Launching Asia’s first authenticated Italian Murano art glass store inside the Galaxy Macau, the CEO of the Italian-founded Ma.re gallery, Tommaso Manzoni, told Business Daily in an interview that local demands for luxury art glass products may still need some time to grow as the city’s Chinese tourists may not have fully realized the values behind it. Nevertheless, he believes Macau is a good platform for his business to develop this and other Asian markets Why would you choose Macau as the first stop to expand your business in Asia? When we were in Italy, we sold a very nice piece of art glass to a client from Macau. We talked with this client, we asked the client whether there was something about Murano glass being sold in Macau at that time and he told us no. Hence, we thought that coming here to open a store would be a good idea. In fact, before that, we had been thinking to expand our business to the Asian market for several years. And we think Macau will be a very good opportunity for us. What does Macau bring to your business compared to other big Asian cities, like Hong Kong? Macau does not only attract us by its casinos and hotels. We think that Macau is actually a very good platform for us to step into other Asian markets, as it is easy to reach other nearby cities via Macau. Meanwhile, it also provides other advantages for our business, for example, Macau is a free port, which brings us advantages in terms of taxes. When we ship our products, we don’t encounter customs problems that we may face in the Mainland China, where taxes are very high too. How was the process of the brand here? How long did it take? It took about one year and a half before we officially launched the store. For that year, I came to Macau just for couple of weeks, staying in an hotel and then went back in Italy. I did some examination during that period to test the feedback in the local market by showing our products to local customers. Meanwhile, I officially moved to Macau last October… Before the launch of our store, we also participated in MIF (Macau International Trade and Investment Fair), MGS (the Macao Gaming Show) as well as some other exhibitions in the Venetian Macau to see local reactions. We met Galaxy [representatives] during the MIF. Some managers of the company saw our products for the exhibition, which has led us to open a store in Galaxy. Why do you think Galaxy is suitable for launching your business, compared to other casinos or street shops? First of all, we think that the potential in big-scale shopping malls is much higher than street shops. Meanwhile, the shopping mall of the phase II of Galaxy is like a luxury street providing different kinds of high-end products, and we think this totally matches our products. How about the rent in Galaxy? Of course, in big property like this, the rent is quiet expensive. However, on the other hand, they can help us a lot in terms of promotion and advertising with different campaigns. In fact, for us, this is more like an investment, as you know, we are not a very famous fashion brand, like Louis Vuitton that has stores all around the world. Through such investment, we hope to gain our influence in the future. What are the other difficulties of introducing the Italian art glass to the city? One of the major problems we face is to teach our staff here how to manage our glass. It is because this kind of art glass is not that popular in the local market, we have to teach our staff how to move, how to touch, how to clean, and how to wrap when clients want to take them away. Meanwhile, in terms of shipping, there is no problem at all as we are very used to shipping our products worldwide. We have a team in charge of this. We usually ship our products by sea which takes around 35 days, but we can also ship by air if clients urgently want something, which of course, will be more expensive. Which kinds of your products are the most popular for the Asian market? Well, they all love [glass] about animals, like birds, jellyfish, turtles and etc. In fact, we have also started to design some dragon-related products for the Asian market. What’s the price range for your products? We have a very wide range of products with different prices. The store we have here is a bit small that we cannot show all our products. On the Macau [Peninsula], we have a very big warehouse that stores bigger sizes of products. Our products range from MOP200 for a rose, MOP600 for maybe a drinking glass to some masterpiece that costs MOP1 million. Is the warehouse on the Peninsula side opened to public as well? We only open the warehouse for appointments and for private clients. The warehouse in Macau runs like this , for example, if clients see a chandelier here in the Galaxy store and they want to see more, we will bring them to the warehouse. Demands primarily from SARs How are the demands to such kind of art products in the local market? From what I’ve observed, most of our local Macau clients and those from Hong Kong have already known about Murano glass as they may have been to Italy and they know about these glass art products. They appreciate the products much more than most of the Mainland Chinese tourists at this moment. We can see that people from the Mainland may not understand these products. From how they touch them, you can see that they have no idea about where these are from. As such, your major clients are from Macau and Hong Kong? Yes, people from Macau and Hong Kong are our major customers at the moment, as well as other tourists from Asia, such as Singaporean and Malaysian. We have some Mainland Chinese clients sometimes, of course. But that proportion is not that big. I think it will take us more time to teach them to understand the values of the Murano glass. Mainland Chinese are not your major customers despite the fact that they are the city’s major source of tourists… Yes, for these few months. Hong Kong and Macau clients are more familiar with such kinds of art pieces so it is easier for them to see a piece and then buy it for decorating their houses. But Chinese tourists may not care about [such art pieces] as much as the Hong Kong or Macau clients do. They may prefer spending the same amount of money on a fashion bag or a watch. Hence, as I said, it will really take some period of time to see growth in the demands from the Mainland Chinese. The high-end retail market of Macau and Hong Kong are experiencing downturn due to Chinese tourists spending less in general. Does it affect your business when your major customers are not Mainland Chinese? Still yes, of course. Frankly, I agree that we did not open our store during the best time of Macau in the history. It is a bit quiet [in the shopping mall] as there are fewer Chinese tourists. We hope the situation would improve and get better next year. It’s been some six months after your store was launched. Have the demands met your initial expectation and have they increased? To be honest, we were expecting a bit more. And we actually saw the opposite [that the demands have decreased.] During the opening of Galaxy Phase II, there were more people and [the shopping mall] was busier. Probably affected by the situation in Mainland China and the economy there, it is quieter than the beginning. However, I don’t think this only happens in Galaxy. I have some friends doing businesses in other local casinos and they told me the situation is the same. What are your current marketing strategies to attract more clients? We are now eyeing on the Hong Kong market more as it is a very huge one. In my opinion, if we can achieve good performance for the Hong Kong segment, the products will be more easily adopted by Mainland Chinese clients… Meanwhile, we will also try to attract more Chinese clients, to educate them more about the values of these art pieces. For that, we are thinking to bring some artists here to do some demonstrations, hoping to let more people know the values and the history about such kinds of art products. These pieces are not for souvenirs, they are more like investment, as the values can well go up. Are you planning to open more stores in the city? Macau is quite small thus we think one store is enough for the local market for this moment. In fact, I would like to expand our business to Hong Kong but the rent there is also not so easy. Singapore will also be a nice destination for our products. There are different places in Asia which are very nice for us to open our business. Do you have a timetable for the expansion plan? We don’t have the timetable at this moment. We need to see how the business will be for the next year here in Macau. We are planning to open for franchising to other local stores, or for stores in other cities. Are you confident in the prospect of your business in Macau? Yes, I am. After all, the advantage of our business is that our products are unique in the local market. There is no other shop selling the same things as we do. We are the only one. If we can make a very good marketing, especially if we are able to attract more Mainland Chinese clients, we will for sure achieve success.
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