Louis Vuitton brings more luxury to capital

Jean-Baptiste Debains, president of Louis Vuitton Asia-Pacific, told VIR’s Linh Hien that the move showed Louis Vuitton’s confidence in the glamourous potential of  Vietnam.

>> Louis Vuitton opens new store in Hanoi

Louis Vuitton decided to open a second store in Hanoi, why not in the metropolis that is Ho Chi Minh City?

We opened the first store in Hanoi Sofitel Legend Metropole Hanoi 16 years ago. It is the first Louis Vuitton store in Vietnam and one of the first luxury brands to come to the Vietnamese market. We had another important step when we opened the second store in Ho Chi Minh in 2007. For the new store in Trang Tien Plaza, we believe we have found the right place for luxury brands for local buyers and tourists.

Many tourists, domestic and foreign, travel to Hanoi and they all look for good hospitality, hotels, good food and a number of them also look for luxury shopping. So I think we are a part of this experience.

How many stores is Louis Vuitton targeting for Vietnam? Will Danang become your next choice for new stores as the city is a Vietnam’s fast-emerging attractive tourism destination?

In the long-term, I cannot tell howmany stores we will have here. In the short-term we will stay with what we have today, so as to work better with what we have. Generally, we think we have quite good coverage of the region and it’s also true so far for Vietnam. We are very happy to have good presence in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City. We will look at what’s happening, but the priority is to work better with what we have in Vietnam and also the Asian region.

Danang is very interesting and actually three years ago we went to Danang and saw beautiful beaches and resorts that are now developing very quickly there. We hope to come back Danang next year to see what’s happening and maybe someday we will open a store in this central city.

In 2008, Yves Carcelle, former chairman and CEO of Louis Vuitton, was quoted by local media as describing Vietnam as “a new dragon” and Louis Vuitton had registered a 300 per cent growth in revenue in Vietnam in 2007. Has Louis Vuitton kept that strong growth over the past five years in Vietnam?

We cannot give the number. I just can tell that our business has been great, otherwise we would not gather today to celebrate the opening of this new store.

Is it the right time to open new luxury brand shops in Vietnam in the context of the economic downturn?

I see that despite the slowdown, the Vietnamese economy is continuing to grow at quite fast pace and a lot European countries would be very happy to have such a level growth. We have been here for a long time and the local economy does not always grow at the same pace. However, we have had good performance in Vietnam and that’s why we opened such a big new store in the country.

Vietnam has emerged as an attractive destination for the production of famous brands like Nike and Lacoste because of its cheap-labour cost and political stability. Would Louis Vuitton set up its own production facility in Vietnam?

Our production base is in France for leather goods and we also have factories in Italy, Spain and in the US. I know some other brands including luxury ones are doing manufacturing in Vietnam, but not for Louis Vuitton.