Luxury fashion giant Louis Vuitton will open its Bucharest store in the first week of June, after an investment worth over one million euros. The store will have a retail area of around 130 square metres and will be located inside Marriott Hotel.
"We have been looking at Bucharest for along time, as it is one of the capitals in Eastern Europe, an area with very dynamic economies, which has significant growth rates," Philippe Schaus, international senior vice-president of Louis Vuitton told ZF. A Louis Vuitton team had travelled to Bucharest regularly since 2006, meeting with real estate companies and trying to get to know the city in order to find the best place for the store, considering that, as far as the French company is concerned, location is of prime importance.
"We know that a number of Romanians have been buying Louis Vuitton products from other stores, such as in France, Switzerland and Austria, but we have waited until now because we could not find a suitable place," Schaus says, who after his visits to Bucharest expresses surprise at the lack of a designated shopping avenue like in the West. Schaus admits that a hotel is not an ideal long-term solution for Louis Vuitton stores, but for now it is the only appropriate location in a city where the luxury market is still young.
"We looked on Calea Victoriei and on other boulevards in Bucharest but chose the Marriott because it is a visually safe and controlled environment, where you know who your neighbours are and do not risk having a sex shop open next door."
However, Schaus does not rule out the possibility that Louis Vuitton will one day move onto Calea Victoriei, or downtown, if municipal authorities manage to develop the area- i.e. introduce car parks, better access, environment quality, control over which stores open in what area, etc.
"We are very pleased with our location for now, because we are not looking for quantity but quality in terms of traffic," Philippe Schaus says. "We opened in a lower traffic yet more elegant area in Budapest, too. For instance, when you go to India you don't look for a high-traffic area because that would be completely pointless."
The store in Bucharest will sell products from the Louis Vuitton range of leather items (with only slight differences compared with what one can find in London or Paris), whilst prices will be slightly higher than in Paris, but similar to those in neighbouring countries, Schaus explains, citing transport costs. Louis Vuitton will also offer its famous personalised service in Bucharest, where a customer can design their own travel trunk based on their requirements and tastes.
The item is then made at the workshop in Asnieres (a Parisian suburb) never to be duplicated, which thus warrants the product's uniqueness.
Besides leather goods, Louis Vuitton will also sell its range of footwear and accessories (belts, wallets) in Bucharest, but may expand its product range to jewellery or ready-to-wear collections in three to five years.
"Romanians have quite similar tastes to Italians or French, so we will introduce similar collections. On the other hand, I find Romanians are more fashion conscious than even Westerners, and have very modern tastes, they are not afraid of novelty," Schaus adds.
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