As the summer heat wave hits, the &#34;big brother&#34; of the down jacket industry, Canada Goose, is experiencing a cold winter.
This global down jacket giant, which rose rapidly after its IPO in 2017, once sparked a trend for &#34;ten-thousand-yuan&#34; down jackets in just a few years. Owning a parka with the eye-catching Arctic disc logo has been on countless consumers' dream lists. When the middle class spent nearly ten thousand yuan on down jackets without hesitation, they were not just buying winter clothing, but rather a passport to identity. Therefore, a winter without &#34;big goose&#34; is incomplete, and it once became a popular saying.
Now, eight years have passed, and &#34;a winter without big goose&#34; has become increasingly complete—those who once pursued it have turned their attention to domestic down jackets from BOSIDENG, or the &#34;three-piece set&#34; consisting of lululemon, Arc'teryx, and Salomon. Even as Canada Goose, which once enjoyed great glory, shifts from a &#34;luxury&#34; positioning to outlet discount areas, few are interested. This sense of loss is also reflected in sales; since 2022, Canada Goose's growth rate in the Chinese market has dropped from double digits to 1%.
More dramatically, in July 2025, multiple media outlets reported that Canada Goose's major shareholder, Bain Capital, is considering selling its stake and seeking an exit. The major shareholder's intention to withdraw may confirm the reality of the &#34;ten-thousand-yuan down jacket&#34; stepping down from its pedestal.
<h2>The Birth of the Middle-Class Standard</h2>
In the winter of 2018, the cold wind howled in the North District of Taikoo Li, Sanlitun, Beijing, yet a long queue of hundreds of meters formed in front of the Canada Goose global flagship store. Many people wrapped in heavy down jackets waited outdoors for over half an hour in sub-zero temperatures just to grab a &#34;Expedition Series&#34; jacket priced at nearly ten thousand yuan. Within three days of opening, all popular models in the store, including the Expedition series, were sold out.
From that day on, Canada Goose became a popular brand among the middle class. To this day, China has become Canada Goose's largest market. The brand has 74 stores worldwide, with 30 located in China (including Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan).
Looking back at the development of Canada Goose, this globally renowned high-end brand was initially born in an inconspicuous small warehouse in Toronto. At that time, Canada Goose was long considered a relatively niche professional cold-weather brand. Since 2001, Canada Goose began to enhance its visibility through endorsements from film crews and movie stars. It was frequently featured in films such as &#34;The Day After Tomorrow&#34; and &#34;National Treasure,&#34; and sponsored international events like the Berlin Film Festival and the Toronto Film Festival, gradually bringing the brand into the public eye.
In 2013, the entry of Bain Capital became a significant turning point in Canada Goose's fate. After acquiring 70% of its shares for $250 million, Bain Capital conducted textbook-level capital operations for Canada Goose, expanding the clothing styles from the initial 20 to 200, and extending the product line from professional cold-weather gear to everyday life scenarios. At the same time, the brand's pricing moved closer to the luxury market, and it successively opened e-commerce platforms and offline flagship stores in the United States, Europe, and Asia, successfully transforming polar professional equipment into a global high-end brand
In 2017, Canada Goose was listed on the New York and Toronto Stock Exchanges, with its market value once soaring to a high of $7.8 billion.
In its globalization expansion strategy, Bain Capital places particular emphasis on the Chinese market. In 2018, Canada Goose entered China, accurately capturing the domestic middle class and nouveau riche's demand for &#34;identity recognition.&#34; With its brand characteristics of cold resistance and scarcity, Canada Goose quickly became a &#34;standard configuration&#34; for the middle class, even sparking a nationwide craze—counterfeit versions priced in the hundreds and thousands could be seen everywhere online, and the red and blue circular logo became a fashion symbol.
This trend accelerated Canada Goose's expansion in the Chinese market. From 2018 to 2021, in just three years, the number of its stores in China surged from 1 to 20, covering core cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, and Chengdu. The grand openings of its stores in Sanlitun and Hong Kong were unprecedented, becoming a microcosm of the brand's popularity in China.
