Year of the Ox starts off bullish

Photo credit: 24carat

So there we have it...the Chinese Ministry of Commerce announced that retail sales over the week long CNY period were up 13.8% vs last year! Of course, I do recall a country paralysed by the snow storms last year but nevertheless, that's pretty good news. The winners were brands offering smart promotions and real value / gift-sets ie, big elaborate boxes to gain the giver lots of face. Walk into a Carrefour and alongside your expected chocolate and fruit gift baskets, you see everything ranging from gift sets of Huggies nappies, Quaker rolled-oats and even Centrum vitamins. The importance of the gifting market cannot be underestimated, infact more than 50% of fragrance sales are for gifting purposes - let that be a guide for your marketing & sales strategies.

Local house-hold appliance brands also benefited this season, helped by government subsidies to farmers of up to 13% of the price. In China although favourite brands are rapidly becoming Nokia, Nike and Apple, homes are still filled with Midea, Haier and Skyworth. After all, household appliances do not really lend themselves well to ostentation.

To top all of that everyone is definitely still spending on communications - with 18 billion text messages sent in the holiday week!