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 December 12-16:
Coach First Global Luxury Brand To Launch Official Tmall “Flagship”
Fresh off of its star-studded 70th anniversary celebration in Beijing, this week Coach is celebrating another milestone in China, the launch of an official pilot Taobao Mall (Tmall) store that will give Chinese shoppers access to limited-edition bags and accessories through January 15, 2012. Stocking a range of men’s and women’s items, coach.tmall.com also includes a special selection of 70th anniversary commemorative products, a hand-picked edition of best sellers, and exclusive products created specifically for Tmall.
Additionally, as part of the store’s one-month-long trial run, 20 lucky customers will receive an autographed copy of Coach brand ambassador Gwyneth Paltrow’s cookbook, My Father’s Daughter.
Art is a fairly simple investment vehicle. In art, income is mostly in the form of capital gains. The institutional investors are museums, foundations and other large collectors, including corporations. Some of those institutional investors are capable of generating some cash flow from effective rental of art by selling admission to viewings and trading in exhibitions. Many museums do not do much trading in art but, instead, get art loans and gifts from collectors. Art dealers are the central professionals, and auction houses act as wholesale exchanges, mostly as brokers, but not, normally, as dealers.
Art dealers maintain inventories of art. They also do IPO’s of new art and act as market makers for their artists. They also function as brokers for other dealers and collectors. They can get one hundred percent interest-free leverage with no downside risk, in some of the transactions and services that they perform, acting as agents for artists and art sellers.
Foreign Breweries Touting Premium Beer In China, But Are They Doing It All Wrong?
The world’s largest consumer of beer for nearly a decade, China’s thirst for beer — mostly German-style light lagers from homegrown breweries like Tsingtao, Snow, Zhujiang and others — has been well documented. But with living standards rising, and more international brewers eying the country’s growing middle class, Chinese beer drinkers have become spoiled for choice, with brands like Carlsberg and Heineken becoming ubiquitous nationwide and a growing number of premium beers — both foreign and domestic — hitting bars and store shelves. Still, the massive output of domestic Chinese breweries like Tsingtao means that regular price wars create a race to the bottom, in terms of pricing and profitability. This means that, for major domestic Chinese macro-brewers, the profit margin of a bottle of beer is often less than that of a bottle of pure water.
As Jing Daily noted last year, with their trademark low-range lines, Chinese brewers only see an average of 100 yuan (US$15) profit from one ton of beer.
Report: Greater China Luxury Sales Set To Surpass Japan For First Time
Underlining the importance of Asia to the global luxury market, and the role that emerging economies like China, Vietnam and India are playing in buoying major brands, a new PricewaterhouseCoopers report highlights some of the key trends currently taking shape in this fast-growing region. With Europe facing a protracted economic and financial crisis, and the US economy expected to remain sluggish in 2012, luxury brands are expected to keep their broader focus on the Asia-Pacific region in the year ahead. However, mixed economic data coming out of new regional powerhouse China could dent the rampant growth we’ve seen there over the past five years. Still, as the PwC report notes, new opportunities in segments like e-commerce and in smaller, second- and third-tier cities (particularly in China) should see luxury sales continue to climb in Asia.
Though the report covers a wide range of consumer segments, from food and general retail to luxury and electronics, our interest lies in findings about the Asian luxury market.
Sino Shocker: Ningxia Wines Beat Bordeaux In French/Chinese Blind Tasting
Three months after the Ningxia-based winery Helan Qing Xue’s Jia Bei Lan Cabernet Dry Red 2009 won China’s first-ever “International Trophy” at the Decanter World Wine Awards, this week the Chinese wine-growing region scored yet another victory, taking the top four spots in the “Ningxia vs Bordeaux Challenge” in Beijing. Jointly organized by Jim Boyce, the website TasteV, Beijing wine club Zun, and contributors to the Grape Wall of China blog, the event featured a blind tasting of ten wines — five from Ningxia and five from Bordeaux — by five Chinese and five French judges.
