Paul&Shark CEO talks top-five global cities, says London is key

The opening of the Paul&Shark store on London’s Regent Street saw company CEO Andrea Dini in town to mark its debut in what the Italian exec says is one of the handful of primary shopping cities globally.

He has another strong reason for coming to London regularly (his daughter lives there). But the city’s ongoing status as a must-be-there destination appears to have survived the trauma of Covid, Brexit and the end of tax-free shopping for tourists post-Brexit. Fashionetwork.com caught up with him on one of his visits.

Fashionetwork.com: Why was it important to you to open a London store?

Andrea Dini: “All Italians love London. We have enormous respect for Great Britain and London specifically is an international city. It’s one of [only] five or six important international [shopping] cities in the world.”

FN: So what are the others? 

AD: “I would say Paris and New York. I would have said Hong Kong before Covid, but now Shanghai. But at the very top, I say Dubai. The acceleration of Dubai during Covid was tremendous, we have had stores there for many, many years. Turnover was stable then all of a sudden so many people moved to Dubai — going there because of very, very soft [Covid] regulations — as they had jobs that allowed you to work wherever you are. Many Indians, many Russians moved their families over there. And some commute because Mumbai to Dubai is only a two-hour flight. There is a saying in our market that any time Dubai isn’t one of your top three monobrand stores is because there is something wrong in the store — the management, the location — because across all brands, Dubai has to be in there.” 

FN: None of those top cities you named are Italian, are cities there still important to you?

AD: “[In Italy] we have a lot of good cities but not yet at the level of other capital cities. For example, Milano is the fashion capital of menswear, but it doesn’t have the marketing reputation of London.”

FN: What is it about London that’s so strong and why did you choose Regent Street, rather than Knightsbridge, Bond Street or Covent Garden, all of which might have suited your brand?

AD: “London is a very interesting city, a very special ‘marketing tool’. To have such a lovely store at the upper part of Regent Street, I think we will benefit, not only from the point of view of turnover but also from an image point of view. London is one of the very few cities where I strongly believe you have both. We did a lot of research and we asked for suggestions from people who live and work in our business in London. The end result was Regent Street, especially this upper part where there is a combination of quality and quantity. Bond Street, for instance, is fantastic but the traffic is low. If you have the right brand for Bond Street you don’t need the volume of customers a day, you need five spending £40,000 each one! Our average ticket is different, not too high, not too low. It’s a premium-to-luxury brand so my fear was that Bond Street traffic would have been a little bit too low.

“This part of Regent Street  has a wonderful combination of an excellent image but also the traffic. It was not easy to find. We had an extremely good real estate agent from CBRE, but we looked for one year at many, many different directions. Then our agent called me and said ‘come and look. Lacoste is moving, but you have to be very fast. The Crown Estate [Regent Street’s landlord] loves Paul&Shark and would welcome us very much here’. So I jumped on a flight. I like the Crown Estate concept — one area, one owner, it’s like a mall. It’s the first time In my life I see this. In Italy a street like this would have 200 different owners. Because this is one owner they sent us a very big ‘bible’ of what we could do and not do. At first we were annoyed by this, but we saw that if all of us respect the very strong rules, the street is nice!”

FN: The store looks very different from previous Paul&Shark locations.

AD: “The design is by an architect firm based in Milano. I engaged them for the new concept for modelling all our new stores. The new concept was to make the store far lighter in terms of furniture.  We used to have quite a heavy look, but now everything is changing. Covid was a tremendous accelerator of the changes within our company — its only good aspect — and I wanted a much lighter design, but keeping some of the heritage of the brand. For example, wood is part of that, but whatever you see in ‘wood’ here is [mostly] not wood. It’s made from recycled and leftover cotton and wool, plus ceramic powder, so this is sustainable.”

FN: What has the initial response to the store been like?

AD: “The response has been good but the weather surprised us. It was pretty warm so maybe we should have had a lighter offer. But very good. What has been interesting is that the customer changes depending on the hours of the day. For example, I was told by the store manager that Middle Eastern [customers] — an important part of every store performance — only arrive after 6 o’clock but the general tourist moves around more randomly.”

FN: How many stores do you have in total?

AD: “Directly managed 15, plus 150 franchised. In Italy, we are in the ‘art’ cities — Venice, Milan, Verona, Florence, Rome [just recently opened and very pleased with it]. Then we have Porta Del Mare, one of the most summer resorts area and Cortina, one of the most important winter resort areas.”

FN: And your future store plans?

AD: “Next for monobrand stores for 2024 are Madrid and New York. I think we should reopen in New York where we were [before] but decided to close it during Covid because the landlord was not cooperating in sharing the burden of such as disaster. Probably soon we will be in Shanghai because traffic is moving in that direction.”

FN: Will you continue operating in Hong Kong given the problems faced there in recent years?

AD: “We used to have three stores in Hong Kong and now we’re down to one and I think we can absolutely keep it. We are about to redo it with the new concept. Italy has already rolled out the new concept. It took us a year to do it, because we only try to do it in the lowest turnover months. For Hong Kong we will do it after Chinese New Year when the market is quieter.”