Page 21 - Sphere No.16 (Apr 2006)

and an ever-increasing pool of ambitious
entrepreneurs, go-ahead individuals who
long ago traded in black, one-speed Fly-
ing Pigeon bicycles for Mercedes Benz
limos, Buick sedans (built at the new
USD1.5 billion General Motors plant)
and even Ferraris and Porsches.
Yet for all this pell-mell modernisa-
tion, conducted at a pace that must make
it the fastest-changing city of all time, the
nation’s commercial capital has managed
to preserve many of the prime real es-
tate assets that so captivate people from
overseas. Snuggled in among the cloud-
touching buildings are streets lined by
English, French and German-style vil-
las, built during the early 20th century
to recreate a slice of the Old Country for
homesick expatriates.
The Bund is now home to a Giorgio
Armani boutique, gourmet restaurants
and art galleries. It is a kind of one-stop
shop for the new breed of local yuppies
who are not in the least bit intimidated
by paying USD1,500 for an Italian suit or
USD200 for a French gourmet meal.
Urban regeneration
Those self-same individuals, who have
made their money through entrepre-
neurial ingenuity, or risen to senior exec-
utive level as employees, are demanding
higher standards in all aspects of their
lives, insisting on offices and homes that
are designed, built and managed to inter-
national levels.
Hutchison Whampoa Properties has
been able to capitalise on this expectation
of excellence, building and managing a
portfolio of up-market properties that
includes offices, malls and residential de-
velopments. Well-heeled Shanghainese
willingly splash their cash on quality real
estate and the suburban villas beloved
of the new rich sell for between USD1.5
million and USD4.5 million.
“The buyers are people who have accu-
mulated wealth and want some improve-
ment in their quality of life,” explainedHu-
bert Shea, General Manager of Hutchison
Whampoa Properties (Shanghai). “They
tend to be entrepreneurs who have set up
their own business, or senior executives
with a local or multinational company.
“People realise that we can offer qual-
ity and a product that is of international
standards, benchmarked by our projects
in Hong Kong, London and other coun-
tries. We also have strong management
and customer service back-up - property
is a very competitive area and that makes
us different from our rivals.”
Already up and running are projects
that include Walton Plaza, an office-
apartment block, Westgate Mall shop-
ping mall and Westgate Tower offices,
The Summit apartment towers, the Cen-
ter office block, Seasons Villas and Re-
gency Park, featuring luxurious villas
with a prestigious clubhouse. A further
six major developments, comprising a
similar mix of commercial and residen-
tial properties, are on the way.
Forward-looking Shanghai authorities
are now planning another wave of urban
regeneration in time for the city’s hosting
of the 2010 World Expo, two years after
the capital, Beijing, stages the first-ever
Olympic Games in the Middle Kingdom.
SPHERE 19
THE WOMEN of Shanghai are
renowned as keen followers
of fashion, fussy to the point
of fastidious when it comes to their
personal appearance.
Boom times in the city have allowed
the newly-affluent generation of twen-
ty and thirty-something women to
finesse that natural style to an even
more sophisticated degree.
This is the first generation of Chi-
nese females to have the financial inde-
pendence to be able to splurge money
on clothes and cosmetics.Their moth-
ers and grandmothers grew up during
the darker periods of China’s recent
history, when interest in fashion was
considered to decadent and – worse
still – deeply bourgeois.
Today’s young office ladies have no
such constraints and they are exercising
their new-found spending power vigor-
ously. Brand-name boutiques abound
in the city, as do branches of Watsons
Your Personal Store, where beauty
products are flying off the shelves.
Rod Routley, General Manager for
Eastern China, is in charge of 30Wat-
sons Your Personal Stores in the city,
and will be supervising the opening of
at least 15 more during the next year.
“You are looking at a real uplift in
demand for skin care and cosmet-
ics,” he said. “There is a lot of inter-
est in new and innovative products;
many items that have been available
in the international market for some
time are now making their debut in
China. Shanghai is becoming more in-
ternational and is leading the way in
China. People here, while still price
conscious, are more interested in
newness and innovation. Our target
customers are young women aged 18
to 35 and their uptake of new prod-
ucts tends to be stronger. They have
the spending power and want to fol-
low the latest trends.”
Detailed information about many
of the brands sold by Watsons Your
Personal Store can be found on the
editorial pages of magazines such as
Vogue China.The fashion bible’s China
edition was launched last year, with
the first issue a 300,000 sellout.
It aims to educate modern Chinese
women about everything from fashion
and skin-care creams to lipstick and
mascara.
“Young Chinese women really want
expert guidance on what to wear, and
how to wear it, whether it is cosmet-
ics or clothes,” said chief editor An-
gelica Cheung. “Our health and beau-
ty section is a very popular part of the
magazine – there is a huge hunger for
information.
“Our readers are affluent and dis-
cerning, they want to buy the very lat-
est products and have the money to
do so. Many of them work for foreign
companies, still live at home, and have
the income to buy designer clothes
and brand-name cosmetics.”
That demand is likely to grow rap-
idly as the nation becomes richer and
richer, with more and more of its 1.3
billion people able to afford luxury
and health-care products. Shanghai, as
A.S.Watson and other retailers have
discovered, is a perfect city to roll out
new stores, products and concepts ...
people there just can’t get enough of
the new.
HELPING SHANGHAI LOOK GOOD