Fashion chain C&A to seek growth in China

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European fashion retailer C&A said on Friday it would enter China with four stores in Shanghai in 2007 and set up shop in Beijing next year, as it joins rivals Zara and H&M in the country's competitive $1 trillion retail market.

"We want to be one of the leading fashion retailers in China," said Sandra Dembeck, who is in charge of business development for C&A in the country.

C&A, which counts itself among the world's four biggest fashion chains in terms of sales, will open the four Shanghai stores by end-September, offering low-price fashion to 15- to 30-year-olds, and is poised for further expansion, Dembeck said.

"We will enter Beijing before the (2008) Olympics. After Beijing we will go into the second-tier cities," she said.

Its main European rivals -- Spain's Inditex , owner of the Zara chain, and Sweden's H&M -- have said their focus in the near term was on consumers in Shanghai, where they have announced or opened three outlets each.

Their U.S. competitor Gap Inc. has yet to set up shop in China.

C&A, named after Dutch brothers Clemens and August Brenninkmeijer who founded the company as a textile warehouse in 1841, aims to be operating more than 1,400 shops in 20 countries, mainly in Europe and Latin America, at the end of 2007, which would match H&M's current store count.

The company, which is still controlled by the Brenninkmeijer clan, dubbed the wealthiest family in the Netherlands in the 2006 Quote 500 rich list, plans to open another 300 to 350 stores globally in the next two to three years.

C&A does not generally disclose group results, but its European business achieved gross turnover of 5.2 billion euros ($7.1 billion) in 2005. ($1=.7344 Euro)

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