Orient Magazine Issue 73 - September 2019 | Page 40

Orient - The Official Magazine of the British Chamber of Commerce Singapore - Issue 73 September 2019

In Focus:
Suzy Smith, Managing Director, Global Travel Retail, Edrington

1. The Travel Retail sector appears from our outside perspective to be an area of strong growth for Edrington and other companies in the sector. Coming from a marketing background yourself, how are you looking to differentiate Edrington’s products and drive the future of the sector?
Our global travel retail business accounts for an important part of Edrington’s total profits. The department headquarters are here in Singapore, but there are offices throughout the world servicing the sector. Travel retail is an unique environment, providing an opportunity to engage with consumers in a space where they have time and are actively looking to spend or find special products.
To this end, we launched Macallan airport boutiques this summer, first in Dubai and then at Heathrow. The concept is about step-changing the impression of Macallan to provide the full history and understanding of the brand, with unique high-end prestige products, some of which are unique to travel retail (the Boutique Collection) or limited global editions (the Prestige Collection). We invested in our distillery in the past five years on the Macallan Estate to provide a money-can’t-buy experience, and our boutiques are the next step in the process of bringing this to consumers. We are further investing in staff training by having the travel retail teams visit the distillery and understand the story and brand to fully portray this to our customers.
Typically in travel retail, you would pay premium costs for display areas within an airport, as well as positioning in mass retail outlets, so an investment of this nature is significant for a single brand.
2. Edrington clearly looks to international markets for growth, with a statement on the company website of 2/3 of employees being based overseas in wholly-owned or JV offices. With operations in Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Shanghai, Taiwan and Korea, where does the company see the next growth area likely to be in this part of the world?

We are seeing a lot of growth in emerging markets around Asia, with travel retail in the Asia Pacific region providing the highest growing market for passenger numbers. In this part of the world there is plenty of inter-region travel and an increasing level of affluence among consumers, making the region a real area of growth and focus for the future of Edrington.