Danish produced Chinese shoes are a hit. Ulla Hentze has taken the traditional Gong Fu shoe also known simply as “China shoes” and given it a Scandinavian design. It has turned out to be a great business idea and the shoe has sold well both in Scandinavia and Asia.
Like many other she was looking to tap into the Chinese market but marketing and sales were difficult to handle on the vast market. Therefore she started a partnership with a bureau in Shanghai – Schultz Knudsen who would be in charge of sales and marketing while she focused on design and production.
“As it is, I am already in charge of a lot. Designing the shoes, having them manufactured and delivered. Because of that, the sales work is hard to manage, especially in the Chinese market. That is why I was looking for someone who could both market my shoes and sell them on-line,” Ullla Hentze, who owns the company Shoeshoe which has its own factory in China that produces 25.000 pairs of shoes a year.
The Scandinavian designed Gong Fu shoe turned out to be extremely popular in the universities so the Shanghai bureau decided to do an event at Shanghai Jiatong University to get publicity In June 2012 they created a design competition where the winner would have the design put in production. The event exceeded all expectations. 6000 entered the competition and publicity was big on both on-line and traditional media which hyped the shoe further.
Although the Chinese site was created recently it is already a success.
“It has only been a few months since I went on-line with my Chinese shop but I have already sold so much that the expenses for my marketing in China are covered,” says Ulla Hentze to Danish paper Boersen.
Original article here
