freeamfva: Lacoste’s Jean-Louis Delamarre on the brand’s dual strategy in travel retail

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Jean-Louis Delamarre: Just taking a look back at 2017 so far, it’s already been another very successful year for Lacoste in travel retail. Our strategy in travel retail has a dual objective: One is branding and the other is business; we try to combine the two.Get more news about cheap lacoste mens polo shirts,you can vist kictg.com!

For Lacoste, it’s very important to leverage travel retail as a medium because of the exposure it affords the brand. Via this channel, we are able to come into contact with many millions of consumers every year. With this in mind, our strategy is to focus on big door openings in key locations so that we can express the brand and the different categories we play in to their best advantage. By focusing on the top airports, we are able to show the very best of what the brand can bring to duty free. And the results are evident, this channel is growing for us, and qualitatively as we expand the brand to key locations around the world.
In this business, we are opening new doors every week, but we have some key markets which are important for us to make a difference in. Just this week [first week of October], we have opened in a key location for us in downtown Bangkok with King Power Thailand, which is our biggest partner in travel retail globally. For us to have a sizeable and beautiful placement in their new downtown store has been very important for the business and represents significant exposure of the brand.

Beyond that we have projects all around the world and within the last month we have already opened several new doors in Asia. Our presence in Europe is constantly growing; we have opened at London Heathrow in the UK, which is trading very well and we are very happy with its progress. We also have some exciting projects coming in Paris.

Our very latest concept will be coming to travel retail before the end of this year. Internally we are calling it ‘Le Club’ because it is reminiscent of the tennis clubs the brand’s founder René Lacoste played and changed in.

Within this concept, travellers will find a very iconic presence of the brand – starting from the materials and going back to the very roots of the game of tennis. For example, you will see the leather that was used to bind racquets and the light wood of the changing rooms of some of the most iconic clubs, such as the famed Chantaco family heritage Golf club in St. Jean-de-Luz.The concept places a big emphasis on polo shirts, which are our statement product. When you think of Lacoste, the first things that come to mind are the Crocodile emblem and polo shirts. Leveraging this brand identity, we really want to make a big push on polo shirts and make a big visual impact on this category in each and every one of our stores.

We are planning to introduce this concept to new travel retail doors in Portugal and in Belgrade. These will be the first iterations, after which the concept will be rolled out all over the world in the channel.The Lacoste travel retail division is one global business unit. We track our performance globally, and we have been lucky to record growth year-after year. Yet it is a global business in that very essence and there are some parts of the world that have felt the impact of geopolitical events – Brexit in the UK/Europe and also the slowdown of Chinese travellers to Korea, for example, and this has in turn had an impact on our business. But with the Chinese traveller, you can always catch up with them in some part of the world!

And that is fortunate, because the most important trend for our business continues to be the massive increase of Chinese consumers travelling abroad. This is not only something we have to take into consideration in Asia, such as Korea, but everywhere. Therefore, we must adjust our offer and ensure we can receive Chinese guests all over the world and in the right manner.

Then, there has been development of some interesting channels in this industry; the cruise business is really starting to take off and we can see, in some parts of the world, the rise of e-commerce business in travel retail, particularly in Korea.