Shanghai Tang. Strategic Recommendations

SHANGHAI TANG was created by David Tang in 1994. It has been the pioneering China luxury lifestyle brand with international presence. With its mission as the global ambassador of contemporary Chinese Chic, Shanghai Tang tries to showcase the best of Chinese heritage.

Shanghai Tang has an international network of 40 boutiques in the world's most prestigious shopping districts, including Shanghai, New York, Paris, London, and Madrid.

Shanghai Tang bases its brand identity on interpreting Chinese culture and craftsmanship in 21st century, utilizing the best of Chinese materials from luxurious Chinese silk, the finest Mongolian cashmere or the precious Chinese jade.  (http://www.shanghaitang.com/)

Shanghai Tang has a reasonable success in Asia but it's not working for European nor American luxury consumers, but for tourist shopping.

Shanghai Tang offers ready-to-wear for women, men, and children, as well as accessories, home ware and lifestyle experiences through lounge music collections and the Shanghai Tang Café that offers a modern Chinese cuisine experience. (sic)

Our view is that Shanghai Tang has an incoherent positioning, offering losts of useless accessories that can me you confused about where you are, a luxury store or a chinese bazar. Besides, we think that it's not clear the legitimacy Shanghai Tang has for craftsmanship, since they have a poor value chain and a doubtful knowhow.

Shanghai Tang past mistakes:

On the other hand, LuxuryCompanies likes:

We also like what other companies have made interpreting a sophisticated and aspirational asian heritage (www.louisvuitton.com/)



LuxuryCompanies strategic recommendations for Shanghai Tang:

- The best by far recommendation we suggest is to hire an international fashion designer able to interpret the codes and values of the brand. John Galliano is not the best choice but whether the public and legal proceedings have finished it could be a challenging and risky option to analyze.

- We also suggest Shanghai Tang to cut the portfolio, to take ownership of the value chain with a verticalization strategy,  choose more suitable prescriptors and leveraging on its chinese heritage broadcast a global and international experience

PRADA. Strategic Recommendations

PRADA (http://www.prada.com/) is luxury fashion company founded in 1913 in Milan (Italy). It's has been managed during this time by Prada - Bertelli Family and in June 2011 has published an IPO in HK market raising US$2.14 billion. Prada said they will invest in cut part of his debt, international expansion (mostly in APAC) and redesign is current stores in a 18months plan. (http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/06/24/us-prada-idUSTRE75N09P20110624)

PRADA is sophisticated, exclusive and alternative. Vast relationship with arts in his flagships stores, cultural innitiatives or specific collaborations such as Po Koolhas in Seul 2009 or Elmgreen&Dragset in Texas 2005. All of these propositions coverge in PRADA Foundation, which is a reference for the company values.

PRADA has women and men fashion, ready-to-wear, leather goods, shoes, perfumes, eyewear and a sort of useless accesories to banalizing the brand

PRADA is a well-known brand and extremly well-positioned in Apac. But is dramatically loosing revenues in Europe and NorthAmerica. They are aware of changes and we expect some strategic decisions in this sense.

OUR recommendation for PRADA is to diversify and growth and we suggest two specific actions:
1.- Joint venture with Nespresso (http://www.nespresso.com/)
2.- Takeover Burberry as target company (www.burberry.com)

NESPRESSO could contribute with cashflow and it's also a lever to promote european-way coffee tasting in Asia.

BURBERRY has reemerge and it's a very attractive acquisition for many companies. For PRADA could be and excellent opportunity to add british value to his company and leveraging this knowledge gain legitimacy in asian countries

LuxuryCompanies

June 2011

Luxury Companies launching

Dear All,

During the following days we will be launching "Luxury Companies" blog.

Our mission is to analyze luxury companies and to show our strategic recomendations

Hope it would be useful for luxury professionals and for everybody interested in.

Kind Regards,
Luxury Companies