Faut-il encore investir au Japon ?

4 minutes read
Alors que toutes les marques y ouvrent à grands frais de nouvelles boutiques au Japon, le "Financial Times" ose poser la question de la rationalité de ces investissements sur un marché mature qui semble avoir cessé de grandir...

 INDUSTRIE_321019_0

LUXE : Faut-il encore investir au Japon ?

Investing in Japan 2008
Luxury goods: More than threads and jewelsSo you have been dragged by a fashion-mad friend into Armani's 12-story, 6,000 sq metre flagship store in Ginza, Tokyo, but you do not need a suit or a scarf.Not to worry: the spa is just upstairs. At Y65,000 ($669), a three-hour Armani Ceremony to “treat every part of the being” will set you back less than the cashmere. When you are done, you can re-join your friend for a bite at the top-floor Armani Ristorante. Armani sank $20m into the new space last year, its biggest-ever investment in a single store. It is not the only luxury brand offering Japanese customers more than threads and jewels. If the Ristorante's fattened Japanese beef with celery root flan is not to your liking, just head down the street to Chanel, where the French fashion house has set up an eatery with Alain Ducasse. You can follow up with drinks at B bar, Baccarat's new nightspot – cocktails in crystal glasses at Y2,500-Y3,000 – then work off your hangover with a yoga session amid the handbags at Furla. Bulgari, Hermes, LVMH, Richemont, Coach – just about any luxury group you can name has spent big money to open flagship stores or expand sales networks in Japan in the past several years. They have been drawn by Japan's six-year economic recovery, which has been particularly good to wealthy urbanites, their primary clientele. Yet there are reasons to question the investment spree. Overall incomes have barely budged, in spite of a sharp increase in corporate profits, and the Japanese fervour for foreign brands has waned since the go-go 1980s. Although the country generates 14 per cent of sales for European luxury companies (and more for the bigger names), it is likely to add just 0.3 of a percentage point to their overall sales growth this year, according to HSBC. “It's difficult to admit that the era of high growth is over,” says Yves Alemani, head of Japan operations at Christofle, the French silverware maker, which will launch a new store in the posh Roppongi Hills shopping centre in May. Luxury brands, he says, “continue to look at Japan as a promising market”, when it is in fact a mature and daunting one. Heavy competition and a stagnant population ago profile do not help. For some luxury companies, expansion in Japan has been in part a real estate bet. Chanel, which bought land in Ginza to build a store five years ago when Japan's property market was at a low ebb, says the building's value has risen by 40 per cent. Many other brands are leasing their space, however – and suffering painful rent increases as a result. “There is no way that everyone is making money,” says Richard Collase, head of Chanel in Japan. Making money may not be the flagships' purpose – at least not the most immediate one. Mr Collase says Japan serves as “a showroom for the rest of Asia”, where luxury sales are expanding much faster. Consumers in China still look to Japan as a fashion leader, and although brands are building more shops there, many are wary of stocking their Chinese shelves with the latest and best merchandise, for fear that it will quickly be copied. “Wealthy Chinese travel to Japan to get things they can't get in China,” says Mr Collase. For the Japanese market, meanwhile, advertising through a stylish new flagship may be a necessary defensive response to saturation. Cheaper publicity is harder to come by, as the Japanese are less inclined than they once were to sport foot-high logos on their sweaters and handbags. They are also less susceptible to some forms of marketing favoured in the west, such as hanging clothing and jewellery on much-photographed celebrities, says Sakae Nonomura, head of product development at Kanebo, the cosmetics maker. “Japanese are much more concerned about what other members of their peer group are wearing.” Cementing brands' hold on the right peer groups is one purpose of the spas, cafes and restaurants: they help insinuate brands into customers' social lives. On a recent afternoon, the Armani Ristorante was filled with prosperous-looking women in their 30s and 40s – core buyers for Armani's more upscale lines. Such women might previously have spent a leisurely afternoon shopping and sipping tea at a department store, the distribution medium that has long dominated the luxury trade. But department stores are in decline – sales have fallen every year for a decade and a half. That has generated perhaps the strongest motivation for brands to build more stand-alone stores. If nothing else, the cafes and restaurants offer brands fresh revenue streams – alternatives to the sort of chains-and-umbrellas licensing deals that have sometimes diluted their image. “If you have a coffee shop or a restaurant you can cash in every day,” says Mr Aleman. Jonathan Soble SOURCE : Financial Times (18 mars 2008)

Marque