International Marketing Study Program 2003
Egana Goldpfeil visit
7 January 2003
Tuesday the 7th of January saw the group travel by MTR to Egana Goldfeil's Hong Kong Head Office. Monash students received a warm welcome from a man in the hallway who later turned out to be from the Board of directors.
We received a tour of the offices, which not only housed white-collar workers within admin, accounts and marketing departments, but facilities capable of producing watches. The attention to detail was evident in the making of the time pieces, the craftsman barely noticing the students admiring their handiwork. We were also introduced to senior members of staff who briefly postponed a meeting to explain how they manage the world wide operation and cultural differences especially between the Hong Kong and German Offices.
Evelyn Cheung manager of Group admin and Personnel department gave us an introduction to Egana's portfolio of brands and a brief history of the company. The group was fascinated by the technology employed by Egana - with employees 'clocking on' with an 'Octopus' watch. This technology is prevalent throughout Hong Kong with a watch or card able to be swiped on a scanner to travel on the MTR, show attendance at work or even buy groceries at the local 7-11.
The Egana corporate mission is 'to be the leading, respected multi-brand powerhouse in the fashion accessory industry. Evelyn explained how Egana is broken down into 3 core divisions:
- Timepieces
- Jewellery
- Leather Goods
- Lifestyle Products
Egana is seeking to expand the 3rd category in the near future into new markets and improve the product range.Evelyn explained how Egana has embraced the 'Think Global, Act Local' marketing strategy - a must for a company trying to manage over 50 brands and offices in 12 countries.
We then had Uemran Oeztok, the Marketing Executive, gave us a presentation on one of the Egana's watch brands, Carrera. This was followed by a speech on one of the world's well-known brands, Esprit, by its General Manager of the Jewellery Design Department, Jeremy Smyth. The group was shown a perceptual map of where Carrera watches lie in relation to their competitors on the attributes of price and quality. The difficulty of expanding into new markets because of different business practices, government regulations and consumer behaviour was emphasised by their 'soft' push into China with Carrera watches. Having spent the past few days in the markets of Hong Kong the students had seen many knock offs of some of the Egana Brands. A question was posed 'Isn't imitation the greatest form of flattery?'. Jeremy was strong in rebutting this statement as while it is nearly impossible to police such behaviour in Asian Markets these inferior products have two negative effects on Egana:
- Revenue base, and
- Erosion of the brand image because of their low quality.
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