Tiffany & Co. Inc. (New York) is going to be focusing heavily on the international market, especially China.
In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, ceo Michael Kowalski said the jewelry retail plans to open three stores a year in China, where it already has 24 locations. Tiffany will also open in the Russian and French markets, Kowalski said, and boost its presence in Japan.
“We’re . . . optimistic about potential in China,” Kowalski said in the interview. “Our companywide plan is for Tiffany sales to grow between 10 and 12 percent for the foreseeable future.”
He said accommodating the Chinese boomlet has implications throughout the world. “It has caused us to increase our store presence in markets that are heavily visited by Chinese customers,” Kowalski said. “We’re building a flagship store in Paris on the Champs-Élysées.”
One of the biggest challenges Tiffany faces, he said, is to accommodate customers who are speaking other languages. It’s a struggle to find Mandarin-speaking sales professionals. We have to work hard to find them.”
Tiffany stores in all markets will be renovated and upgraded. “We are enhancing the store experience in the U.S. and all over the world,” he said. “We’re renovating stores and upgrading the quality in sales professionals and everything you see in the store. We’re changing the ratio of selling space to provide more seating space. More casual sit-down environment, more private areas.”
In China, that has also meant being more overt about presenting the brand. “A great example would be the store signage,” Kowalski told The Journal. Whereas in New York, the brand signage is minimal on the outside of the building and practically invisible inside the store, that elegant approach to branding didn’t always work in China.
“When we first came to China, we were equally discreet and subtle in how we presented the brand and that created a problem,” he said. “People simply didn’t see or couldn’t see the brand. They couldn’t understand what the store was about. We’ve had to be more direct and less subtle in how we communicate the brand. We need to do a better job of telling our brand stories to give a deeper, richer more robust sense of brand.”