Laurence Levy is the CEO of French ballet shoe company Repetto has made growth in China a top priority for 2023 and she sees travellers from the world’s second-largest economy as a golden opportunity to build brand awareness.
“By doing an excellent job in communicating our French luxury heritage to Chinese tourists coming to our flagship store, we can create a halo effect for our activities in China,” she said in an interview with Alizila.
China’s reopening in January was welcome news to many European fashion labels. Before the pandemic, Chinese shoppers made a third of luxury purchases globally and two-thirds of those purchases happened outside China.
“This potential is just huge and it’s just the beginning for the Chinese luxury market and for us at Repetto,” said Levy, who joined the brand last year.
Repetto is taking a multi-pronged approach to expansion in China. It has managed physical stores in some of mainland China’s best-known high-end shopping areas since 2013, and Chinese tourists were among the top visitors to its Parisian boutiques before the pandemic.
Repetto upped the ante in February last year by launching an online store on Alibaba Group’s business-to-consumer digital marketplace Tmall, a move Levy calls a “game-changer”.
The brand is also making inroads into the booming athleisure market, where fashion melds with sportswear. Repetto is using its technical expertise in dancewear to make the more relaxed and comfortable style of clothes that women have preferred since the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic.
“Ballet helps us know perfectly the body of a woman and the technical aspects of materials. Ballet gives me strength, a unique competitive advantage,” said Levy.
Levy also sees the trend as a way to reach new customers in China.
“Our customers come mostly from Tier 1 cities such as Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou. We have a lot of potential to reach more cities and age groups, but that’s where we are starting from,” she said.
Another powerful lift comes from the ballerina-inspired ‘balletcore’ aesthetic, grounded in the re-emergence of ballet flats as chic and comfortable urban footwear. “The ballerina is back on trend,” said Levy.
In the West, celebrity fans such as Lily-Rose Depp and Katie Holmes sparked the adoption of ballet flats, while in Asia, Korean pop star Jennie Kim led the way.
