Daniel Arsham Headlines First "Future of Luxury: Ecommerce in Asia" Conference

O n 29 March, Sotheby’s and Jing Daily will host an exclusive conference in Hong Kong. “The Future of Luxury: Ecommerce in Asia" will bring together global thought leaders in the luxury industry and create a meaningful conversation about ecommerce in Asia. Contemporary artist Daniel Arsham will also lead a special keynote session on the collaboration between luxury marketers and cultural content providers.

The half-day event coincides with Sotheby’s bi-annual Hong Kong sales series as well as Art Basel Hong Kong. Both events will take place simultaneously at the Hong Kong Convention Center.

1. How to win, serve and retain digitally savvy luxury consumers
2. The top risk luxury brands are making online
3. China’s soaring cross-border ecommerce market
4. Challenges Artificial Intelligence will raise for luxury brands

Daniel Arsham is a New York-based artist whose work explores the fields of fine art, architecture, performance, design and film. Raised in Miami, Arsham attended the Cooper Union in New York City where he received the Gelman Trust Fellowship Award in 2003. Soon thereafter Arsham toured worldwide with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company as the company’s stage designer. In 2008, Arsham co-founded Snarkitecture with architect Alex Mustonen. The studio's work includes installations, architectural environments and objects for a diverse range of clients such as Beats by Dre, Calvin Klein, COS, Design Miami, Gufram, Kith, New Museum, and Valextra. Arsham’s work has been shown at PS1 in New York, The Museum of Contemporary Art in Miami and The Athens Bienniale in Athens, Greece, among other institutions.

Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Center, Hall 5, 1 Expo Drive, Wanchai
29 March
9:30am–1:30pm: Luxury Conference

Luxury consumers are digitally savvy early adopters with high brand expectations, even more so than mainstream consumers. Despite much activity over the past year, luxury brands still have lots of ground to cover to create the exceptional omnichannel experiences that their luxury customers expect. How should luxury brands re-orientate around the customer, over products and channels, to successfully attract, serve and retain these empowered customers?

Moderator:

Josh Pullan is the Deputy Managing Director, Global Jewels & Watches Digital and New Initiatives and leads innovation, new selling models and strategic partnerships within the luxury space. During his time in New York, Josh launched Sotheby’s eCommerce businesses, which today exceed $200M in annual sales. Under his leadership, Sotheby’s has entered new verticals such as loose diamonds and experiences, as well as developing partnerships with some of the world’s leading luxury brands and designers. He has also launched several new operating models that drive cost out of the business and increase speed to market.

Panelists:

Kiki Fan is the Deputy General Manager of Tencent Advertising & Marketing Service with responsibility of leading major sponsorship and partnering initiatives for top brand advertisers. Kiki Fan is also the Deputy General Manager of Smart Retail Strategic Cooperation under the Tencent Cloud and Smart Industry Group, in charge of sales management of smart retail and the marketing cloud development centre.

Achim is the global leader of McKinsey’s apparel, fashion, and luxury group. He has a passion and deep expertise for both the fashion and luxury-goods industries. Over the past 15 years, he has advised numerous leading brands, retailers, wholesalers, and producers globally on a broad spectrum of issues. Through his extensive work in the industry, he has gained deep insights into the clothing, footwear, and accessories markets globally and built a wealth of expertise in a broad range of functional issues, including category strategies, key industry trends, and due diligence approaches.

Arthur Cohen is CEO and co-founder of LaPlaca Cohen, a leading strategic marketing and communications firm exclusively serving the needs of cultural and creative organizations. Cohen consults to creative organizations throughout the world, working with management, sponsors, board members, collectors, foundations, architects, planners and educators on audience development, brand and identity, and strategic planning initiatives.

At first glance, any luxury brand could be proud of itself for establishing an online presence in recent years on any of the busy ecommerce platforms serving the Chinese market. After a period of softness, the growth in China’s domestic luxury market in 2018 alone is expected to hit 20-22 percent.

But, as circumstances in luxury retailing and the digital marketplace change, luxury brands that bet everything on the sales from a single e-platform will soon find out that they have a non-viable formula for success in China. Consumers are increasingly seeking a different shopping experience therefore the trend in luxury retail is to create an integrated consumer journey--a smooth, logical, organic experience from digital to physical stores.

Moderator:

Daniel Langer is the founder and CEO of Équité, leading brand development and strategy firm focusing on luxury, lifestyle and consumer brands, serving clients in industries spanning from fashion, apparel, beauty, premium nutrition, services to luxury cars. He is an authority in luxury brand strategy, an award-winning brand builder with more than 20 years of top management experience. Daniel and his team create extreme value for clients across the globe, connecting global and local insights, strategies and trends with powerful data-driven digital tools.

