Piatonna - Bagging a Bit of the Luxury Leather Market
Luxury leather handbags by Piatonna grace the arms of some of the wealthiest and most fashion conscious women in the world.
The company was launched in 2004 by husband and wife team Pia Tonna and Max Harrison. Pia quit a senior position at the Chanel Group to pursue her dream of designing and wholesaling her own collection of luxury handbags. Piatonna bags are distinguished by the quality of their design, their distinctive shapes and unusual leathers. With a price point between £500 and £1,000, theirs is a niche market and the company has concentrated on establishing a presence in some of the world’s wealthiest and most established retail markets.
California was identified by Director Max Harrison as having the right market profile. It has a high concentration of retail outlets and a wealthy consumer base with a keen interest in fashion. However, the company was keen to check out the market’s true potential and approached the Export Marketing Research Scheme for support in carrying out a detailed field research study. The Scheme is operated by the British Chambers of Commerce on behalf of UK Trade & Investment. It offers support and advice to eligible companies that wish to research the export potential of an overseas market.
Max explains:
"Without the help of the Export Marketing Research Scheme I doubt that a small company like ours would have been able to fund a research trip on this scale. In addition to the funding, we received advice on structuring the research trip, arranging interviews and analysing our findings. The information we uncovered has been invaluable. We discovered that it is essential to develop strong personal relationships with stores. This has led us to take a far more focused approach and to set our sights on eight to ten stores rather than our initial estimate of 50. We were pleased to ascertain that we don’t need to alter our designs or processes, however, the research suggested that we needed to raise our profile through fashion trade magazines and we have recently appointed a PR consultancy to help us achieve this.
"Crucially, too, we discovered that many US buyers will not travel to fashion shows in Europe, therefore, the New York fashion shows are imperative if you want to sell in the US. As a result, we attended the New York fashion shows for the first time this year and, despite the strength of the pound against the dollar, picked up orders in California, Florida and a number of other US states.”
In the three years since its launch, Piatonna Ltd has made full use of the range of services offered by UK Trade & Investment to assist UK exporters. It signed up for Passport to Export, a scheme to guide novice exporters through the basics of exporting, as well as attending Trade Missions in Japan and working alongside UK Trade & Investment teams in London and overseas embassies and consulates around the world. Piatonna receives ongoing support from International Trade Adviser, Nicola Coan and in 2007 the company won the UK Trade & Investment Award for Exceptional New Exporter.
Max comments:
"We now sell to over 60 retailers across 23 different countries, including some of the world’s most prestigious stores. As a relative unknown competing with the likes of Gucci and Prada, we face many barriers to entry. However, the support of UK Trade & Investment has helped us to establish a foothold in this highly competitive marketplace and, today, more than 50% of our turnover is export. The UK Government has helped to fund our export growth and we believe we should be accountable and show how that funding has helped us. Undoubtedly, without the support of the Export Marketing Research Scheme, we would not be targeting our sales so successfully in America and that has already made a significant difference to our bottom line. We hope to use the scheme again soon to research Moscow’s potential as a market for our products.”