When Cartier bought out his teacher's workshop, he thought business would now go very well. The shop and workshop were located in a working-class district where it was easy to find employees.
But as soon as Cartier had the opportunity, the first thing he did was move to Rue de la Paix, where the best fashion houses and hotels of Paris were already nearby. The move opened access to the aristocracy and wealthy foreigners: the street itself became a marketing channel. The workshop, which supplied jewelry for sale anywhere, began to develop as a real brand.
There is also such a concept as business clustering. You've probably noticed that jewelry stores in a city are located on the same street?
The essence of clustering is paradoxical: competitors strengthen each other if they are nearby. Jewelers were the first to understand this: they clustered their stores and formed a point of attraction for wealthy audiences who came specifically to shop. That is, they acted on the principle of 'someone will buy from someone.' In addition, jewelry quarters helped customers protect themselves from fakes, because in any back alley any fool could sell fakes, but only those with at least some name in the jewelry world were allowed into the quarter.
Successful clusters also attract other businesses, smaller but ambitious, which locate around and begin to feed on the energy (read: the remnants of money in buyers' wallets) of the quarter. This is how cool urban stories and places where citizens love to go and spend time emerge. This is how Silicon Valleys, Skolkovo, Wall Street, and, forgive me Lord, Patriki appeared.
The principles of place branding still work today. If you want to sell, carefully look at your neighbors and who the cluster attracts. Know your target audience well. If you don't know either the target audience or the districts of Moscow, ask me—I've eaten a couple of pretty bitter dogs on this.
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