SHANGHAI — Make no mistake about it: Cartier is concentrating on China.
The luxury jeweler threw a huge party for the grand opening of its Shanghai flagship on the Bund on Dec. 18, inviting hundreds of the city’s socialites to celebrate the second Shanghai unit. But even those who weren’t on the guest list for the posh event couldn’t miss it: An enormous Cartier-bannered blimp circled over the Bund’s waterfront location for most of the evening, crisscrossing the famous skyline in the foggy night.
The Cartier store is the first shop to open at the renovated Bund 18 building, a stately former bank on the city’s waterfront thoroughfare. The historic street is quickly becoming the location of choice for luxury goods firms in China.
A few blocks down from Cartier is Three on the Bund, a high-end complex that opened in the spring with a Giorgio Armani flagship and a Jean-Georges Vongerichten restaurant. Cartier’s neighbor at Bund 18 will be luxe men’s wear label Ermenegildo Zegna, expected to open soon.
For Cartier’s China flagship, there was no better location.
“We already have a presence in the most prestigious avenues in the world, from the Champs-Elysees in Paris to Fifth Avenue in New York,” said Maxime Elgue, managing director of Cartier’s Far East operations. “The Bund is the logical choice to open our flagship in China. Shanghai is the flagship city of China and the Bund is definitely the address to be.”
Before the opening festivities, Cartier’s China operations had already had a busy month. In the past five weeks, the company has opened three other stores — in Hangzhou, Harbin and Guangzhou — to add to existing boutiques in Beijing and Shanghai. Within the next month, Cartier plans to open three more stores, two in Shenzhen and one in Chengdu.
It’s an opportune time for Cartier, which is owned by Compagnie Financière Richemont SA, to make its move on the Chinese market. Jewelry has become the third-biggest consumption item in China after housing and automobiles, according to the China Gem Association. The country is the biggest consumer of platinum and the fourth-biggest consumer of gold in the world, according to the association. Annual jewelry sales here soared to more than $12 billion in 2003 — a number that’s only expected to increase as Chinese consumers become wealthier.
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Cartier has had a presence in China for more than 15 years, mainly through partnerships with local sellers. It opened its first freestanding store, in Shanghai’s upscale Plaza 66 mall, five years ago. Elgue said China’s admission to the World Trade Organization three years ago made such massive expansion possible.
“We’ve taken a big leap forward in the last few years because China has joined the WTO,” Elgue said. “In a sense, the red tape is a lot simpler. Some duties have been dropped. Contracts have been fulfilled or are being followed. It’s not 100 percent easier, but it’s improving. It’s a lot better [to do business here] than 10 or even five years ago.”
The loosening of China’s markets has been coupled with a rise in the country’s wealthy elite, which analysts predict will be the biggest luxury consumers in as soon as 10 years. Nowhere is the market’s potential more obvious than in Shanghai, often heralded as the richest and most cosmopolitan city in China.
The Cartier party certainly provided evidence for that designation. The guests that crammed into Bund 18’s fourth-floor exhibition center were decked out in designer clothes and accessories — a style that isn’t always the norm in most of China’s other, more conservative cities.
The guests barely seemed to notice the smell of fresh paint that still hung in the air as they milled about the ground-floor boutique, a 2,626-square-foot spot designed by French designer Bruno Moinard, who redesigned all the Cartier stores last year and the plush party lounge upstairs.
Since the opening also served as a worldwide launch for the company’s Panther jewelry collection, the party space was peppered with safari-inspired accents such as enormous gold palm trees and fur-covered chairs. A foursome of slinky panther-painted dancers clawed and crept their way around the champagne-drinking guests.
The party’s opulence is indicative of the extent to which foreign companies are willing to go to wow China’s current luxury consumers, as well as those who will soon follow.
“Our presence here is an investment of our image,” Elgue said. “The location is the best advertising money can buy. Thousands of people will be crossing the street here every day. They will become aware of the brand and we hope they will buy it when they’re able to in 10 or 20 years time. We know there are a lot of people here who can’t afford Cartier right now, but we hope it’s a brand they can aspire to in the future.”