Belgian bagmaker Delvaux opens largest flagship in Beijing

By

Benjamin Fitzgerald

Published
Jan 6, 2017

Belgian luxury brand Delvaux has recently opened a new store in Beijing, marking the start of retail expansion in the Chinese luxury market.

Located in the trendy north section of Taikoo Li in Sanlitun, the new Delvaux store is the largest retail location in China, joining two other stores in Shanghai and Hangzhou.

The two-story boutique features an upstairs showroom with white walls and shelving, as well as white couches to offer a blank slate for affluent clients to browse the candy-colored spring/summer collection. Most of the bags are re-imaginings of shapes and styles Delvaux has used for decades.

Until the Beijing flagship debut, Delvaux’s only Beijing locations were small boutiques in Galeries Lafayette and the Yintai Center.

The old-world European brand has surprisingly been a favourite among Chinese millennials, according to CEO Marco Probst.

“Our Chinese clients were a big learning curve for us in the beginning when we started out here,” Probst told a leading Chinese daily. “We learned pretty quickly that you can have a 20-year-old girl buying a bag for $20,000, so the customer profile pretty much changed, putting their average age down to 25 to 30. Chinese clients are completely open and they learn so quickly.”

Delvaux was founded in 1829, and opened its first boutique in Hong Kong in 2014 after being acquired by a Hong Kong investment group Fung Brands in 2011.