China News Service, Beijing, October 12 (Zuo Yuqing) According to foreign media reports, the luxury brand Dolce&Gabbana, which was almost "community dead" in China 3 years ago, will be in China in 2021. Sales volume rebounded by 20% year-on-year.
Dolce & Gabbana saved the hearts of Chinese consumers?
We went to the store and walked around.
According to the Dolce & Gabbana public account, the brand currently has 55 stores of various types in China.
And its flagship store, which was once located in Beijing Yintai Center, has been withdrawn in 2020. Except for the Wangfujing store, most of the remaining stores are concentrated in Beijing SKP malls.
During a visit on the 12th, China News.com noticed that almost none of the several stores in Beijing SKP mall were patronized, and only one store still had customers choosing clothes.
But on Dianping, its store information is not searchable.
Dolce & Gabbana is located in Beijing's SKP store, and customers are choosing clothes.
Photo by Zuo Yuqing
Bloomberg reported that Alfonso Dolce, CEO of Dolce & Gabbana, said that China's sales have rebounded by 20% from last year, but despite this, its
sales are still lower than before the "failure"
.
In China, the world's fastest-growing luxury goods market, the company "
has not fully recovered from the collapse of public relations caused by itself
."
And this "misconduct" and "collapse" began in 2018, when Dolce & Gabbana released a set of advertising videos "Eating with Chopsticks" on the eve of the Shanghai fashion show. The content was about a Chinese female model embarrassingly eating with chopsticks. Italian food, but this set of ads was regarded by many as "offensive" and caused dissatisfaction among Chinese consumers.
Dolce & Gabbana's controversial promotional video "Eating with Chopsticks".
Many netizens believe that the female model’s makeup, the strange way of eating Western food with chopsticks, and the commentary of “yin and yang” are not only full of “stereotypes” of Chinese and even Asians, but also show the brand’s face in the Chinese market. Arrogant attitude.
It was Stefano Gabbana, one of the founders of Dolce & Gabbana, who pushed public opinion to the top, in response to the accusations, publicly humiliating China and saying that "we live well without China."
Although Dolce & Gabbana's official Weibo said that the official Intragram account and Stefano Gabbana's Instagram account were stolen, Chinese netizens did not buy it.
Chinese celebrities who originally planned to participate in the fashion show have issued statements and refused to attend; their Asia-Pacific brand ambassadors Wang Junkai and Di Lieba have also issued statements successively announcing the termination of their contract with Dolce & Gabbana.
Dolce & Gabbana's official blog stated that the official Intragram account and Stefano Gabbana's Instagram account were stolen.
Under the storm of public opinion, Dolce & Gabbana was forced to cancel the fashion show that was going to be held in Shanghai at that time, and its brand was also resisted by Chinese consumers.
Even if the founder released a video after "stubbornly speaking" saying to apologize to all Chinese in the world, it still failed to restore the brand's declining trend in China.
The 2019 billionaire list released by Forbes shows that the two founders of Dolce & Gabbana both fell out of the list that year.
Prior to this, the two each entered the 2018 billionaire list with a value of $1.7 billion.
At that time, the Forbes website stated: “In any consumer category, the cost of infringing consumer trust is not as high as that of the luxury industry. The high value of a luxury brand lies mainly in its reputation. If a brand tarnishes this reputation, it will There is a real danger of losing'luxury'."
On November 23, 2018, the founder of Dolce & Gabbana released a video to apologize and said "I'm sorry" in Chinese.
Dolce & Gabbana is still trying to reshape its image and restore its relationship with the Chinese market.
Bloomberg reported that the brand did not want to lose the Chinese market and hired two "international crisis management companies" for this.
"In the social media storm after the incident, the brand
managed to retain existing customers in China, but it was difficult to win new customers
." Dolce told the media.
Just in June of this year, Karen Mok was wearing Dolce & Gabbana's costume in the new song MV, and the appearance of the model as an avatar also caused controversy. "Mok Dolce & Gabbana" topped the Weibo hot search list.
Subsequently, Karen Mok changed his avatar and deleted the relevant blog post content.
Dolce & Gabbana now has about 1,200 employees in China and plans to open a new boutique in Shanghai CITIC Plaza soon.
"In our promotional activities, we have been more cautious-lower-key," Dolce said. "We will continue to pay more attention to our visibility at the institutional level."
On the 12th, on the topic "Dolce & Gabbana's sales rebound in China this year", most netizens left messages that were still dissatisfied with the Dolce & Gabbana advertising incident, and some netizens questioned whether the sales figures were accurate?
What do you think about this?
(over)