The Business of Fashion
Agenda-setting intelligence, analysis and advice for the global fashion community.
Agenda-setting intelligence, analysis and advice for the global fashion community.
One look at the current advertising campaign for Hermès, and it's clear that India is on the radar screen of Western luxury brands. But this is not a new phenomenon. At the recent Walpole Seminar on China & India, Dr. Amin Jaffer, International Director of Asian Art at Christie's, described the long relationship that India has had with European luxury brands, dating back to the late 1800's.
Today, however, things aren't as straightforward. Other Walpole seminar participants like Mohan Murjani (of the Murjani Group - partners to Jimmy Choo, Gucci and Bottega Veneta in India) also revealed that new luxury entrants in India are up against strong domestic players, labyrinthine bureaucracy, and inconsistent infrastructure. Break-even will take longer than some might have hoped.
On the Internet side, despite the naturally chatty and curious Indian nature, things have also been very slow to develop. I explored this topic in an article in Luxeletter, an online publication from the Murjani Group, covering the luxury industry in India.
The entire article is republished below.
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In the luxury space, passionate groups of consumers, in their millions, are talking about luxury brands on blogs and social networks. In France, Café Mode's independent perspective on the latest runway shows and fashion trends has become so influential that L'Express, a leading daily newspaper, now houses the blog on its own website and pays its blogger a salary. Manolo, an American who writes a popular blog on shoes and celebrity, earns a six-figure salary from his blog and has a column in the Washington Post. Every month, hundreds of thousands of Japanese visit @Cosme, a Japanese consumer review website dedicated to the cosmetic industry. The recommendations are so influential that they can make or break a cosmetics brand in Japan.
Some of the most prolific participants in these communities, said to be about 1 per cent of internet users, may know more about the brands than the brands even know about themselves. As trusted authorities, these experts have the potential to become a brand’s most fervent evangelists — or detractors. What’s more, through the active engagement of these passionate communities, luxury brands can also gain valuable feedback to understand what consumers want and what they expect.
But where is the ‘Blogger’atti?
It’s a mystery to me that India (a country that loves nothing more than to debate and discuss everything) does not yet have an indigenous fashion blogosphere. Indians are notoriously chatty — the Indian blogosphere is already buzzing with technology and Bollywood news. Indians are smart shoppers who like to research before they shop. They actively seek recommendations from friends and family, making word-of-mouth recommendations extremely powerful. Finally, blogs and social networks are not bandwidth-intensive, so are still easy to access even in India’s low bandwidth environment.
Given all of this, it’s only a matter of time before Indians, particularly those of the younger generation, like their luxury compatriots elsewhere in the world, begin to actively turn to the internet to learn more about luxury brands.
The only question is: Who will be the first to answer their questions? The luxury brands, or the bloggers?
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