The Devil Wears Prada
September 20, 2011 6:30 AM   Subscribe

I'm working on a project in China at the moment aimed at getting luxury European and North American brands to install themselves at a new five-star hotel and luxury shopping plaza in one of China's many rapidly growing second-tier cities. The location is excellent and the nimiety of demand and feasibility studies we have conducted show this clearly. We need to convince key decision makers not only in Paris, Milan, London and New York but also here in Shanghai. But how to contact the right people?

I have a lot of responsibility on my shoulders for this project, though at the moment I feel like a glorified telemarketer in my vain attempts to get through the sadistic gatekeepers guarding those in power at these companies. Most enforce a strict no-name policy and insist I just send our proposal through the post to a generic address thereby, in my opinion, immediately condemning it to oblivion. I'm looking for the names of key decision makers for retail expansion in China. Once I've got a name, I can usually get an e-mail address. I've tried finding names on Linked-in, with some limited success. Ditto for trawling Google News. It's not enough though.

My short-term objective is to be able to get in contact with the person responsible for every single brand (there are 38 we're targeting in total) and then schedule meetings in Shanghai and Europe in order to deliver a PowerPoint presentation to demonstrate the potential of this hitherto inconspicuous location. We have also produced a book providing more in-depth information about the project that I would like to personally deliver.

Help me out, Metafilter.
posted by anonymous to Clothing, Beauty, & Fashion (2 answers total)
 
If you're dealing with names, you should use those names.

That is, if I were you, I'd try to get just one 'established' store to be committed. b1tr0t's example of Burberry sounds pretty good. Thereafter, you could go to Polo (for example) and say "The space is great, etc etc etc and Burberry is moving in." After that, you say "Etc, Etc, Burberry and Polo have agreed to make stores." And then: "Burberry, Polo, and Prada are creating retail locations; we're in discussions with Marc Jacobs and Gucci. Are you interested?"
posted by suedehead at 12:14 PM on September 20, 2011


My suggestion is for you or your company to join the American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai or the AmCham in Beijing (they are separate entities), and start to network within that organization. Once you find one real decision maker, he/she can introduce you to others in the industry.
posted by hawkeye at 4:55 PM on September 20, 2011


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