South Korean duty free retailer Lotte Duty Free has unveiled a Tiffany & Co. store at Kansai International Airport in Japan. The opening represents the Kansai debut for the luxury jewellery brand.
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The 90 square meters store is located in the Terminal 1 Departure Hall at the Osaka gateway. It is the first Tiffany duty free store in Japan to reflect the latest design concept since the brand was acquired by LVMH Group in January.
The exterior is reminiscent of Tiffany’s famous flagship store on Fifth Avenue, New York while the artwork of Jean Schlumberger, the famed Tiffany jewellery designer who passed away in 1980, adds further allure.
The boutique offers a wide range of watches and accessories, including the new Tiffany T1 collection.
Lotte Duty Free signed a contract with Kansai International Airport in June 2014, formally making its Japanese duty free debut at the Osaka gateway in September of the same year. It has since opened a series of luxury boutiques at the airport, starting with Tory Burch in December 2019, followed by Loewe, Bvlgari, Bottega Veneta, Gucci and now Tiffany & Co.
In pre-pandemic 2019, Kansai International Airport served around 12 million passengers, second only to Narita International Airport, Tokyo among international airports in Japan. That total included 4 million Japanese, 3.25 million Chinese and 1.5 million Koreans.
Lotte Duty Free Head of Global Business Lee Jong-hwan said, “Lotte Duty Free is the largest luxury brand store retailer at Kansai International Airport. We believe that the opening of the Tiffany boutique will strengthen our position in the Kansai regional duty free market.”
Lotte Duty Free also announced that it has recently resumed overseas expansion projects that were suspended due to the COVID-19 pandemic to “preemptively prepare” for global tourism demand that the company believes will recover soon.
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In particular, Lotte cited the opening of downtown stores in Da Nang, Vietnam and Sydney, Australia – the respective opening times to be coordinated through close monitoring of the local vaccination status and traveller trends in both countries.
Lotte Duty Free currently operates 11 stores in six overseas countries.
(Source: The Moodie Davitt Report)