Tiffany & Co., the US luxury-jewelry retailer, said it will open its first store in Beijing to cater to the growing number of affluent customers on China's mainland.
The store in the lobby of Beijing's Palace Hotel is scheduled to open in December under a business license held by the hotel, Vice Chairman James Quinn said. The 1,200-square-foot location will feature many of Tiffany's more popular jewelry items, gifts and accessories, the New York-based company said.
Tiffany, known for its robin's egg-blue gift boxes, has been considering opening stores in Beijing and Shanghai for several years, Quinn said.
The company, which first expanded into Asia in 1972, now has stores throughout the region, including Singapore, Malaysia, South Korea, Japan and China's Taiwan and Hong Kong, Bloomberg News reported.
"China has clearly been performing exceptionally well building middle-class wealth," Quinn said. The location in the Palace Hotel, one of Beijing's top lodging properties, should help Tiffany establish itself with business people and others, he said.
Tiffany will consider opening a store in Shanghai once the Beijing location is operating successfully, Quinn said.
Tiffany will have 128 company-operated stores by the end of the year, Chief Financial Officer James Fernandez said at a UBS Warburg investor conference on Friday in New York. During the second quarter, international retail sales accounted for about 41 percent of the company's US$371.3 million in revenue.
(eastday.com. November 5, 2001)
