.
Yeah.
Janne Kela, Evli Funds. You mentioned sustainability as one area that you need to invest in. Can you open up a bit?
Yes. So of course, the topic of sustainability, that's a very large word. And of course, at Marimekko, we approach the development of sustainability through our products and practices across our value chain. And to give you a very concrete example, when we discuss investments into sustainability, one key aspect has to do with material transformation. Why is that? When we look at our environmental footprint as a company from a full value chain perspective, one of the key sources for our environmental footprints is actually the material choices.
So therefore, already for some years ago, we have crafted a material transformation plan that guides our, kind of, transitioning to preferred materials that are organic, recycled, certified, that not only actually improve the transparency of our products and supply chain, but also it decrease the environmental footprint of the materials that we use. This material transformation requires investments, and because we are also sort of a financially strong company, and we are growing profitably, we have a strong balance sheet, we are able to also invest constantly into transforming our products and practices to be even better. That's extremely meaningful work for us at Marimekko. Now I just gave you one aspect of the sustainability work for us at Marimekko. Sustainability is something that is sort of integrated to every single Marimekko employee's own work.
We all have a role to play in the development of sustainability of our company.
Thank you.
I think we're nearing the end of the event, but we would still have time for one question, if there is such here at the room. There's no questions online. It seems that we've answered all the questions and presented all the details for today. We would like to thank you for taking part in our Capital Markets Day, and we hope to see you in our next events as well, the next one being the Q3 publishing in 5th of November. Thank you.