China Speakers Bureau

Luxury sales, for the wealthy and not so wealthy - Paul French

Paul French

As the sales of luxury goods to Chinese spike, retail analysts try to figure out who is buying what. The profile of the buyers can vary a lot, tells Paul French The Guardian.

Many of these new consumers are executives and entrepreneurs, keen to show they have made it, or the offspring of wealthy families. Others, however, are the aspirational: "Secretaries who live on instant noodles for six months to pay for their LV handbag ... it's a way of saying, 'I have become part of this world,' " said Paul French of the retail consultancy Access Asia.

More about luxury sales in China in The Guardian.

Paul French is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your conference or meeting? Do get in touch.

Labels: China, China Speakers Bureau, luxury, Paul French

Why China does not need Home Depot - Paul French

Image via Wikipedia

What foreign companies, trying to tap into the China market, regularly forget is that there is no need for their services, tells retail analyst Paul French at Marketplace Public Radio. Home Depot is an example.
Paul French responds to Raymond Chou, president of Home Depot China:

CHOU: The Home Depot is the world's largest home improvement specialty retailer in the world by far, and we plan to be number one in China, too. Therefore, really the task at hand is to try to figure out how do we become the largest home improvement retailer in China, whether or not we're going to be here or not.

Paul French by Fantake via Flickr
PAUL FRENCH: I don't know if Home Depot needs to be here. I don't know if this is the right place for Home Depot... You can go around the ring roads of Beijing or you can go around the expressways of Shanghai and you see these giant warehouse places, where manufacturers just set up inside and you go in there and there's 50 makes of toilet, 50 makes of power shower, and 50 makes of bathroom tile. Everything's up for negotiation, you can sort everything out, it'll all get delivered. You don't need Home Depot.

More at Marketplace.

Paul French is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch.

Labels: China, China Speakers Bureau, Home Depot, Paul French

The Temple of Apple - Paul French

The Temple of Apple via Wikipedia

The Apple outlet in Pudong, Shanghai is getting mythical proportions and babtized by retail analyst Paul French the 'Temple of Apple'. In Mercury News he explains why Apple changed from a laggard into a winner in the booming China market, unlike other US brands.

While Apple currently captures only a sliver of China's consumers, the country's 300 million-member middle class includes many upwardly mobile consumers with money to burn.
"Apple's moment is here," said retail analyst Paul French of the Shanghai-based firm Access Asia. "There is now enough of an urban middle class with enough money to afford Apple products. Five years ago -- or even two or three years ago -- there weren't enough of those people."...

Paul French by Fantake via Flickr

While many Chinese buy cheap knockoffs of Apple products, plenty of others are more than willing to pay top price for originals -- and the reliability and status that comes with them.
At the Pudong outlet -- a spacious store awash in natural light that French calls "the Temple of Apple" -- product adoration crossed a number of age groups one recent afternoon, from teens sipping milk tea to professionals getting assistance on Macintosh software. Young couples cuddled over iPads as music, from hip-hop beats to the Beatles, filled the air.
"They've got great products and they are doing this at a time when Chinese consumers are feeling bullish and have some money," French said.

More in Mercury News.

Paul French is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. When you need him at your meeting or conference, do get in touch.

Labels: Apple, China, China Speakers Bureau, Paul French

Mattel got carried away with Barbie story - Paul French

Image by Zingaro. I am a gipsy too. via Flickr

The sudden closure of Mattel's Barbie store in Shanghai seems to have nobody apart from Mattel, says retail analyst Paul French in the LA Times, today. He is sceptical about the firm's announcement they are merely changing plans.
The closure comes after other high-profile closures of retailers like BestBuy and Home Deposit.
The LA Times:

Paul French, the Shanghai-based founder of retail market-research company Access Asia, said Monday he was skeptical that the closure was planned.
"What’s better than a [successful] flagship store in Shanghai?" he said.
Instead, French said, Mattel probably overestimated its cachet in China and assumed Chinese women would embrace childish brands the way many women in Japan do with Hello Kitty and, well, Barbie.
"They got massively carried away with that store," French said. "Retail is all about square footage and I never saw enough people there to justify its size. The rent there would have been big."

Paul French by Fantake via Flickr

Paul French is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch.

