- Leadership transition marks generational shift at one of China’s oldest fashion groups
- Investment gains continue to overshadow earnings from core clothing business
Youngor Group (雅戈尔集团) founder Li Rucheng has formally handed control of the Chinese apparel conglomerate to his daughter, signaling a generational transition at one of the country’s best-known fashion and investment empires as the company struggles to revive its core clothing operations.
The Ningbo-based company said late on May 21 that its board had elected Li Hanqiong as chairwoman during a board meeting held the same day.
The 49-year-old executive previously served as vice chair and president of the company, taking over from her 75-year-old father.
The succession had been widely anticipated. “The younger generation will take charge of Youngor’s operations during this board transition. After years of preparation, the company’s younger leadership has gradually matured,” Li Rucheng wrote in the company’s 2025 annual report.
A changing of guard
Born in 1977, Li Hanqiong holds an EMBA degree and previously worked at Youngor’s Hong Kong operations as well as Shanghai-based investment firm Vstone.
The transition marks a formal changing of the guard at a company whose origins trace back to a struggling township garment factory in Ningbo during China’s early reform-and-opening era in the 1980s.
Li Rucheng joined the factory as an apprentice before reviving it in 1982 through a contract manufacturing order involving 12 tons of fabric.
He later launched the Youngor brand in 1990 and expanded the business through branding, partnerships and diversification into real estate and financial investments.
‘Buffett of the garment industry’
The company became known for its sprawling “triple-engine” structure spanning apparel, property and investments, earning Li Rucheng the nickname “the Buffett of the garment industry.”
Youngor entered the property sector in 1992 and expanded into financial investments in the late 1990s, later becoming an early investor in firms including Bank of Ningbo and CITIC Securities—now among the most profitable firms in China.
Since 2019, however, the group has scaled back property exposure and reduced investment activity as part of a strategy to refocus on its fashion business.
That transition has proven difficult. According to the company’s 2025 annual report, net profit attributable to shareholders from its core fashion business fell 77.75% year-on-year to 95.9 million yuan ($13.3 million).
By contrast, its investment division generated 2.47 billion yuan in attributable net profit, up 11.86% from a year earlier—nearly 25 times the earnings of the apparel segment.
Gone are the good old days
The imbalance has intensified scrutiny over whether Youngor can restore competitiveness in its traditional menswear business under second-generation leadership.
In an interview with local media outlet Tidenews, Yang Yiqing, executive vice dean of the Zhejiang Merchants Research Institute at Zhejiang Gongshang University, said Youngor’s situation reflects broader challenges facing Zhejiang private enterprises amid changing consumption patterns, rising costs and intensifying competition.
“The investment business standing out alone may help earnings in the short term, but excessive dependence on capital returns can weaken innovation momentum in the core business,” he added.
