When Even the Chinese Don’t Want “Made in China”
April 26th, 2012A British friend who works at a European lifestyle luxury brand maker in China told me how sales for their top of the line wares are not taking off the way they are in other countries in the Asia-Pacific region. Sales have been through the roof in South Korea, Japan and Thailand. China, though, is so-so.
“The problem,” my friend told me, “is the Chinese with money read the label and see ‘Made in China’. If they’ve already bought one of our products, they return it; if they haven’t bought it yet, they return it to the shelf.
“They simply don’t trust the quality of products made in China, and don’t understand how something made in China could be so expensive.” My friend went on to tell me that despite the designs being cutting edge and the highest quality fabrics used in clothing lines and the best materials in their appliances, the company is struggling to reach the sort of tipping point in purchases amongst China’s nouveau riche as they have in other Asian countries.
As I write in my upcoming book (Wiley & Sons, due out early summer 2012), “China Fast Forward: A Blueprint of the Technologies, Green Industries and Innovations Driving China’s Future”, Brand China has come to be associated in international markets with cheap, chintzy and unaccountable. Apparently, the Chinese think so, too.
I write in “China Fast Forward” how the most successful Chinese companies seeking their fortune in overseas markets actually remake their Made In China image into something Western, international-sounding, and bland; that is, innocuous. Others want to associate themselves with a strong Western national-brand image.
The Financial Times recently published an article about the growing haute couture business in China. Now, some high end domestic products aspiring brand-hood are designing clothes in Shanghai and having them manufactured in Italy. Just so they can have attached to them the Made in Italy label, with all the sense of style and attention to detail the image entails.
Of course, we don’t know where in Italy these wares are manufactured. An Italian neighbor of mine in China told me there are villages in Italy whose economies have been based for centuries in textile manufacture. “Now,” she told me, “there are more Chinese than locals in many of these villages.”
National brands in these days of global supply chains just aren’t what they used to be.






