Swarovski opened a flagship store in Tokyo on 27 March 2008 in a bid to lure customers in the highly lucrative but increasingly saturated Japanese luxury market.
On the same day as the new Swarovski …
Swarovski opened a flagship store in Tokyo on 27 March 2008 in a bid to lure customers in the highly lucrative but increasingly saturated Japanese luxury market. On the same day as the new Swarovski shop opened in Tokyo“s glitzy central Ginza district, diamond specialist De Beers opened its own flagship store only a few streets away. Italian jeweller Bulgari opened a flagship store in Ginza in November 2007; Cartier already has an established store in the district. The Swarovski flagship store is the Austrian crystal jeweller“s fourth after Boston, Hong Kong and London. “Japan remains an important market for Swarovski and since Ginza is increasingly international, we hope that this will be a springboard for the rest of the world”, a spokeswoman said. Japanese designer Tokujin Yoshioka, known for his glasswork such as tables and chairs that look like they are covered in water, used thousands of prisms to create a “Crystal Forest” in the 450 square-meter (5,000 square-foot) store. The two floors will be connected by a crystal staircase made of steel and thousands of facet crystals that will be lit up by background lighting. “When I let my thoughts run loose on the intimate relationship between crystal and nature, the forest became an important component for my inspiration”, Mr. Yoshioka said.