Labels: Barbie, BestBuy, China, China Speakers Bureau, Mattel, Paul French

Low profit margins force BestBuy out - Paul French

Former flagship in Xujiahui, Shanghai

The decision by US electronics retailer BestBuy to close its outlets in China hardly comes as a surprise, says retail analyst Paul French in USA-Today. "They were ahead of the consumer."

Unlike the warehouse style of top Chinese electronic chains Gome and Suning, where sales personnel push particular brands to earn commission, Best Buy provided "a much nicer retail environment," said French, at prices no higher than its competitors.

But the perception of the customers was different, they still feared they were paying a price for the better store, used it for window-shopping and rushed to the competitor when they went for a purchase.
French wonders whether switching to Five Star, an electronic retailer from Nanjing, purchased by BestBuy, will help:

Paul French by Fantake via Flickr
As independent shops and plazas, not chains, still dominate electronics sales, "the pie is going to get cut very thinly," French cautioned. "Profit margins are great if you are Apple," he said. Elsewhere, "There are too many brands and not enough people buying the high-margin items."

Paul French is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. When you need him at your conference or meeting, do get in touch.

Labels: BestBuy, China, China Speakers Bureau, Paul French, retail

Old Shanghai A-Z - Paul French

Old Shanghai via Wikipedia

Followers of Paul French's weblog China Rhyming could have seen the preparatory work for his latest book The Old Shanghai A-Z. The book is out now, just in time for Christmas.
Paul French:

As to how it was put together – I broke Shanghai down into three areas – the International Settlement, the French Concession and the External Roads Area. I then plotted out blocks across t€he three areas and retraced every street to compare old and new maps. What this revealed was that there are a lot more roads than commonly listed with old names – several hundred – and that most of the sources you’ll find on the internet are (gasp, shock horror) wrong. Mistakes get made, repeated and repeated again and eventually it’s impossible to tell – I’ve gone back to the original map and tried to start from scratch to avoid those errors. I ventured out far into Yangtzsepoo (Yangpu) to the East, the Badlands of the West, the Trenches of the North and old creeks of the South.

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Paul French is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau and covers a wide range of subjects. When you need him at your meeting or conference, do get in touch.

Paul French by Fantake via Flickr

Labels: China, China Speakers Bureau, Paul French, Shanghai

Most-sought speakers for November 2010

Kaiser Kuo in 2008 via Wikipedia

Huge changes in this month's list of most-sought speakers, compared to October. Kaiser Kuo gained the top position and certainly made the biggest move this month. As he took his position as director international communication at China's largest search engine Baidu, we feared he might be working more behind the scenes. But for the past month, his valuable contributions kept on surprising us in a pleasant way.
His statement that internet censorship in China was not giving Baidu a competitive advantage over Google irked some, according to the tweets we saw. His argument that the internet is not making us stupid got almost universal approval.
In terms of news the past month has been pretty busy for our speakers. Mostly our radar screen picks up a few quotes per day, but some of our speakers, including Rupert Hoogewerf, Wendell Minnick and Shaun Rein made many appearances.
Two newcomers on our top-10: John van Fleet, or educational and marketing specialist and CEIBS' Annette Nijs entered our list. Welcome.

The overview of the most-sought speakers for November 2010 (October in brackets)
1. Kaiser Kuo (4)

Annette Nijs via Flickr

2. William Overholt (8)
3. Arthur Kroeber (5)
4. Shaun Rein (1)
5. Rupert Hoogewerf (3)
6. William Bao Bean (9)
7. Paul French (2)
8. Wendell Minnick (10)
9. Annette Nijs (-)
10. John van Fleet (-)

Labels: Annette Nijs, Arthur Kroeber, Kaiser Kuo, Paul French, Rupert Hoogewerf, Shaun Rein, Wen Jiabao, William Bao Bean, William Overholt

Foreign brands struggle as Chinese retailers rise - Paul French

Image via Wikipedia

Depending on how you look at the figures, retail grew up to 20 percent in China, retail analyst Paul French tells Forbes and compares the fate of foreign retailers like Gap force domestic competition from the Trinity Group and China Lilang.
Paul French in Forbes:

Take a look at people like Trinity Group (controlled by Hong Kong’s Fung brothers) who recently acquired Kent and Curwen and Gieves and Hawkes. They’re positioning well to catch the next wave of wealthy Chinese men – i.e. the one’s who will probably not just be content with Dunhill! Also take a look at China Lilang, recently IPOed and who are typical of the new Chinese apparel retail entrepreneurs in that the company is designing, sourcing, manufacturing and retailing casual apparel very successfully. Trinity and Lilang represent the two major strategies – acquisition vs manufacturer-turned-retailer. In reality both work.

