Luxury department store Lane Crawford recently opened a Shanghai flagship store twice the size of its Hong Kong location, and Wall Street Journal sat down with company president Andrew Keith to listen to his views on what the Chinese luxury consumer wants. According to him, China is all about the unique, niche fashion brands right now, which is an unsurprising statement considering the fact that Lane Crawford is known for its offerings of hot young designers such as Jason Wu and Prabal Gurung, which are hard to get elsewhere in China. According to Keith, Chinese consumers are "looking increasingly for brands that are going to enable them to express themselves in a different way, and they’re looking for that sense of discovery, that sense of being able to feel that they’re connecting with brands and understanding that the brand has got a different DNA and a different handwriting to what’s available in the market at the moment.” In the video embedded above, he also discusses why the Shanghai flagship is so huge, which product categories are most popular with mainlanders, and how Lane Crawford goes about figuring out what will attract mainland customers.