Canada Goose is not only hailed as the &#34;Hermès of down jackets,&#34; but it also continuously breaks sales records—according to media reports, on &#34;Double Eleven&#34; in 2018, its official flagship store on Tmall achieved sales exceeding 10 million yuan within just one hour. In 2024, the Greater China region surpassed the United States and Canada with sales of 422 million Canadian dollars, becoming Canada Goose's largest market for the first time.
<h2>&#34;Big Brother&#34; Loses Favor</h2>
After experiencing glory in the Chinese and even global markets, Canada Goose's growth rate significantly slowed down starting in 2022.
Financial reports show that from 2022 to 2025, Canada Goose's annual sales growth rate plummeted from 21.54% to just 1.1%. The once highly valued Chinese market also fell into a growth bottleneck. In the fiscal year 2025 (ending March 30, 2025), Canada Goose's revenue in the Greater China region grew by only 1% year-on-year.
To reverse the decline, Canada Goose frequently adjusted its management team in China. In June 2025, the company announced the appointment of Xie Lin as the president of the China region, fully responsible for the direct sales business in mainland China. This marks the third change of the president for the China region since 2022. Three leadership changes in four years reflect the brand's anxiety and strategic wavering in the Chinese market.
However, more fatal than the decline in performance is the reputation crisis. In 2021, a consumer in Shanghai requested a return due to quality issues with a down jacket but was told that &#34;stores in mainland China do not accept returns or exchanges,&#34; while overseas markets enjoyed a 30-day no-reason return policy. This &#34;double standard&#34; incident caused a huge uproar, and the Shanghai Consumer Protection Committee urgently summoned the brand.
Although Canada Goose later revised its policies, promising that all products sold in its exclusive stores in mainland China could be returned and refunded, and fulfilled its refund commitment to that consumer, the labels of &#34;double standard&#34; and &#34;arrogance&#34; regarding the brand in the Chinese market have become difficult to shake off.
Meanwhile, the high-priced Canada Goose, often exceeding ten thousand yuan, has repeatedly faced quality controversies. In September 2021, the National Enterprise Credit Information Publicity System showed that Canada Goose's affiliated company—Xiji Shanghai Trading Co., Ltd.—was fined 450,000 yuan for falsely advertising that its products contained &#34;excellent and warm Canadian down,&#34; misleading consumers
Related events have once again topped the trending searches, and similar issues have further weakened consumer trust.
Even as the controversy continues to brew, Canada Goose seems unaware of the impending brand crisis. Whether in pricing strategy or store locations, it still strives to maintain its &#34;luxury&#34; image, positioning itself alongside luxury brands and focusing on high-end, mature commercial districts. In Beijing, three stores are located in Sanlitun Taikoo Li, Beijing SKP, and Wangfujing Center; in Shanghai, they are situated in Hongqiao IAPM, IFC International Financial Center, and Xinyi Taikoo Hui, with a new store opening in Wuhan's SKP in 2024.
According to data from Winshang, over 80% of Canada Goose's stores are located in city-level commercial districts among representative shopping centers of over 50,000 square meters across 27 cities in the country, with about 95% of stores situated in mature commercial areas.
Clearly, selecting high-end malls is aimed at maintaining brand tone. However, in recent years, the continuous slowdown in performance across global regions has forced Canada Goose, which insists on a luxury route, to lower its profile. Since 2024, to expand sales channels, many consumers have noticed the presence of Canada Goose authorized stores in outlets such as Florence Town in Tianjin, Bicester Village in Shanghai, and Bicester Village in Suzhou.
<h2>Encircling the Big Goose</h2>
As Canada Goose finds itself in a quagmire, the &#34;three treasures of the middle class&#34; composed of Arc'teryx, Salomon, and Lululemon are accelerating their market share acquisition. In recent years, as a high-end brand under Amer Sports, Arc'teryx has shown strong growth momentum, with Greater China becoming the fastest-growing region for the group, and its &#34;hard shell jackets&#34; series has become a new favorite among urban white-collar workers. Meanwhile, Salomon's hiking shoes and Lululemon's casual sportswear have gradually become the top choices for the middle class, collectively squeezing Canada Goose's original market share.
Amid the domestic &#34;outdoor craze,&#34; the Italian high-end brand Moncler has also joined the competition. In 2022, Moncler signed Wang Yibo as its global brand ambassador, further aligning with localized marketing and accurately capturing the domestic outdoor trend by combining &#34;luxury&#34; and &#34;outdoor&#34; elements to aggressively seize the Chinese market.
