Hermès Returns to Tianjin After 12-year Hiatus
Hermès unveiled its 28th store in mainland China in Tianjin’s upscale shopping complex MixC on Wednesday.
It marks the brand’s return to the city after a 12-year hiatus. Hermès shuttered its store in the Tianjin branch of the Japanese department store Isetan in 2011, four years after it opened.
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The new store in the Nothern China coastal city, which is 30 mins away by high-speed train from Beijing, comes with a striking facade made of a dégradé of colorful, locally manufactured glazed ceramic bricks.
The brand said the new space emphasizes the Parisian house’s “commitment and cherished history with the region.”
The store carries a full range of products with an open floor plan. The main entrance hosts a selection of women’s silk products, while fashion jewelry, perfume and beauty products are on the right. After passing through the homeware section, customers will reach the women’s fashion, fine jewelry and watches area.
At the heart of the store stand the equestrian and leather collections, followed by the men’s fashion area, with its selection of shoes, accessories and silks, also accessible through a second entrance.
The store features 21 artworks, including contemporary photography from the Hermès collection and illustrations from Émile Hermès collection.
The brand hosted a ribbon-cutting ceremony and a cocktail reception for VIPs on Wednesday, according to posts on Xiaohongshu. For the opening, the brand put out rare items, such as a pink Kelly doll bag and a metal Kelly Morphose bag, to incentivize key customers to splurge on Thursday, when it opens to the public.
China was a key driver behind the brand’s robust performance in 2022, and the market continued its celebratory rebound with strong spending over the Chinese New Year holiday in the first quarter of 2023, when Hermès sales rose 23 percent to 3.38 billion euros.
China’s craze for Hermès bags could be seen during the latest edition of Art Basel Hong Kong, and the recent Sotheby’s auction of Hong Kong property tycoon Joseph Lau’s rare Hermès bags, which sold for more than $3 million.
Hermès has been upgrading and upsizing its stores in China to better cater to the fast-growing demand. In April, it unveiled the renovated and expanded store in The Peninsula Beijing, the site of the brand’s first store in mainland China, which opened in 1997.
The brand was said to have brought in at least 19 million renminbi, or $2.7 million, in sales on the reopening day of its flagship store in Guangzhou’s Taikoo Hui, at the beginning of the pandemic in April 2020.
The brand’s Wuhan store at the city’s mega luxury shopping mall Heartland 66 last year, meanwhile, reportedly raked in around 30 million renminbi, or $4.45 million, on opening day, according to users on Xiaohongshu. The two-floor store replaced the former Wuhan location at Wuhan International Plaza opened in 2012.
In January, the brand celebrated the reopening of its Nanjing store within Deji Plaza with an auspicious ceremony featuring a Taoist priest, dressed in a yellow robe and a traditional headpiece, reciting specific passages while holding burning incense, then kneeling before a table full of auspicious offerings to worship the god of wealth. The extensive ritual was widely discussed by Chinese netizens.
Tianjin is one of the three direct-administrated municipalities in China, with the other two being Chongqing and Shanghai. The city with a population of 13.8 million is the largest coastal city in Northern China and the seventh largest city in China. In 2022, the gross domestic product of Tianjin amounted to 1.63 trillion renminbi, ranking 11th place among all Chinese cities.
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