Danish fur attracts fashionable Chinese

Kopenhagen Fur, the world’s largest fur skin auction house, is one of the very few Danish companies able to beat the Chinese on their own ground. Being present at EXPO 2010 gives us important exposure, says its managing director, Torben Nielsen.

Back in 1986, Kopenhagen Fur caught the eyes of the Chinese, as they were the first western company to throw a fashion show inside China, which took place on the historic Great Wall outside Beijing. Today, Kopenhagen Fur, a global market leader in the fur trade, continues to attract the attention of the ever more fur and fashion loving Chinese. Today, China is the most important market to Kopenhagen Fur, and that is the reason Kopenhagen fur chose to join the Danish EXPO 2010 project, says Torben Nielsen, who is managing director. 

- Firstly, the fur processing industry, the stitching and the tanning, has moved from Europe, Japan, Korea and the US to China. Eighty to ninety per cent of the world’s fur production now takes place in China.  Secondly, the rapid economic development makes China a still more important market to us because more people buy fur, and we are lucky that the Chinese pay much attention to good quality. The Chinese demand good foreign qualities, and that makes Kopenhagen Fur’s share of the market in China grow fast, says Torben Nielsen.

What is the current situation for Kopenhagen Fur on the Chinese market? 

- China is our most important customer, and we sell eighty to ninety per cent of our skins in China. Fur is actually one of the biggest export products from Denmark to China, and products from Kopenhagen Fur account for about one third of total Danish exports to China. At the same time, the Chinese mink production is dropping rapidly because their quality cannot compete with the Danish quality. We are one of the very few Danish businesses able to beat the Chinese on their own ground because we focus on high productivity and good quality. Our strategy in China has been to form alliances with well-established Chinese companies known for their good design, and with shopping malls such as Haining, the largest leather and fur market in China. We are in charge of training shop personnel in China in order to make sure that they share our perception of quality and know the difference between Danish and Chinese fur quality. We also work closely with Tsinghua University where we have established Kopenhagen Studio, which aims to teach Chinese design students how to work with fur. They get to know the Danish qualities, which we encourage them to use in their future designs and collections.

What do you hope to gain from participating in EXPO 2010?

- Being visible at the EXPO gives us a lot of exposure to our Chinese partners and the Chinese authorities. The most striking difference between the Chinese and Danish ways of thinking is that in Denmark, it is perfectly all right to be small and hard-working, whereas in China, big is beautiful. If you are the largest in the world, you have also proved to the Chinese that you are the best. So niche strategies in China are almost doomed to fail. The Chinese will ask, if what you produce is that good, why are you still so small? In that way, the Chinese are very unsentimental. That suits us very well because we are also unsentimental and put high efficiency and quality at the top of our list of priorities. We invest in design, because we know that to insure that the interest remains intact, fur has to be in fashion.  Participating in EXPO 2010 is just a natural consequence of the fact that we are the largest within our field in China.

The theme of the EXPO is Better City, Better Life. What is Kopenhagen Fur's connection with this main theme?

 - Fur is a very sustainable and green product because mink live on waste from the food industry. We recycle waste from the food industry through the animals and get a valuable product out of it. The product is not a throwaway product but one that lasts for many years. If you take good care of your fur, you can enjoy it for 20-30 years. That makes it as green as it can be. For those reasons, we think we fit very well into the overall EXPO theme.

How do you think the Chinese will receive the Danish EXPO pavilion and exhibition?

- It is a very good idea to send the Mermaid to China, that is, if the Chinese visitors know who she is. However, I am not sure they will connect the Little Mermaid with Copenhagen and Denmark. I do not think they care too much about the fact that it’s the original Mermaid and not a copy. In that way, the Chinese are very unsentimental.