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Bloomingdale's Lays Out Welcome Mat To Chinese Shoppers

To mark the Lunar New Year, Bloomingdale's is catering to affluent Chinese tourists with an array of pop-up shops.
Courtesy of Bloomingdale's
To mark the Lunar New Year, Bloomingdale's is catering to affluent Chinese tourists with an array of pop-up shops.

A number of luxury retailers are rolling out tactics this year to mark the beginning of the Lunar New Year. For Bloomingdale's in New York City, though, reaching out to Asian shoppers during the cultural celebration is a decades-long tradition.

The upscale department store's marketing strategy traces back to 1971, the year President Nixon lifted the U.S. trade embargo with the People's Republic of China. Immediately, Marvin Traub, then-president of Bloomingdale's, decided he wanted to sell Chinese goods in his flagship store on the Upper East Side.

"Bloomingdale's was the first store in the United States that had an event that was totally devoted to Chinese products and Chinese traditions and Chinese craftsmanship," says Michael Gould, Bloomingdale's current chairman and CEO.

The "China Passage" boutique Traub envisioned opened in the fall of 1971, and caused a sensation in New York. Customers poured in to buy housewares, crafts and even Mao suits and caps made on the mainland.

A display window celebrates the Year of the Snake at Bloomingdale's flagship store in New York City.
/ Courtesy of Bloomingdale's
/
Courtesy of Bloomingdale's
A display window celebrates the Year of the Snake at Bloomingdale's flagship store in New York City.

Now, Gould says, Bloomingdale's is just as interested in having sales go the other way. The store is attracting affluent visitors from Asia by creating a retail environment that caters to their interests and culture. Chinese tourists, especially, he says, have become as desirable in America as American tourists once were in Europe.

"All one has to do is walk the streets of Paris, or walk into Galeries Lafayette or Printemps, or even Harrods or Selfridges in London, and see how the Chinese have really gone there," Gould says. "You can see they've gone to where it's easy."

With visa processes now speedier for Chinese visitors, executives at Bloomingdale's are determined to draw them in the doors. While other stores recently have begun to woo Asian shoppers, Bloomingdale's remains a coveted and well-known destination among cosmopolitan Chinese because of its 40-year history with China.

Star Luxe, a bilingual and New York-based media platform, recently took its millions of Chinese viewers into the flagship store in Manhattan.

A reporter panned the camera to show off the store's welcome banners with Chinese calligraphy, scarlet floral arrangements and pop-up shops featuring everything from luxury leather goods — in red, for luck — to serving pieces in silver and gold.

Forty years ago, Bloomingdale's was a different scene when it asked Chinese manufacturers to adjust some of their items to appeal to American buyers. Now, it's making its own adjustments.

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Corrected: February 11, 2013 at 12:00 AM EST
The audio of this story, as did a previous Web version, incorrectly identifies Michael Gould as the president and CEO of Bloomingdale's. Gould is the chairman and CEO.
Karen Grigsby Bates is the Senior Correspondent for Code Switch, a podcast that reports on race and ethnicity. A veteran NPR reporter, Bates covered race for the network for several years before becoming a founding member of the Code Switch team. She is especially interested in stories about the hidden history of race in America—and in the intersection of race and culture. She oversees much of Code Switch's coverage of books by and about people of color, as well as issues of race in the publishing industry. Bates is the co-author of a best-selling etiquette book (Basic Black: Home Training for Modern Times) and two mystery novels; she is also a contributor to several anthologies of essays. She lives in Los Angeles and reports from NPR West.