Production has begun on Australian Wool Innovation’s 2011 China Luxury Market Campaign, aimed at growing market share in the rapidly expanding Chinese women’s wear segment.
The campaign will utilize multiple media channels to promote Australian merino wool to Chinese women through TV, radio, print, online, social media, in-store promotion and outdoor billboards. At the heart of the campaign will be a six-part TV documentary series filmed by the Chinese Business Network.
In China, AWI has partnered with six of the country’s leading premium women’s wear brands: Icicle, JNBY, Zukka, Exception, White Collar and Eachway. The brands have committed to increasing their Australian merino wool product offering by 5 percent in their fall-winter 2011-2012 collections and by 30 percent for fall-winter 2012-13. Designers from the labels will travel to New South Wales, Tasmania and Western Australia seeking inspiration for an exclusive merino wool collection for their brand. The documentary series will film the designers learning about merino wool and the people and land that produce it.
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“Today, the luxury market in China, like the rest of the world, is driven by more than glamour and hype,” said Sam Guthrie, global business development manager at AWI, the marketing arm of Australian wool growers. “Luxury consumers are interested in values of heritage, quality, provenance and craftsmanship. They want to know the substance behind the brand and its product.”
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AWI cited a McKinsey & Co. report that said Chinese consumers spent $15 billion on luxury products in 2010.
AWI will create a design studio on a merino wool farm to be known as The Wool Lab, where designers will undergo training in the versatility of merino wool. The Wool Lab will contain more than 500 selected yarns and fabrics from 60 manufacturing partners in the U.K., Japan, Italy and China for the designers to use in their lines. Each Wool Lab collection will be modeled in the documentary series by well-known Chinese women notable for their success across a range of industries, including business, journalism, media and fashion.
The documentary will be launched in December, at which time The Wool Lab collections will be made available in the stores of participating brand partners in time for the peak selling season leading up to Chinese New Year in late January. In addition, AWI will create a pop-up store in Shanghai to sell the products.