After La Perla opened its first concept store in Hong Kong on April 25th, the Italian lingerie line decided to open an even larger concept store in Macau. Chief Asia Pacific Managing Director, Chiara Scaglia, says that the Chinese economy is strong and the country has a growing market for consumer and luxury goods.
La Perla entered the Chinese market in 2007, operating stores in Bejing, Shanghai, and Hanghzhou. It will re-open two Shanghai stores as concept stores, since their original licenses expired over the summer. Chiara Scaglia is very excited about the future of La Perla, saying there is a few things in the pipeline from Q4 to Q2 and contracts are being signed in Nanjing. In Shenzhem, the company will have one or possibly two news stores, an outlet outside of Shanghai and there are other possibilities in Northern China.
The company’s spokesmodel, Liu Wen, flew in from NY to help with the opening. Her appearance in last year’s La Perla global add marked a departure for the company in using high end models. The company will now be using high end models in all of the ads from now on. Liu Wen will do one more major add for the company sometime in the near future.
The major focus of the company is to show the functionality of lingerie, showing consumers that they can have fun with lingerie and that their pieces can be worn to events, the beach, etc. Liu Wen led by example when she sported a black corset over a white tee paired with jeans.
While ads are important, the company will also be focusing on e-commerce due to China’s heavy internet use. La Perla will be relaunching the mainland website over the summer, which include simplified and traditional Chinese so consumers can directly purchase items from the website.
As of right now, La Perla products are sold on China’s leading retail shopping sites, Tmall and Shangpin.
