Diesel unveils retail expansion plans

Fashion brand Diesel is ramping up its global expansion, with plans to open an 80sq m standalone store in Haikou Meilan International airport in the Hainan district to complement its recent opening in Panama Tocumen International airport’s retail plaza.

The retail expansion marks an exciting period for the company, with also another shop in shop opening planned at the end of the year at Tel Aviv Ben Gurion airport with JR Duty Free. The Italian brand is also to undergo a refit of its boutique outlet inside Qatar Duty Free’s Junction store at Hamad International airport.

Head of Travel Retail Michele Turrin was very enthusiastic about the company’s expansion prospects: “Historically Japan has been our strongest market and in China we have plans of further developing our existing stores network both in domestic and travel-retail. Haikou is one of these projects” he told DFNIonline.

“Middle East travel-retail is interesting with new developments in the region. We opened last year in Doha with a very successful POS in Qatar Duty Free Junction fashion store. We’re also looking very seriously at the Midfield Terminal in Abu Dhabi. We’re confident we can do well in the GCC [Gulf Cooperation Council] where we have nearly 40 domestic stores, the brand is well positioned and enjoys a good reputation.”

The company says it is also in discussions with some key airports to deploy pop-up store units, although Diesel did not mention who and in which location when DFNIonline pressed on this issue.

Diesel has had a successful retail operation in travel-retail. Its innovative product, the JoggJeans, has had superb traction in this space, representing already around 20% of an average turnover at Diesel’s travel-retail stores. Its dominance of the denim market is also profound, with the JoggJeans, in some locations, representing up to 60% of the jeans category turnover – and around 30% of its travel-retail store sales.

“Usually denim is considered a difficult sell, but because of the strength of the brand, the denim category has achieved unexpected high sales at all of our stores. We initially thought not to dedicate denim as much space to an airport location, but after analysing the results we slightly changed our formats to accommodate enough space in this category. We are “masters of denim” and our JoggJeans represent our USP in the market.”