10 Corso Como partnership big for Trendy
Print Edition
Italian fashion retailer 10 Corso Como opened its first store on the Chinese mainland in Shanghai last month — a 2,500-square-meter glass encased building on Nanjing Road West that includes a fashion boutique, art gallery and restaurant.
The concept was created in 1990 by Carla Sozzani, the founder of Galleria Carla Sozzani and creator of the 10 Corso Como brand in Milan.
Chinese retailer Trendy International Group is Sozzani’s partner in the Shanghai project. The company is 10 percent owned by L Capital Asia, the investment arm of Paris-based luxury retailer LVMH.
Trendy also owns fashion brand Miss Sixty.
Chinese consumers are refining their fashion tastes at an unprecedented pace, according to Andre Chen, senior vice president of Trendy International.
The company, founded in 1999, is one of the fastest-growing apparel designers, distributors and retailers in China. The company has cultivated several popular Chinese women’s wear brands including ochirly and Five Plus, the men’s fashion brand TRENDIANO, and Love Ysabel that targets the children’s market.
To expand its footprint in the Asia-Pacific, the company acquired fashion brands MISS SIXTY, ENERGIE and Killah in 2012.
“The partnership with 10 Corso Como has been a great opportunity and a big challenge for Trendy,” said Chen.
In the office of Trendy’s multi-brand development and franchising unit in Shanghai, he sat down with Shanghai Daily to discuss the partnership and his impressions of the Chinese fashion market.
Q: Did Trendy International Group approach Carla Sozzani to introduce the 10 Corso Como brand on China’s mainland, or was it the other way around?
A: Carla is not a business person like us. We were trained for business planning and analysis, to execute plans stage by stage to reach a goal. She is spontaneous. If she were here to answer your question, she would probably say opening a store in China was not in her plans.
I asked her once if people have been urging her to open a store in China. She replied: “Yes! Every day, they come. And there are way too many of them.”
Her initial concern was if we understood the concept of the brand. And after we got to know each other, she wanted to make sure we had the ability to enforce the concept.
Q: So what is your interpretation of the brand?
A: The most important thing about 10 Corso Como is the way it interprets fashion. “Narrow fashion” is about wearing or using products of big brands. Carla has her own comprehensive interpretation of fashion. She believes anything that can be worn, touched, smelled, eaten or viewed — anything where beauty can be appreciated by the human senses — is fashion.
So the brand is really about lifestyle — a way of living. This comprehensive approach of expressing beauty creates the environment that allows customers to experience fashion.
The store is not a shopping location merely aimed at consumption.
It’s a place for experience. Carla has been promoting a philosophy of “slow shopping” — taking one’s time to allow one’s senses to experience the merchandise in the store. That’s the core of the concept.
The new store in Shanghai comprises a beautiful garden café, an exquisite Italian restaurant with the most renowned wines, French-scented candle and home fragrances, avant-garde fashion, jewelry, shoes, hand-made furniture, china and homewares.
Q: 10 Corso Como Shanghai is the third outlet in Asia after Seoul and Tokyo. What makes it stand out?
A: Carla ensures that the concept and content of 10 Corso Como are the same across different venues. Shops in different locations have identical intrinsic values.
However, each individual store has adopted local culture and made some changes. Although there are different elements in different stores, you know it’s 10 Corso Como as soon as you walk in. The colors and the patterns speak for the brand.
Q: How would you describe fashion consumers on China’s mainland?
A: Consumers have changed a lot in the past decade. They have more advanced access to information, thanks to the Internet. Sometimes we have underestimated their needs. What they want is becoming increasingly sophisticated.
Now we no longer distinguish between fashion and luxury consumers. They tend to be hybrids. And the development of the industry is customer-driven. We need to understand what consumers want.
First, they want something “authentic” — someone with “authority” to tell them what fashion is.
Secondly, they want something “real” — the actual experience of fashion provided by a group of people who have passion for the fashion industry.
Thirdly, they need choices. Because there are too many products, they need someone to provide products and services that are carefully selected, which we called “curation.”
It’s the consumer’s own choice to personalize his or her way of shopping and lifestyle. For example, many people will wear Converse shoes, Levis jeans and a Zara shirt, and carry a Ferragamo bag.
Q: Do you think the consumers in Asian cosmopolitan cities tend to be different?
A: I think they have many differences in style preferences, hobbies, shopping habits and other conventions.
Q: Do you think those differences will increase or lessen in the long term?
A: The brands will become more international in order to meet the needs of consumers in different regions. As e-commerce gets popular, information will increasingly be shared among consumers all over the world. So, yes I think the differences will be brought down.
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