Phenomenal shoes are paving the way of the future!
Recent success from Jimmy Choo proves the power of Western brands in China
China has always had an attractive economy over the past decades due to cheap labour and an eager consumer base that is seemingly chomping at the bit for the latest trends. Maybe it is because of this that it’s still such an attractive market for retailers to launch in, even with its lagging economy as of recently. Case in point, Jimmy Choo’s eight new stores in China, helping bring in £318 million last year, increasing sales by 10.1% overall. Maybe it’s because China loves foreign brands or maybe it’s because they’re huge fans of buying alone. But whatever the reason, even with the rumours of a decreasing economy, China is clearly a top contender when opening stores globally. But even more so, the Chinese market is a prime location for testing and bettering a brand’s ecommerce and online market place platforms. It’s potentially the best place to test cloud based programs to see how successful they’ll be globally.
Though rumours can be damaging in more ways than one, why was Jimmy Choo so successful with these eight stores? According to a study done by PowaWeb, the CEO, Andy Muldoon, found that Jimmy Choo developed a strong enough ecommerce strategy while still playing into Chinese market. By developing such strategies, Jimmy Choo and other retailers are able to not only reach consumers in cities like Beijing but they’re also able to target markets in the more rural areas that don’t have easy access to big city shopping, in which brings more money and more brand awareness.
The CEO goes onto say, “It’s great to see how resilient the Jimmy Choo brand has been in the Chinese market, yet by adopting a direct online retail approach, they can also significantly increase their potential consumer-base. With the high-street store having a relatively limited reach due to the size of the country, retailers must take full advantage of the penetration rate of online shopping, which stands at roughly 55.7 percent”.
This goes to show that the Chinese market is a great arena to not only test ecommerce and online shopping strategies but it’s also a brilliant place to ramp it up for an eager and available consumer base.
With such a need for brand name retail and a budding technological space, the Chinese market is a prime location for not only cheap manufacturing but an excited marketplace to continue buying goods. And this success comes even after the economic slowdown towards the end of last year.
Muldoon furthered his previous statement of why eCommerce and cloud based online shopping platforms are becoming the way of the future with the comment, “With such large amounts being spent online in China, retailers need to offer a direct to consumer eCommerce solutions that compliments the brick-and-mortar stores to create a dedicated omni-channel environment for their consumers. To not offer this is damaging to retailers, particularly as the rising middle-class are often the biggest spenders on high-quality products, are located away from the major cities”.
This statement compliments the idea that more and more people are not only going online to research products they intend to buy but purchase several products.
Embodying this mindset, Jimmy Choo has seen clear success and it’s only time before similar, high end retailers follow suit. And frankly, it’s about time we start targeting the rural and smaller towns, as time and time again, we notice they are more keen on online shopping or ecommerce platforms, simply due to the fact they don’t have easy access to the stores like the city slickers do,
So here’s to gorgeous shoes, literally paving the way of the future! And Jimmy Choo, if you’re reading this, I wear a size 7.5.
