After the success in Europe, Swedish lifestyle brand Richmond & Finch is launching in greater China.
Richmond & Finch specialises in high-end smartphone cases and its products are now sold in more than 50 countries. In Hong Kong, the brand has gone on sale in the Harvey Nichols department store at Landmark – and Richmond & Finch plans a standalone store in Shanghai in the fourth quarter of this year.
Director of Asia, Oliver Spring, says Richmond & Finch has been “amazingly well-received by millennials in Asia”.
“Richmond & Finch’s phone cases stand out from the crowd with their distinctive wraparound metal border which spans across the case, together with the metal ring around the camera. This is their invention, bred from our creative spirit and together with the original and contemporary colour schemes and designs of our cases define our artistry.”
Founded in 2014, it is the fastest-growing mobile brand with over 500,000 products sold within 12 months and 65,000 followers on Instagram.
“It is a unisex brand, carefully created to go hand-in-hand with current fashion trends and it offers a fresh collection each season.
“Accessible Luxury is up and coming. We are targeting the millennials in Asia and their hunger for Swedish design and lifestyle is unstoppable. We are the first tech-accessory brand that is truly fashionable,” said Spring.
“What we see is a massive shift: fashion retailers are becoming more tech, tech retailers are becoming more fashionable. We could almost use the buzzword “Fashion-Tech” in that sentence!
“Our focus will be the expansion in the Chinese market. We will be launching soon a broader range of products to create a holistic product universe and brand storytelling.”
“Ultra luxury consumers are trading down and the aspirational mainstream are trading up. That makes accessible luxury the new growth sector, especially with the bulging upper middle class populations in China, India and Southeast Asia.”
Spring says business travellers have become discerning and brand conscious, stylish millennials and young professionals are making more upscale choices and self-expression makes buyers seek less pervasive labels.
Spring says the brand ultimately wants to evolve into a multi-product travel retail label.