David Goodman joined Sotheby’s in 2015 from The Madison Square Garden Company, where he was the President of Productions and Live Entertainment. In his new role as Sotheby’s Executive Vice President, Digital Development & Marketing, Mr. Goodman oversees worldwide marketing, events, advertising and editorial. He also serves as the company’s Chief Digital Officer, responsible for the company’s initiatives in the digital, mobile and social media worlds.

Judy Liu is a pioneer in digital technology, global operations and the world of e-commerce. She is the Managing Director of Greater China for Farfetch, overseeing the company’s growth in the region, overseeing all of Farfetch’s team in China across different functions including marketing, operations and product etc. With over 15 years’ experience, Judy is renowned and respected globally for her insight in successful business development, digital marketing and E-commerce ecosystem.

Panelists:

Edouard joined Morgan Stanley Research in 2009, where he heads the Luxury Goods team. Prior to covering the sector, Edouard headed the pan-European Food Retail team and was consistently number one ranked in the Extel and the Institutional Investor surveys. Between 2005 and 2009, Edouard worked on the buy-side from New York, covering the Luxury Goods and Retail sectors on a global basis. Prior to that, Edouard worked at Deutsche Bank in New York and London, in the consumer team. Edouard studied at Neoma and HEC in France.

Chinese consumers are increasingly e-shopping around the world. Sixty-seven percent of Chinese ecommerce consumers had a cross-border purchasing experience last year, a figure that was up sharply from 34 percent from the year before. The purchasing preference of Chinese overseas tourists has demonstrated a high level of similarity to the country’s cross-border shoppers. The cosmetics category was the most frequently purchased, followed by apparel & footwear, food, electronic products, and pharmaceutical products.

Moderator:

Renee has been focused on the China market since 2000, with a specialty in understanding and selling to the Chinese consumer. She has worked as a brand owner, retail operator, consumer researcher, public relations specialist and market entry strategist in China. Hartmann is co-founder of China Luxury Advisors, a boutique consultancy that helps brands develop China-related strategies, ranging from market entry to social media to attracting, converting, and retaining Chinese tourists.

Panelists:

Don Zhao is the co-founder of Azoya International. In 2013, Don co-founded Azoya International with Alex Huang in Shenzhen to focus on helping top-level retailers and brands to quickly enter the booming Chinese consumer market. With great passion in the e-commerce industry, Don is dedicated to reshaping the e-commerce & retail in and outside of China.

Kim Leitzes is the CEO and founder of PARKLU, China’s premier influencer marketing agency and platform with over 40,000 influencers across China's top social media apps. She is a first-time entrepreneur with eight years of experience in China’s ever-changing KOL marketing industry. Kim graduated from Wharton and previously worked with consumer, luxury and retail brands as an investment banker and strategy consultant before founding PARKLU in Shanghai.

A leading authority on Chinese consumer trends and influential professional for luxury brands as well as high-end retail development in the region, Andrew Wu was born and raised in Shanghai. After living in Canada 1980~1993, he returned as head of Dior cosmetics in China under LVMH to pioneer local luxury marketing and retailing between 1993~2000. During 2000~2005, he joined Sony Music Entertainment as its Vice President for Asia to develop the Chinese entertainment. He re-joined LVMH in 2005 as Group head of Greater China, since then overseeing rapid business evolution of LVMH’s 70+ brand portfolio in the Chinese marketplace and promoting the extraordinary Chinese consumer transformation.

Like it or not, artificial intelligence (AI) is going to take over the luxury industry, and some brands are already using AI in some of their new digital marketing campaigns. Brands need to anticipate this revolution and adapt their strategies as soon as possible, because the industry will crown winners and losers as quickly as the technology grows.

But AI is not simply a yellow brick road to financial success. There will be some key challenges for companies wanting to use AI, specifically ones that threaten the way they’ve been doing business for decades.

Moderator:

Yiling is Senior Editor of Jing Daily, the leading digital publication on luxury consumer trends in China. Her coverage of the Chinese luxury industry combines a native perspective with her background in economics and finance. She is passionate about demystifying the forces shaping the future of the luxury industry in China by bringing readers the latest news, analysis, features, and reports exploring developments in that landscape.

Panelists:

Ahmad Qamar is Director of Machine Learning (ML) at Sotheby's. He joined the company from Thread Genius, a startup focused on using ML to understand visual content, where he was co-founder and served as CTO. He was formerly a founding member of the ML team at Spotify that developed personalized recommendations and discovery experiences and is the sole-author on the patent for Discover Weekly’s algorithm. Ahmad is a University of Chicago graduate in Math and Physics, with peer-reviewed publications in physics, theoretical neuroscience, and ML.

Daniel Langer is the founder and CEO of Équité, leading brand development and strategy firm focusing on luxury, lifestyle and consumer brands, serving clients in industries spanning from fashion, apparel, beauty, premium nutrition, services to luxury cars. He is an authority in luxury brand strategy, an award-winning brand builder with more than 20 years of top management experience. Daniel and his team create extreme value for clients across the globe, connecting global and local insights, strategies and trends with powerful data-driven digital tools.