Some of the building blocks are already well in place, tried, tested, validated, and nationally rolled out, and others will be introduced in the next 2-3 years.
It’s failed to stop many closures even before the pandemic, and Covid has only accelerated this trend.
We look at the concepts and techniques premium and luxury brands are using today, to stay ahead of the curve tomorrow.
Depending on who you ask, you will get very different answers. If you ask your brand and marketing management, they will vote for as much standardisation as possible. If you ask your sales force, the answer will be quite the opposite.
Global expansion in sales and distribution competence has become a lifesaving strategy feature, but allow me a personal question first:
If someone had told you in 1993 that someone would manage to turn truck tarps into it bags in Seoul by 2019, and create a best practice brand development story in the process, you may have questioned their judgement.
In case a cycling jersey isn’t yet part of your casual wardrobe, this story about brand community management may change that when bike apparel may well set trends in mainstream clothing by 2025.
For many years, retail expansion was the main growth strategy in the brand retail world. More recently, however, brands increasingly face an under-performing retail portfolio. Realising that retail expansion doesn’t work without like-for-like growth of existing stores, brands are busy assessing their retail portfolios in order to focus on profitable stores and stores with potential for improvement.
Spain and Portugal are back in the mindset of expansion managers! Several international brands are currently revisiting their expansion strategies or considering taking up business in Spain and Portugal. There might even be more opportunities for international brands now than there were before the crises.
When considering new regions for brand expansion, Benelux countries may raise concern about their small size as well as the many different languages and other cultural particularities. But taken together, the relatively small countries of Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg represent an often underestimated powerhouse.
Sir Paul Smith is a British designer of extraordinary fashion for men, women, children, and accessories. He has been for some 40 years, and in various collaborations he designs pretty much anything that can be designed. In an interview, he recently described himself as a ‘strange designer’. A few weeks ago, he opened his first small but nonetheless great Paul Smith store in Berlin. (more…)
It’s widely known that consumer markets and brand distribution channels have fundamentally changed over the past 25 years in more ways than anticipated. Fact is, the internet as a brand distribution channel grew from 0 to commonly 8-15% of sales. But far more relevant from a commercial and strategic perspective is that many formerly emerging countries, especially China and countries in the Middle East and Central Europe, grew to 30-40% of total sales and profits in lifestyle brand distribution.
A € 575 Billion consumer retail spending, growing to reach €975 Billion by end of 2022 and very favourable demographics make India one of the world’s most promising and exciting retail markets for years to come. With India’s fashion retail segment at about € 52 billion in 2017, and poised to cross €85 billion by end of 2022, India offers great opportunities for European and other international brands.
A few months ago, I wrote about an apparent increase in attractiveness of the Italian market for foreign brands and asked, Is the Italian Market on the Rise Again? Meanwhile, Milan has seen a couple of important retail milestones and I would like to give you an update on the Italian retail market.
Germany’s Bundesverband Onlinehandel (BVOH) teamed up with the agency p.digital to conduct a study about the state of the e-commerce marketplace industry. The study ‘Marketplaces Across the World’ charts 335 marketplaces in Europe alone and lists over 740 globally.
These findings alone make obvious that e-commerce marketplaces in Europe and globally have become an important channel of distribution. But there is more:
This post shows how KPIs in new markets can differ enormously from your home market. When starting international expansion, reporting often needs to be reviewed to make sure that you get the full picture and give a new market its fair chance. This is part 6 of my series on international expansion, catch up with my previous pieces here.