Paul French is not sure whether recent plans to enter China are that smart:

I’m not sure where The Gap will fit. As a brand struggling internationally and in its home market, it’s perhaps a little late to hope China will save them. It is still true that the trends that sweep China emerge from Europe, and to a lesser extent America and Asia (really only Japan and Korea) and Chinese retailers imitate them. Right now the apparel market is moving from a five-year love affair with sportswear — and a massively crowded market of foreigners and locals — towards fast fashion. Currently all the running really is being made by foreigners in this sector: Zara and Mango — the global phenomena of Inditex, C&A, H&M, Vero Moda, and others. Gap would have been far smarter to come to Shanghai with their Banana Republic brand right now if they wanted to catch a profitable wave.

More in Forbes.

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Paul French is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meetin

Paul French by Fantake via Flickr

g or conference? Do get in touch.

Labels: China, China Speakers Bureau, Gap, Paul French

Most-sought speakers for October 2010

Hurun by Fantake via Flickr

It's October and it might not come as a surprise that Rupert Hoogewerf or Hurun has appeared as the largest mover in our most-sought speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. This years' Hurun rich list attracted much attention, as it showed how Chinese women are conquering top positions, how retail is becoming more important and real estate tycoons are losing their financial leverage - although still important.
Rupert Hoogewerf replaced Kaiser Kuo on the third place, as Kuo is now working more behind the scenes of China's largest search engine, Baidu.com.
Not quiet have been our numbers one and two. Shaun Rein was already our most-quoted speaker, but is now appearing in mainstream media at least twice a week. This month he blamed Apple's Steve Jobs for being too US-centric and was caught predicting two, three decades of solid growth for China. Paul French is not that much quoted, but very busy on this book tour, promoting his latest book Fat China. Obvious, with good results.
Worth mentioning is also the staying power of two relative newcomers, Helen Wang and Wendell Minnick. Often, new speakers on our roster are in danger of slipping away into the dark corners of our databases, but both are able to attract enough attention to say in our top ten.
Now, the official top-10 of most-sought speakers for October (September between brackets

.

Labels: China, China Speakers Bureau, Helen Wang, Paul French, Rupert Hoogewerf, Shaun Rein, Tom Doctoroff, Wen Jiabao

'Fat China' scores in most-sought speakers for September 2010

Paul French by Fantake via Flickr

Some remarkable changes in our monthly top-10 of most-sought speakers. While most of the listed speakers hold on to their position in the list, Paul French has entered the triumvirate of top-3 speakers at number 2, clearly a success related to his latest book Fat China: How Expanding Waistlines are Changing a Nation, where he identifies obesity as a new key problem China has to face in the decades to come. For China's health care yet another Gargantuan dilemma, caused by the advertisement industry, claims French.
Many other thought-leaders on China seem to prefer to stick other - undeniable giant - challenges has to face, but setting the agenda by re-framing China's challenges in such a way certainly seems to appeal to clients.
Shaun Rein, as usual, has been extremely active in the mainstream media in debating China-related issues, so he still remains very much at the top.
Good news is also the appearance of a new speaker, Helen Wang, who entered the first ranking right away at the 8th position. Her book, The Chinese Dream, on China's middle class is not yet available, so we have good expectations she might hang on to a top position in the months to come. All too often, when new speakers do not trigger off enough response among mainstream media., clients or otherwise, they often leave this top-10 as fast as they came in.
Wendell Minnick, with his special focus on China's military might, did not face that fate. As the military tensions increase in Asia, the Bureau Chief of Defense News in Taiwan solidly hangs on to the 9th position.
Without further delay, let's turn to the full top-10 of most-sought speakers of September 2010. (August 2010 in brackets).

Helen Wang by Fantake via Flickr

Are you looking for these or other speakers on China-related issues? Do get in touch.

