What Is The Right Thing For The Top Honors, Hermes, Icicle And SKP?

The current international luxury brands in China seem to follow the same business plan - mainly involving key KOL, celebrity marketing, high-profile news events, gimmick online activities, retail outlets all over the country, predictable senior management, and high attention to young people. For an industry that focuses on innovation, such a high degree of uniformity is shocking, and it also hurts the development of the whole industry. However, there are still some luxury enterprises in China have taken a distinctive road, and achieved remarkable success.

The most famous example is Hermes. Ironically, Hermes has hardly changed its DNA in China. The French luxury brand has long adhered to its corporate philosophy - avoiding celebrity promotions, playing online games, and not marketing specifically for youth culture. Hermes decided to open an independent store in Shanghai instead of following the trend of popular shopping centers.

How did Hermes succeed in the opposite direction? One thing that the brand has always been good at is customer service inside the store. Hermes knows better how to treat customers better than anyone else. Each Hermes store has given great freedom to the company's guidelines, which enables local managers to use their knowledge of their customers in the store to create the best shopping experience. This means that the brand does not invite the so-called executives (who are almost always from Hongkong or Taiwan) to make decisions for the shops in Shanghai and other cities. The local retail store should be implemented and implemented by the local people. This leadership concept is particularly useful in product selection and merchandising. The window of China's Hermes will ingeniously adapt to the taste of Chinese audiences.

Of course, not every fashion house has the brand charm of Hermes. A very different local luxury goods company has achieved success in China: Icicle, a fashion brand built in Shanghai twenty years ago. The company focuses on high-end products, currently has more than 250 stores, almost all shops are profitable. Surprisingly, however, not many people know this brand, or even the insiders of China's luxury goods sector. How does this low-key brand affect their customers? Like Hermes, it is not endorsed by celebrities. Icicle has long decided to focus on product quality and creativity (brand owns an exquisite design studio in Paris) and always maintains an inclusive price. They also insist on training highly qualified shop workers - both in stores and in WeChat, for deep digitization.

Therefore, Icicle has not invested much time and money in large-scale marketing activities, but rather tends to train professional salesmen because they are essentially ambassadors of the brand. Like Hermes, store employees choose products according to their relevance to local customers' habits, and store designs meet the specific needs of different locations. Shoppers experience warm and authentic sales services at the new flagship store in Shimao International Plaza, Icicle, Shanghai. Employees in the store have a wealth of product knowledge, which has not been achieved by many large international brands in China. Most of Icicle's target customers are career women. They want original and elegant clothes (rather than those stars), and this kind of consumer is growing in China.

This customer centered approach will enable buyers and brands to establish a real link. In fact, this method has been practiced for a long time by Icicle and has been extended to 250 shops nowadays. This slow and stable method is worth exploring. The brand is now seeking overseas expansion. In fact, just three months ago, Icicle unexpectedly bought the French fashion brand Carven.

From the retail level, the success of SKP Plaza in new light Plaza is also worth exploring. This retail organization has performed well both in Beijing and Xi'an. The luxury retail mall is not the most rewarding and profitable shopping center. The CEO of SKP is quite different from its competitors. By working with a Paris consulting company, SKP managed to create a unique space to provide less space for the dedicated brand, and to integrate niche brands into different categories. The experience provided by SKP shopping mall is orderly and not monotonous. In addition, SKP adds a series of special activities to its annual plan, such as flash shops, to create a pleasant experience for customers. In order to better convey specific retail stories to customers, they launched their own print and digital magazines.

It is not enough to set up a boutique in the right place - a brand or retailer needs a clear concept. Although experts continue to emphasize young market and online sales platform, brands should pay attention to adopting qualitative methods to innovate. This means that they should first understand the needs of customers in the shopping experience, rather than start shop immediately; if there is no basic knowledge, trying to dominate the market may lead to disaster. The example of British retailer TopShop proves that the brand suddenly decided to close all stores and leave the Chinese market after opening more than 200 stores in China a few years ago. Even the very high-end retailers can not avoid these problems. For example, the French luxury shoe brand JM Weston has been trying to find a good way to attract Chinese customers for 10 years, but recently chose to withdraw from the Chinese market.

Different companies like Hermes, Icicle and SKP are successful: on the one hand, they always remain loyal to their brand roots and innovate on this basis. Although China's luxury consumers are very diverse, they want to be respected and treated. As fashion blogger Mr. Bags has said, "Chinese luxury shoppers are interested in foreign brands because they are different." In other words, foreign luxury brands should not come in to try to make "Sinicization" products. At the same time, in order to make oneself different, China's luxury brands should also seek a more balanced multicultural Chinese team, but also need to effectively and continuously strengthen brand DNA. The combination of European knowledge and heritage with local expertise is the key to a good brand story, which can best serve the changing Chinese market. Author: Herv e Rogazy