Up close and personal in travel retail
As the pictures confirm, the American beauty powerhouse’s brands remain in big demand and I suspect that CNY 2024 has contributed very significantly to honouring CEO Fabrizio Freda’s pledge to return to ‘normalised’ stock levels in the very near future.
Roger Wang is too much of a serial entrepreneur to stop with his Cognac brand. Look out for his exciting next move later this year. I won’t give the game away here but I predict he will have another big hit on his hands.
What a great occasion it was. One that perhaps marked Lotte Duty Free’s true coming of age as a world-class airport retailer outside its native land.
The perfectly served Aperol Spritz inspired me to play this lovely passing shot straight out of the Carlos Alcaraz handbook {Note: No passengers were harmed in the making of this photograph}.
I dined with two of our industry’s newer entrepreneurs, both classic encapsulations of the pride, passion and perseverance that goes into not only getting a business off the ground but also sustaining and growing it.
For a moment prospects of recovering my laptop seemed between slim and none. And slim, like my train, had just left town.
I recall to this day walking into a Waitrose supermarket in West London after I received the news and vowing to drink a good wine that night, a defiant toast to what I was perhaps illogically convinced would be a successful fight against the illness.
“What attracted me to the brand is that our customer is someone who is not a beauty junkie, per se, they actually want to really experience life.”
Roger Wang might have bought a winery such as this. But fate decreed that his choice would turn to another great love instead, Cognac.
Maison 21 G represents one of the most exciting new concepts I have seen enter the travel retail channel in many years.
The early days were a time when racism, being groped and propositioned daily, and other forms of workplace harassment were the norm, particularly given the attire the team was required to wear to represent clients.
As I went to set up my Interim Helsinki Bureau in the Finnair lounge I realised I had left my mouse (as in laptop accessory not rodent) on the plane. But help was close at hand,
“The fact I was ready to sleep under a bridge meant he probably thought there must be something behind this project because the guy was giving up the last thing he had.”