Labels: Arthur Kroeber, health care, Helen Wang, Jasper BeckerKaiser Kuo, military, Paul French, Shaun Rein, Tom Doctoroff, Wendell Minnick, William Bao Bean, William Overholt

Hu Jintao, China's most prominent diabetes patient - Paul French

Paul French by Fantake via Flickr

President Hu Jintao is China's most prominent diabetes patient, but with 120 million obese - and counting - he is certainly not alone, tells Paul French, co-author of Fat China, to Jeremy Goldkorn of Danwei TV. Chinese are getting more of everything and lost control of their diet, just like people in the West, only later. "We would have loved to blame McDonald's or KFC for it," says Paul French, "but we cannot."

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Paul French is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch.

Fat China! Paul French talks about obesity in China from Danwei on Vimeo.

Labels: China, China Speakers Bureau, KFC, McDonald's, Obesity, Paul French

Chinese women, the new spending force

Changing families values

Chinese women are becoming a new force in domestic consumption as they command half of the household budget, writes Newsweek, who tapped into the brains of Tom Doctoroff, Shaun Rein and Paul French, all speakers for the China Speakers Bureau.
Shaun Rein on the figures:

For Western companies, the rise of the female consumer in China is a welcome change. For years, multinationals ignored Chinese women because their contribution to household income was so small—a fact “that’s changed dramatically,” says Shaun Rein, managing director of the China Market Research Group. In the 1950s women contributed just 20 percent of household income. That rose to about 40 percent in the 1990s and then reached 50 percent last year, according to Rein....
Rein’s firm recently found that women younger than 35 are the most optimistic segment in China, with a whopping 80 percent of the 3,500 women surveyed saying they’ll spend more in the second half of 2010 than they did in the first half. With trends like these, Chinese women may bring new meaning to the term “the power of the purse.”

But those women might have other ambitions than the women in the US or Europe today, says Paul French:

At the same time, advertisers are finding that Chinese women crave security, and that portraying women in advertising as fully independent may not work. Paul French, founder of Shanghai market research firm Access Asia, says women want job success, a husband, and 1.0 children with a villa in the suburbs, so advertisements are “similar to cupcake ads in America in 1953,” he says. “Let’s create the perfect family.”

And warns Tom Doctoroff:

“Chinese women are not indulgent consumers,” says Tom Doctoroff, greater China CEO at the advertising agency JWT.

More in Newsweek.
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Tom Doctoroff, Shaun Rein and Paul French all belong to the Chinese Speakers Bureau. Do you need one of them - or all together - at your meeting or conference, do get in touch.

Labels: China, China Speakers Bureau, economy, Paul French, Public Speaking, Shaun Rein, Tom Doctoroff

The barrow boy grocer from Tesco - Paul French

Paul French via Flickr

Some foreign companies do well in China, others fail. And some have a more rollerskating experience like Tesco, recalls retail analyst Paul French in the Telegraph. The UK retailer set off on a wrong foot with Taiwanese management, but took a good turn when Mr. Towle, a real grocer from the UK moved over.

Mr Towle has been in China for five years, and has no plans to leave. Under his leadership, the operation is clearly gaining momentum. Tesco did not make the best start in China, paying £140m (a rather steep price-earnings multiple of 51 times) in 2004 for a 50pc stake in Hymall, a Taiwanese supermarket chain with 25 stores.

“So many weird things happened at those stores,” said Paul French, a retail analyst at Access Asia. “It probably would have ended in a labour dispute these days. The staff hated the Taiwanese management and they used to talk about sabotaging the products and so on.

"The UK management sent over some people to try to tell the Taiwanese what to do and in the end they just got rid of them all. Since then, it has all been running well.”

A year after his arrival in China, Mr Towle took 90pc control of the venture for a further £180m and last year Tesco finally clinched the remainder.

Inside his stores, Mr Towle, who has been with Tesco for 25 years, working up from the bakery section, can reel off the prices of any of his products and will happily discuss catchment areas, layout and volumes.

“He’s a good old-fashioned grocer,” said Mr French. “Basically, to understand the Chinese consumer, you have to be a barrow boy grocer. They get it immediately. What was needed was a good deal of ruthlessness. In a business where you have a 2pc margin, you need to be ruthless.”

More in The Telegraph.

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Paul French is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch.

