Etam had 3,083 China stores at its peak — in 2025 it closed its last online shop too

Etam, the French apparel brand, entered China around 1994 and grew fast, reaching 4,246 stores worldwide by June 2014 — 3,083 of them, 72% of the total, in mainland China. It was one of the largest foreign fashion retailers in the country, a fixture of shopping malls and a name a generation of Chinese women associated with their teenage years.

The retreat began with a pivot: in 2015 Etam introduced a standalone lingerie line to differentiate itself as apparel sales weakened, and in 2018 it sold its mainland apparel operations — the Etam Weekend, ES and E&JOY lines — to a Hong Kong investment firm, keeping only the lingerie business. That business kept shrinking. By 2020, Etam's physical store count in mainland China had fallen to zero.

What remained was an online-only lingerie presence, and even that did not last. On November 30, 2025, Etam closed its Tmall flagship store, along with its Xiaohongshu and Douyin storefronts, ending 31 years of continuous presence in the Chinese market. The company cited only 'business adjustment considerations' — no specific financial figures were disclosed.

The decline had no single dramatic failure; it was gradual, one channel at a time, over a decade: apparel sold off, physical stores emptied out, and finally the online storefronts that were supposed to be the brand's last foothold in China closed too.