With a renewed focus on travel retail, Italian family-owned luxury sportswear and lifestyle fashion brand Paul & Shark will be exhibiting its yachting-inspired collections for men and women in the Riviera Village at the TFWA World Exhibition this month.

 

The brand will also be demonstrating in Cannes its ability to offer instant personalization of polo shirts for men and silk scarf pouches for women, through the deployment of an intricate tooling machine. The equipment, which takes up minimal space, enables Paul & Shark to embroider a name or message of choice in just a few minutes.

 

Says Travel Retail Director, Catherine Bonelli, “We wanted to be able to show customers how we can create a point of difference for travel retail and to emphasize the quality of fabrics that we use for all our lines.”

 

Presented in versatile and reusable premium gift tins, the Paul & Shark range is made in Italy using only the best quality and robust yarns, cotton and wool to not only ensure water repellency, but less and equal shrinkage, hard-wearing elbows and cuffs. Over the years new materials such as silk have been introduced with the company investing heavily in research to make these also water repellent and hard-wearing.

 

The international business, developed primarily over the past decade, now represents some 82% of trade with brand presence in mono-brand stores, shop-in-shops and generic listings in 73 countries.

 

“Paul & Shark is very much a global brand, appealing to many different nationalities, which makes it perfect for travel retail,” continues Bonelli. “Outside its home country of Italy the brand has a strong consumer base in China – where we have some 70 mono-brand stores – Russia, the UAE and throughout Europe. We are also well positioned in the Americas and see the USA as offering great room for growth.”

 

Bonelli adds, “Paolo Dini (son of founder Gian Ludovico) saw the importance of travel retail immediately and the brand has been present in airports for more than 25 years. At that time it was a fabulous way to introduce Paul & Shark to fashion buyers coming into Italy. They saw this new brand and – by including our phone number on the gift tins – were soon contacting the company for more information.”

 

Paul & Shark has announced new openings for early 2015 with China Duty Free in Haitang Bay, CTC in Cyprus and SkyShops (the new luxury concourse) at Zaventem – Brussels, with more in the pipeline.