When Chinese People Go Shopping in Paris

Once upon a time… I had to receive my first group of Chinese business tourists for the department store in Paris where I was supposed to develop this specific foreign clientele.
It was 16 years ago and I am still working on the chinese tourists shopping today. As the marketing rules have not been changed since, they are still applied by almost every department store here and this is what it looks like: the stores dealing with Chinese tour operators and their emissaries, the tour leaders, must retrocede 5% to the tour operator and to the tour leader 10% of all the sales amount they have made with each group. If this was not put into practice, the tour operators would prefer to take their customers to some more dubious addresses like Paris Look or Benlux which would not at all be able to propose the same range of goods or brands.

Today department stores are commmissioning heavily chinese purchases in reducing their margin. In doing so, their objectives are not only to raise their turnover but also to accelerate the speed of stock rotation of their products that is in increasing their financial profit. They now look like monsters soaking up all the Chinese customers going through Paris or even through other european shopping sites. Anyway every tour operator visiting european capitals does end in our french department stores sometime.
This orientation of course did seriously boost their profits: these new luxury meccas are now welcoming the most famous brands, often difficult to convince, like Louis Vuitton, Guerlain and even Rolex. The other protagonists, the brands flagships in Paris particularly, get nothing but leftovers: a few tourists in a hurry on the Champs Elysees, newcomers to the Place Vendome. Paris is not crouded with Chinese visitors as our Chinese friends from the other side of the world seem to believe…

But this collective chinese shopping phenomenon, which clearly favours the department stores, is about to change: French authorities do issue visas much more easily to a certain social class, Chinese people do not appreciate travelling with persons they do not know and today they do not even need an interpreter or a guide. This new type of wealthy travellers is now ready to carry on as far as the Place Vendome, the luxury hotel Bristol or the Champs Elysees. And of course they will never desert our department stores for, as a Chinese friend of mine would say: “the Galeries Lafayette are almost as famous as Vuitton and yet they do not use advertising”.