Anita Davis
Sep 28, 2009

MediaTV: Shanghai Tang's luxury strategy

ASIA-PACIFIC - In the first part of MediaTV's series on luxury brands' marketing strategies, executive chairman of Shanghai Tang Raphael le Masne de Chermont speaks about the rise of China as a luxury powerhouse, not only as a market of consumers, but as a breeding ground that will produce high-end brands of its own.

In the interview, sponsored by the Financial Times, Chermont says that rising costs of production in China means it is losing its competitive edge to other Asian markets, so it will begin to develop its own luxury labels to fill the needs of this new upmarket culture.

“China has to start integrating its margin and come up with added-value products, and they can only do so if they are starting to brand their own products,” he says. “You see China doing it with telephones and computers, like Lenovo and Haier, but you haven’t seen China yet doing it with fashion and lifestyle … there will be some emerging, and it is good news.”




The series also features Chermont discussing the growing role of digital for luxury brands. He further notes that a luxury experience online is contingent on the education consumers receive from a brand.

“We are convinced that the business online will be prominent in the coming years and there will be a shift from a certain retail experience to online e-business,” he says. “Now, the obsession of most luxury brands … is to build a relevant database so we can send e-newsletters on a regular basis – relevant newsletters to relevant people so that we can either inform or trigger sales through our e-commerce website.”

To see previous MediaTV interviews, click here.

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Produced by: Siren Films

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