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Monthly Archives: February 2012
China Online Luxury Market Surpasses 10 Billion Yuan For First Time « Jing Daily : The Business of Luxury and Culture in China
China Online Luxury Market Surpasses 10 Billion Yuan For First Time Tuesday, February 14th, 2012 Market Expected To Record 30 Percent Growth In Coming Years China’s booming luxury e-commerce market surpassed 10 billion yuan (US$1.59 billion) last year, a … Continue reading
China plans to build world`s largest airport
China plans to build world’s largest airport Beijing: China is planning to build the world’s largest airport at the cost of around USD 15 billion, which will replace America’s Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport as the busiest airport in the world. … Continue reading
China Online Luxury Market Surpasses 10 Billion Yuan For First Time
Market Expected To Record 30 Percent Growth In Coming Years Taobao.com China’s booming luxury e-commerce market surpassed 10 billion yuan (US$1.59 billion) last year, a nearly 70 percent leap over 2010, according to a new study by iResearch. Despite the possibility … Continue reading
Insight: Gucci, Tiffany target Chinese banks
NEW YORK | Tue Oct 4, 2011 5:00pm EDT (Reuters) – Two Western luxury-goods giants are taking a controversial tack in the fight on Chinese knockoffs, by targeting the U.S. branches of major Chinese banks that allegedly do business with the pirates. … Continue reading
Posted in Counterfeiting, E-Commerce, Luxury
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EXCLUSIVE $100,000 ROUND-THE-WORLD TRIP SELLS OUT IN CHINA
Ctrip.com has gone where no Chinese luxury travel agency has gone before: around the world in 66-days. With more than a dozen countries on the itinerary, plenty of business-class flights, five-star hotels, and even a cruise from Ushuaia to Antarctica with the … Continue reading
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GUANGZHOU RISES AS LUXURY GOODS DESTINATION
GUANGZHOU RISES AS LUXURY GOODS DESTINATION While luxury shopping vacations have become all the rage in recent years, for many Chinese, bargains are just around the corner. Guangzhou in Guangdong providence has emerged as a major outlet for luxury goods. … Continue reading
Posted in Ricardo´s comment
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Buying luxury items is a brand-new success story
Updated: 2012-02-20 08:03 By Tang Yue (China Daily) Designer labels are in fashion and easier for domestic customers topurchase now than at any time before, Tang Yue reports fromTianjin and Beijing. Zhang Xiuhua ran a stall at the Exotic Cargo Market in Tianjin when itwas at its peak. “I had to get up at 3 am just to get a good booth on weekends,” sherecalled. “The street was packed with customers from everywhere. It attractedfar more people than any department store.” That was in the early to mid-1990s, when the market was the go-toplace in North China for secondhand clothes and other goodssmuggled from overseas. By the end of the decade, the glory days were already over;crackdowns by customs authorities had severed supply chains, whilebrand-new foreign products were becoming readily availablethroughout the mainland. Yet, as the Tianjin market declined, demand among Chineseshoppers for imported – especially high-end – goods has only grownstronger, with experts predicting that the country will this yearovertake Japan as the world’s largest luxury market. More than 100 billion yuan ($15.88 billion) was spent on luxuryproducts on the mainland last year, a year-on-year increase ofabout 25 percent, according to data released by managementconsultants Bain & Co. The figure is a far cry from the 5 billion yuan recorded in 1998, when trade at the Exotic CargoMarket was starting to wind down. Stylish entrance The first Western-style fashion show in China is widely credited to Pierre Cardin, the Frenchdesigner. He arrived in 1979 with 12 models eight French and four Japanese and set up acatwalk in the capital’s Cultural Palace of Nationalities. Two years later, another show was staged at the Beijing Hotel, this time open to the generalpublic, not just fashion professionals. “These shows broadened Chinese people’s knowledge about clothing,” said Zhou Ting,executive director of the University of International Business and Economics’ luxury goods andservices research center. “In an age when it was all blue, black and gray, for the first timepeople realized that their apparel could be colorful and beautifully designed.” Cardin went on to open his first Beijing boutique in 1989, with Louis Vuitton following suit threeyears later. “No one was certain about the potential of the Chinese market at that time,” Zhou said. “Bigbrands like Louis Vuitton simply believed that they needed to open stores in such a largecountry. Their prices were still too expensive for most Chinese customers. So it was more aboutthe brand’s reach than the profit.” Therein lied the attraction of the Exotic Cargo Market, which had been growing since the late1980s, when a handful of sailors began selling secondhand suits on the street. Although referred to in Chinese as “foreign garbage”, the smuggled garments were superior toChina-made products in textile and design. They were also much cheaper than clothesavailable in the foreign-owned boutiques. “The prices were about the same as those in department stores, but the styles were verydifferent,” said Zhang, 57. “A lot of people traveled from Beijing or even further to shop at themarket.” To replenish her stock, twice or three times a month Zhang would visit Jieshi, a town in SouthChina’s Guangdong province that acted as a trading post for secondhand clothes arriving intothe port of Hong Kong. Clothes were bundled into job lots, she said, with a bag of shirts costing about 200 yuan andjackets about 50 yuan. “We picked the good ones and dumped ones that were too old or torn. Sometimes I kept somefor myself,” Zhang said. “In the early days (of the market), I was making 10 times the amount Ihad previously earned as a construction worker,” said the trader, who eventually wound up herbusiness in 1999. Packing up Tianjin’s Exotic Cargo Market is a lot more subdued today than it was two decades ago. WhenChina Daily reporters visited shortly before Spring Festival, a traditional shopping season,there were few customers. Zhang Li is among the few still selling “foreign garbage” at the market, which now has moretraders pushing home appliances and other electrical equipment. “In the 1990s, a secondhand shirt cost between 30 and 40 yuan. The price is about the samenow, but the price of other commodities has doubled or even tripled,” she said. “Fewer customers are coming here, and a lot of traders have packed up and left. It’s hard tomake a fortune here now,” she added. Industry experts put the decline of the market down to the progress that has been made byChinese clothes designers and the rise in people’s incomes. “At first, the production capacity of Chinese firms just couldn’t meet demand,” explained NiuHaipeng, associate professor of marketing at Renmin University of China. “Customers chose tobuy secondhand foreign goods either because there was no equivalent on the domestic marketor the quality was different. “Later, when people found that Chinese manufacturers were capable of offering products withthe same quality and at lower prices, they had more options,” he said. … Continue reading
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Hong Kong and the mainland
Dogs and locusts Old divisions find a new expression Feb 4th 2012 | HONG KONG | from the print edition DESPITE a plethora of festive new-year dragons and a few days of holiday, it has been a season of ill will in … Continue reading
Taobao Mall
CRT Extra: More on New Taobao “Mall” Site A plan to re-brand and expand the business-to-consumer platform of Alibaba Group’s online retail platform Taobao.com could lead to higher profits for the company (see yesterday’s story in The Wall Street Journal … Continue reading
Italian fashion designers look to China for salvation
This file photo shows window display of a Gucci store in Shanghai. Italy’s top designer brands are looking to China for salvation this year with revenues falling due to a debt crisis that has cast an air of gloom as … Continue reading →