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 January 2-6:
NetEase’s Luxury E-Commerce Site First Casualty Of 2012
Less than one year after its much-hyped launch, “NetEase Premier,” the luxury shopping platform created by the Chinese Internet portal NetEase (163.com), has ceased operations, making it the first casualty of the luxury e-commerce shakeout of 2012. Touting discounts of up to 80 percent on top brands like Hermes, Gucci and Louis Vuitton, NetEase Premier was NetEase’s third foray into the world of e-commerce, following its NetEase mall, online travel business, and third-party online payment service, ePay (网易宝).
However, the portal has a history of shutting down its online businesses far more quickly than its competitors, having ceased operations on its online travel site after only 80 days.
Chinese Group Set To Acquire Luxury Resort Chain Aman Resorts
The Chinese conglomerate HNA Group, which is involved in industries as diverse as airlines, hotels, airport management, real estate, retail and tourism, appears to be set to acquire the boutique luxury hotel group Aman Resorts (Amanresorts), which currently operates 25 properties in 15 countries. As the Business Standard of India reports this week, bankers and analysts close to the deal say HNA put in an bid of around 24 billion rupees (US$452 million) to buy Aman Resorts outright, beating out its top competitor, the Malaysian government investment arm Khazanah.
According to the Business Standard, Khazanah’s initial bid for the resort chain in June 2010 was US$300-350 million for a “controlling stake.”
Shang Xia Turns Luxury To Philanthropy, Helps Children Of Migrant Workers
High-end brands may be known for extravagance, but the Shanghai-based Chinese brand Shang Xia recently found a way to transform luxury into philanthropy. Soon after the October 12 closing of its one-month-long “Human and Nature” exhibition in Shanghai’s Sinan Mansions, which celebrated Shang Xia’s one-year anniversary, the company broke down the “Bamboo House” designed by Japanese architect Kengo Kuma (who also designed the brand’s first location in Shanghai), reusing the materials to build a play area for some of China’s most vulnerable young students.
Using bamboo, pebbles and wood reclaimed from the Bamboo House, Shang Xia had two new areas built for the Liuying Lu (柳营路) school for children of migrant workers in Shanghai’s Hongkou district: a serene “Book Garden” reading room and “Paradise” playground.
Coach Collaborates With Chinese Artist Zhang Lan On “Year Of The Dragon” Collection
In the run-up to Chinese New Year and the Year of the Dragon, we’re still seeing major brands debut new dragon-themed collections aimed at tapping the booming China luxury market. Recently, following in the footsteps of Rolls-Royce, Piaget, Blancpain and others, Coach unveiled its Year of the Dragon collaboration with the multidisciplinary Chinese artist Zhang Lan. A member of the EDGE Creative Collective, Zhang has rapidly risen in visibility over the past several years, becoming recognized as a pioneer in Chinese tattoo and street art design.
For his collaboration with Coach, Zhang adorns the brand’s signature designs and mahogany color scheme with golden dragons rendered in a style reminiscent of traditional Chinese ink painting.
Has A Wife “Become A Luxury” In China?
Since the late 1970s, two seemingly unrelated phenomena have developed and — in their own ways — shaped the landscape of modern China: the country’s one-child policy and subsequent gender imbalance, and the commercialization of Chinese television. With the sex ratio at birth, which measures the number of male live births per hundred female live births, shifting from 103 to 107 in the 1960s and 1970s to 120 by 2004, and Chinese television becoming fully commercialized in the 1990s, the issue of China’s present and future “marriage squeeze” has gone from the household into the public sphere, with dating shows proliferating on national and regional television stations.
