Retail Services
Gem shows draw global attention
When the COVID-19 pandemic kept purchasers at home and curtailed international trade, jewellery and gem suppliers turned to developing the domestic and online markets. This year’s hybrid twin jewellery shows organised by the Hong Kong Trade Development Council (HKTDC) cater for recent changes in market focus along with the growing interest in reviving physical events.
Present perfect
Global gifting app Prezitt lets users treat loved ones to anything from cupcakes and coffee to gift sets or beauty treatments in real time. A recipient who is not happy with what you have chosen for them can swap it for something else on the app, which currently has about 200 partner locations and 5,000 users, explains Prezitt Co-founder and CEO Alicia Tang.
UK auction house expands HK footprint
United Kingdom-based auction house Christie’s has announced plans to enhance and expand its Asia-Pacific headquarters in Hong Kong. The substantial investment will quadruple the size of its current premises in the city and provide new sales galleries and salesrooms in The Henderson, a high-end office tower designed by renowned London-based Zaha Hadid Architects for local developer Henderson Land Group.
Online fast-track for SMEs
Hong Kong-based e-commerce platform SHOPLINE began in 2013 with a rented desk in a shared workspace. In just eight years, the firm has expanded into a team of more than 600 people and extended its office network from Hong Kong to Taipei, Kuala Lumpur, Ho Chi Minh City, Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Singapore and Bangkok, becoming an international team serving more than 250,000 companies in Asia. (This story is the first in Hong Kong Means Business’s ”Powered by HSBC – Bridging the GBA” series.)
Harnessing social marketing
Riding the digital transformation wave that crested across swathes of industries during the COVID-19 pandemic, two innovative Hong Kong entrepreneurs teamed up in 2020 to establish a salestech platform that enables companies to develop their own on-demand virtual sales team, thus helping them promote products and build a sustainable prospects database through social networking.
Americans turn to cybermalls
The COVID-19 pandemic has upended economic activity across the globe over the past one and a half years, but one obvious beneficiary has been e-commerce which has grown in leaps and bounds as customers stay away from shops and restaurants. This change has been marked in the United States, home of the shopping mall.
Start-ups reach out
The serial information technology revolutions – transistors (1950s), integrated circuits (1960s), personal computers (1970s, 80s), Internet (1990s) and mobile devices (2010s) – had a profound effect on the global economy because of their breadth. The jump in communication, data processing and storage capacity transformed every field from accounting to zoology.
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