The New York-based luxury jewelry retailer has built its reputation on supplying all the glitter that goes with Hollywood's biggest stars, Halle Berry and Jennifer Lopez among them, and has now set its sights on the fastest-growing market of them all - China.
Harry Winston Diamond Corp, the Canadian mining group which owns the jewelers, has this week announced plans to build a flagship store in the sprawling metropolis of Shanghai. And it will be pretty hard to miss, boasting a 12-meter high façade a company spokesman says will be like a "billboard to the world, a billboard to the Chinese people."
The 460-square-meter flagship store - to be opened "before January" next year, according to the company - will be supplemented by a salon inside the lobby of the Peninsula Shanghai hotel.
So far Harry Winston's only presence in China has been similar-type salons in venues such as the Peninsula Beijing Palace Hotel and The Peninsula in Hong Kong but the jeweler has been vocal with its plans to expand into China, where its main rivals at the very high-end of the jewelry chain are Cartier and Tiffany. Media reports have suggested the company has plans for up to as many as 10 outlets in China.
And well it might. Jewelry sales in mainland China have gone through the roof in recent times - they surpassed US$30 billion (21 billion euros) last year, according to the Chinese General Chamber of Commerce, a figure which made the Chinese market the world's third largest now after the United States and Japan.
Harry Winston's move is the latest high-profile expansion into the Chinese market by an international luxury brand eager to cash in on the nation's newfound wealth - and desire for the finer things in life.
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