The Great Wall of China

When I moved to Cincinnati in 2000, I was introduced to the local joke:

“Mark Twain used to say, ‘When the end of the world comes, I want to be in Cincinnati, because it’s always 20 years behind the times.’ ”

He was talking about a culture late to adopt emerging popular trends. But that could have been said about all corners of the U.S. With 19^th and 20^th Century media, the flow of fashion and culture trends was a slow flow.

It’s not slow anymore. In fact, it’s instantaneous – as instantaneous as it takes for a fashion blog or a Facebook post to make its way around the Internet, whether to Lodi, N.J., or Loudi, China. It takes the same amount of time for kids in both cities to see, text, discuss and buy the jersey tunic featured on the H&M homepage.

Nobody is as tuned into the Internet as the Chinese millennial. And so, at first, the door swung wide open for Western retail brands. But it’s becoming a tighter squeeze. Saturated now with luxury retail from the U.S. and Europe, Chinese consumers are increasingly looking for something that translates to their culture and identity.

The Internet might seem to be creating one global culture, but there are inevitably going to be differences and retailers had better do their homework.

Leendert Tange, co-founder of Storeage, the Amsterdam-based retail design firm, has done work all over the world and for clients from all over the world. He warns Western retailers that it’s not enough to design a Western prototype store anymore. Build it but they may not come.

Hermès did its homework. The French luxury manufacturer has helped developed a high-end Chinese brand, called Shang Xia, in a boutique right next to the Hermès Maison on Huaihai Middle Road, in Shanghai’s historic French Concession district. In Shang Xia’s collection of clothing, jewelry, furniture and objets d’art, every piece has a connection with China’s past.

A cashmere felt coat, for example, is inspired by the wool felt saddle blankets used by Mongolian horsemen, and a jade “ladder to heaven” necklace echoes the bamboo undergarments worn in Imperial China to keep heavy ceremonial fabrics away from skin.

But Shang Xia also has the Hermès imprimatur, respected by consumers everywhere for quality and fashion. It’s a win-win.

Best Buy, on the other hand, has become the textbook case for not doing its homework. And it’s not alone. As Tange told me, Duval-Leroy, the esteemed French wine producer and distributor, learned a painful lesson when it first entered the Chinese market. Operating out of Shanghai, it put its champagne onto trucks headed to restaurants and luxury hotels throughout China. “The trucks had to go great distances, on often primitive roads through mountain elevations where it was very cold,” says Tange.

And when the trucks arrived, the champagne had frozen. The Great Wall had struck again.

As a journalist, writer, editor and commentator, Steve Kaufman has been watching the store design industry for 20 years. He has seen the business cycle through retailtainment, minimalism, category killers, big boxes, pop-ups, custom stores, global roll-outs, international sourcing, interactive kiosks, the emergence of China, the various definitions of “branding” and Amazon.com. He has reported on the rise of brand concept shops, the demise of brand concept shops and the resurgence of brand concept shops. He has been an eyewitness to the reality that nothing stays the same, except the retailer-shopper relationship.