The struggling international fashion giant Esprit has closed all of its shops in China as it struggles to regain the sales it enjoyed in the 1990s and mid 2000s and its losses enlarge and stock continues to plummet.

Esprit was a brand ahead of its time and used all of the right buzzwords to become a household name. But something went wrong and Esprit has closed all of its Chinese mainland shops. The company offered a 90-percent discount on everything, even hangers, to clear its stock.

It really depends on which generation consumers it belongs to. They may or may not know this brand. CGTN did a small survey on the street of Beijing and it seems most post 80s are aware of this brand. For post 90s, some had experience with Esprit when shopping with their older family members. For teenagers, they say they have never heard of it.

"About six years ago, before I went to college, I remember my parents bought Esprit clothes in a shopping mall. They're rather expensive I recall. I never bought any for myself, as I see it as old-fashioned," said Ms. Sun, a 25-year-old Beijing girl working in the CBD area.

While Ms. Sun's young colleague Ms. Ma just go straight to say that she had little impression of the brand as she rarely sees it in shopping malls.

Louise Lund, a 24-year-old postgraduate student from Denmark, says she does remember Esprit, but it was 10 years ago. "It's my grandparents and parents who bought for me and my sister, maybe because they thought the brand was very high quality. But I haven't notice it for years."

"In my impression, young people don't buy this brand at all now," Louise added.

The golden age of Esprit lasted for 15 years since 1993. In 2008, Esprit recorded 37 billion Hong Kong dollars in revenue. But after a prolonged 12 years of decline, in 2019, the company's revenues tumbled to just 5.7 billion Hong Kong dollars. That's in no comparison to top players such as ZARA and UNIQLO. Its company share price dropped to below one Hong Kong dollar, from its peak of almost 83 Hong Kong dollars in 2007.

The decision to close all its Chinese shops followed another one to exit from the Australian and New Zealand market two years ago, leaving Europe, especially Germany, as its only market.

The company announced at the end of 2019 that it's planning a new joint venture with Mulsanne Group, a fashion house based in east China's Ningbo City, to reboot Esprit's China business. It remains to be seen whether the brand name will be kept or a new brand will be created by the joint venture.