Domestic brand BOSIDENG should not be underestimated either. Previously, BOSIDENG attempted to break into the high-end market by launching the &#34;Summit Series&#34; priced over ten thousand yuan, but due to &#34;high prices not being well-received,&#34; it once hit a bottleneck. In recent years, its budget brand &#34;Snow Flying&#34; has seen a significant increase in sales, achieving approximately 2.206 billion yuan in revenue for the 2024/25 fiscal year, a year-on-year increase of 9.2% as of March 31, 2025. At the same time, BOSIDENG has vigorously expanded its offerings of functional products such as sun protection clothing and jackets during the off-season for down jackets, promoting a diversified development strategy.
It seems that an increasing number of domestic and foreign brands are joining the competition, causing a significant impact on Canada Goose's market position. In reality, the &#34;downturn&#34; of Canada Goose is deeply rooted in a profound shift in consumer trends. The rise of a healthy outdoor lifestyle has led emerging brands like the &#34;three treasures of the middle class&#34; to cater to the new consumption preferences of young people and the middle class. Meanwhile, consumption has become increasingly rational, with consumers no longer blindly pursuing high-priced labels
Since 2024, &#34;mountain-style outfits&#34; such as jackets have become popular, indicating a renewed market focus on product functionality and practical value. More and more young people are replacing down jackets with more versatile jackets. According to data from Frost &amp; Sullivan, the market size of high-performance outdoor apparel in mainland China has surpassed 100 billion yuan for the first time in 2024, with jackets and pants performing particularly well, accounting for 29.2% of the market share. It can be said that Canada Goose's predicament stems from the mismatch between &#34;high price + single functional scenario&#34; and the new consumer mindset.
In the face of difficulties, Canada Goose is striving to transform and save itself. In 2025, the brand launched the Snow Goose spring/summer capsule collection, which includes parkas, long pants, sweaters, and jackets, attempting to break the limitations of a single product line. However, the effectiveness of this transformation remains to be seen. Compounding the issue, according to reports from Bloomberg and other media in July 2025, the controlling shareholder Bain Capital is considering selling its stake in Canada Goose, with current negotiations still in the preliminary stages. The major shareholder's intention to exit undoubtedly casts a shadow over the brand's future development.
It is worth noting that Canada Goose's &#34;loss of favor&#34; is merely a microcosm of the overall cooling of foreign brands in the Chinese market. In recent years, whether it is high-priced luxury goods or fast fashion brands like Zara and H&amp;M, they have struggled to withstand the pressure brought by the rise of domestic brands and changes in consumer attitudes.
As luxury goods become increasingly mainstream and middle-class consumption returns to rationality, foreign brands that rely on high premiums are facing unprecedented challenges. In the current climate where jackets priced in the hundreds are selling well, the golden era for foreign brands that survive on labels and high price points is gradually fading.
Author: Gao Yuzhe, Source: Bao Bian, Original Title: &#34;Is Canada Goose, which the middle class is rushing to buy, about to be sold off by its owner?&#34;
Risk Warning and Disclaimer
The market has risks, and investment requires caution. This article does not constitute personal investment advice and does not take into account individual users' specific investment goals, financial conditions, or needs. Users should consider whether any opinions, views, or conclusions in this article are suitable for their specific circumstances. Investing based on this is at your own risk

03998

GOOS

Canada Goose has experienced a market winter, with sales growth in the Chinese market dropping from double digits to 1%. Once a luxury brand, it now faces the situation where major shareholder Bain Capital is considering selling its stake. Middle-class consumers are gradually turning to domestic brands like BOSIDENG and others, reflecting that the "10,000 yuan down jacket" is gradually losing its appeal

- Canada Goose, once a leading luxury down jacket brand, is facing significant challenges as consumer preferences shift towards domestic brands and functional outdoor wear.  
- The company's sales growth in China has plummeted from double digits to just 1%, prompting management changes and raising concerns about its market position.  
- Amidst declining popularity and a potential sale by major shareholder Bain Capital, Canada Goose's struggles reflect broader trends affecting foreign luxury brands in China.

Is Canada Goose, which the middle class is scrambling to buy, going to be sold off by its owner?