French accessories firm eyes local market

EXECUTIVES of Kor Landa Corp., a French company exporting fashion accessories based in the Mactan Export Processing Zone, are opening an outlet in its factory to penetrate the local market.

“This is where we want to focus although Russia in Europe is still fast growing, we think now is the best time to start looking at the local market especially here in the Philippines,” said Jean Daniel Christin, Kor Landa’s chief executive officer.

Christin said they decided to open the outlet in Nov. 18 after seeing a shift of market demand from Europe to the Asian market especially the Philippines.

He said that over the years they have been marketing their products under their two brands–Nature and Franck Hervel–in Europe and other countries but since the economic crisis, they are seeing more growth in Asia.

Kor Landa also has distributors in Japan, Australia, Spain and Russia.

“The outlet will be within the factory and it will have displays of the products from both brands,” he said.

They will study the trends in terms of the kind of products mostly bought by the locals in one year time and then they will decide if they’d setup a separate brand that will focus on the local demand.

“We are thinking about that but that will depend on what we will find out because if you have a brand, you really can’t do one thing and then do another. So we’ll see,” he said.

Christin said that they are confident they can get the local market to like their products because they already have the creative talent pool in their organization.

31 creative people

“We have a total of 31 creative people working for us so we have the creative people already and what we need is the local market. The outlet will help us know the local market which is a new market for us since we’re French and France is our domestic market,” Christin said.

Christin added that they are also planning to partner with the Department of Tourism to help them promote their outlet. /Reporter Aileen Garcia-Yap