Week In Review: September 20-24

Jing Daily’s Top Posts For The Week In case you missed them the first time around, here are some of Jing Daily’s top posts for the week of September 20-24: Sotheby’s Contemporary Asian Art Auction In Hong Kong (Oct 4): Top Lots To Watch Last week, we profiled top artists “priced within reach” at the upcoming Contemporary Asian Art auction at Sotheby’s in Hong Kong, set to take place October 4. Though there will definitely be some (comparatively) reasonably priced lots there for the picking, other lots — particularly rare works by Chinese contemporary artists who are particularly coveted by new domestic collectors — are likely to go well above high estimates. As we saw recently at Asia Art Week in New York and at this year’s spring auctions in Hong Kong, the buying power and appetite of Chinese collectors is only increasing. Tsingtao, Zhujiang Fight Realities Of Chinese Beer Industry With New “High-End” Products Recently, Jing Daily looked at the trend of major Chinese breweries trying to enter the premium beer market in China — an area dominated by western brands like Carlsberg or Heineken, which account for 70% of sales. For Chinese brands like Tsingtao, which have the infrastructure, capital, distribution networks and international reach to branch into premium segments, it’s really a matter of developing a high-quality, premium product (tough) and convincing Chinese drinkers to pay triple or quadruple what they’re accustomed to on a bottle of locally produced beer (even tougher). This is a challenge faced by a number of established Chinese brands that have tried to move into the “luxury” market: while your products are of comparable quality, your advertisements feature popular celebrities, and you’re competitively priced, for most consumers in China, “foreignness” still equals “attractiveness.” Confusion On Brand Origin Reigns Among Chinese Consumers Some home-grown Chinese companies (particularly ME&CITY) are taking advantage of a lack of clarity among consumers in smaller third-tier markets and marketing themselves as “foreign” brands. This, in turn, will likely make it harder for “real” foreign brands, like Zara and H&M, to gain footholds in these relatively underdeveloped markets in the long term. (Though, realistically, they seem to be in no rush to expand into third-tier markets, keeping mostly to top-tier cities like Shanghai at the moment.) A new McKinsey study on the confusion that reigns among Chinese consumers as to brand origin confirms our observations on the way Chinese companies — many of which try to pass themselves off as imported brands — are using low levels of consumer education to crowd out (or at least make business harder for) foreign competitors. Chinese Developer To Build Africa’s Tallest Building In Ethiopia This week, International Construction reports that the China-based Guangdong Chuanhui Group recently signed a land agreement with the Addis Ababa City Administration in Ethiopia to start construction on the tallest building in Africa later this year. Although final details have yet to be released, what we do know is that the 58-story building will house a five-star hotel and stand four stories higher than Africa’s current tallest building, the 54-story Carlton Centre in Johannesburg, South Africa. Chuanhui’s new tower, one of five high-end hotel projects it has planned for the Ethiopian capital, will cover around 50,000 square meters of land and is expected to cost around US$146.5 million. At this week’s signing ceremony, Addis Ababa mayor Kuma Demeksa said the project would “provide jobs and promote local economic development,” adding that he expected the Chuanhui Hotel to become “an African landmark.” Asian Art Auctions In New York Far Exceed Estimates Earlier this month, Jing Daily reported on New York Asian Art Week, where we said observers should expect to see patriotic “new collectors” from India and China looming large. Over the past few years, Chinese collectors in particular have developed a reputation for selective blindness when it comes to pre-sale estimates, willing to buy certain objects for many times their expected price at auction. If the results of this Asian Art Week are any indication, it looks like that reputation isn’t going anywhere soon. Both Sotheby’s and Christie’s reported totals far beyond estimates, with combined sales totaling around $50 million, about $27 million of that coming from Sotheby’s and around $20 million from Christie’s. The remainder of sales were recorded by nearly a dozen other galleries and auction houses that held sales and exhibitions this week. Tweet

Week In Review: September 20-24

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Published September 24, 2010

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Week In Review: September 20-24