Labels: business, China, China Speakers Bureau, Paul French, retail, tesco

Most-sought speakers for August 2010

Shaun Rein by Fantake via Flickr

The summer holidays and the summer heat forced many to lay low - we noticed from the traffic to our websites - with one exception: Shaun Rein. Almost no day passed without Shaun sharing his views on mainstream TV-stations or on Forbes and Business Week. No wonder he rose to the first place again in our top-10 of most-sought speakers for August 2010. (You can see our listing for July here.)
Shaun Rein covered a wide range of subjects: sex and porn, the stress test for banks, the China blame game of Western media, the lack of savings, and many more subjects. (See also our speakers' corner).
Kaiser Kuo has his first full month as director at China's leading search engine Baidu. And although we miss his opinion leadership in the mainstream media, he still maintained a firm second place. Otherwise, for those who are following our speakers, not that many surprises in this month's top-10 (July 2010 in brackets).

Labels: China, China Speakers Bureau, Paul French, Public Speaking, Rupert Hoogewerf, Shaun Rein, Tom Doctoroff, Victor Shih, Wendell Minnick

Fat China, blame on the advertisement industry - Paul French

Paul French

Obesity is rising in China and our speaker Paul French and co-author Matthew Crabbe wrote their new book Fat China: How Expanding Waistlines are Changing a Nation about the feature. In 1982 7 percent of the Chinese were overweight, in 2002 23 percent of urban China, 7 percent obese. In this article in AdAge they blame the advertisement industry.
From AdChina:

Today, 100 to 120 million Chinese are obese and about half of them are kids. The effects of this obesity crisis in China will be legion, including significantly increased levels of disease, including diabetes. China's healthcare system faces a time bomb of 100 million adults with diabetes within a couple of years. The additional costs will be massive.

Culture and wealth play a role in getting China fatter, but French also points his finger ad the advertising industry:

While we can't blame the advertising industry for urban China's appalling driving standards, the relationship between advertising and obesity is a long and documented one internationally, though to date, the discussion of the link between the advertising of fat-inducing foods and drinks and obesity has been muted in China.

This lack of discussion has not been due to any particular government clampdown or censorship, but rather to the rapid growth in advertising and fast-changing lifestyles that have meant that no time has yet been found for such discussions. Yet they will have to happen soon.

More challenging debate at AdAge.

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Paul French is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. When you need him at your meeting or conference, do get in touch.

Labels: advertising, China, China Speakers Bureau, Obesity, Paul French

July edition of our newsletter is due

Lijia Zhang photograph by Philip McMaster_0233

Zhang Lijia via Flickr

Should we bother you with China and our speakers' bureau in the sweltering heat of the summer, we were thinking at the global offices of the China Speakers Bureau. Well, here in Europe temperature dropped this week actually dramatically, so we decided to have a go with our newsletter for July 2010. The July edition will include announcements about the upcoming military build-up of China and the US and the possible confrontation between both powers that our military expert Wendell Minnick expects for the second half of this year.
Otherwise, many of the growing pains that go along with China's economic development: Paul French's new book Fat China on obesity, increasing complaints by foreign companies who are working in China and our star speaker Zhang Lijia, who is preparing for a book tour to celebrate the publication of her book in Portuguese. Do register here for the newsletter at the right-top corner here when you want to get our updates on a monthly basis.

Update: Our July newsletter is now available here. When you subscribe to our newsletter (right-top) do not forget to check your spam filter for the confirmation email.

Labels: China, China Speakers Bureau, military, Obesity, Paul French, Wendell Minnick, Zhang Lijia

Fat China - Paul French

Paul French via Flickr

Today saw the long anticipated book Fat China: How Expanding Waistlines are Changing a Nation (China in the 21st Century) by Paul French, on obesity in China. "An in-depth analysis of the growing problem of obesity in China and its relationship to the nation's changing diet, lifestyle trends and healthcare system."
From the announcement:
China's economy has boomed, but a potentially disastrous side effect - along with pollution and a growing income gap between urban and rural regions - is the effects obesity will have on the country's fragile healthcare system. China's urban centres have seen alarmingly rising rates of obesity. Throughout the country, an estimated 200 million people out of a total population of around 1.3 billion were overweight - over 15%.

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Paul French is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. When you need him at your conference, do get in touch.

Labels: China, China Speakers Bureau, Obesity, Paul French

Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Luxury sales, for the wealthy and not so wealthy - Paul French

Saturday, April 9, 2011

Why China does not need Home Depot - Paul French