DOHA, Qatar — Just before the madness of fashion week season began, I couldn’t resist accepting an invitation from Lama El Moatessem to visit Doha, the capital city of the tiny nation of Qatar, to attend the opening of the Peter Marino-designed flagship for Toujouri, Ms El Moatessem’s three year old fashion brand. How did a little-known Middle Eastern brand get Mr Marino, the go-to architect for powerhouse brands like Louis Vuitton, Chanel and Céline to design its first store? I was intrigued.

At first, driving through Doha doesn’t feel so different from driving through Dubai, the Gulf region’s major international hub. Both are cities with gleaming skyscrapers rising from the desert, in areas which were virtually empty less than a decade earlier, and both have drawn foreigners from all over the world to execute on ambitious economic development plans.

Indeed, in the last six years, Qatar’s population has almost doubled, growing from around 900,000 people in 2006 to almost 1.7 million today. During my 36 hour visit to Qatar, I met people from Spain, the Philippines, Malaysia, India, China, Nepal, the United States, and Egypt, all of whom had chosen to settle in Qatar to work in jobs ranging from manual labour to executive positions in major Qatari companies.

The 300,000 Qatari nationals have a high propensity for acquiring luxury goods, but until recently the vast majority of these products were bought abroad. In 2010, the investment arm of Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund even bought Harrods — yes, I mean the entire landmark luxury department store — from Mohamed Al-Fayed for an estimated £1.5 billion.

… Continue Reading

Louis Vuitton Maison in Sydney | Source: moluxury.com.au

SYDNEY, Australia — 2011 was an extremely busy year for luxury retail expansion in Australia. In April, Burberry opened a new flagship on Sydney’s George Street. In July, Prada and Miu Miu opened flagships in Sydney’s Westfield  shopping mall, where Gucci also opened its own two-level emporium in November. Then, in a dramatic end-of-year crescendo, Louis Vuitton opened a grand Maison on George Street and Bottega Veneta and Gucci opened stores in Sydney hotel and casino The Star.

This year, store openings in Australia are set to continue at a similar pace. Chanel is planning to expand its flagship on Castlereagh Street and relocate its Melbourne store to a stand-alone building, while Christian Dior will open its first Australian boutique on the site of the old Louis Vuitton store on Castlereagh Street.

So what’s behind the flurry of store openings in Australia?

… Continue Reading

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil – Arriving in Rio de Janeiro in the middle of the Brazilian summer, in a country experiencing an ongoing economic boom, certainly puts the bleak, uncertain economic outlook of wintry Europe and North America into sharp relief.

I was invited to Brazil on the generous invitation of ABIT, the Brazilian Textile and Apparel Industry Association, to attend Fashion Rio, the smaller of two semi-annual fashion events just concluded in Rio and São Paulo this week. And as ever on my trips to international markets, it was the perfect opportunity to explore firsthand one of the fastest growing luxury markets in the world, to see some local designers, and to get to know the local BoF community as well. Brazil ranked 13 on our list of countries with the most BoF readers, based on website traffic in 2011.

I came to Brazil with three questions on my mind: what are the prospects for the Brazilian luxury industry, what’s it like to do business here, and who is the Brazilian consumer?

… Continue Reading

Hermès Flagship, Mumbai | Source: skyscrapercity.com

In our second article this week focused on India, we investigate the barriers impeding the growth of India’s international luxury goods market, which go beyond the recently lifted restrictions on foreign direct investment.

MUMBAI, India — “By the end of 2015, emerging markets should account for more than 50 percent of luxury sales,” Antoine Colonna, a luxury analyst at the asset manager Carmignac Gestion in Paris, told The Wall Street Journal in the spring of 2011. “This isn’t evolution. It’s revolution,” she continued.

But in India, the revolution has yet to take hold. Despite having the world’s second-fastest growing major economy and a rapidly expanding population of high net worth individuals, the country’s market for international luxury goods, worth around $1.3 billion, remains surprisingly small. In fact, while China currently accounts for an estimated 10 percent of the global luxury market, India makes up a mere 1 to 2 percent.

So why has India’s market for international luxury goods failed to take off?

… Continue Reading

Xiu.com screenshot | Source: Xiu.com

We continue this week’s focus on e-commerce by turning our attention on how to succeed in the rapidly expanding e-commerce market in China. 

BEIJING, China — According to a recent report by The Boston Consulting Group (BCG), China is set to become the world’s next e-commerce superpower, surpassing the United States to become the largest online commerce market in the world, with an estimated market size of $300 billion. In 2006, less than 10 percent of China’s urban population shopped online. By 2015, that figure is expected to have quadrupled, reaching 44 percent, while the total number of e-commerce shoppers in China will grow to 329 million.

What’s more, according to BCG, China’s massive geography, a middle class that is rapidly expanding beyond the country’s largest cities, and widely accessible, heavily subsidised high-speed internet — broadband in China costs just $10 per month, compared with $30 per month in India — make the country unusually fertile ground for e-commerce, with internet access far outpacing the reach of physical retailers. Indeed, up to a quarter of e-commerce demand in China is for products consumers cannot find in physical stores, with apparel and skincare amongst the fastest-growing online categories.

But for fashion companies aiming to crack the online retail opportunity in China, it’s imperative to understand that the country’s e-commerce market is very different to established markets in the United States and Europe and that online shoppers in China — much younger, on average, than their Western counterparts — have different expectations, preferences and patterns of behaviour.

… Continue Reading