regional platform in Dubai, in order to support the growth
of our businesses in this important region. The past year
has seen the integration of more Maisons onto the regional
platform and the opening of further internal and external
boutiques in the region.
driven by the changes being seen in China. Although
mainland China is a significant contributor to growth in
the region, destinations such as Hong Kong and Macau
have also seen strong increases in sales.
services the watch and jewellery Maisons has allowed
the Group to support the continued development of those
businesses by facilitating direct shipments of product into
the country since 2007, minimising handling time and
customs delays.
restructured in China in order to provide customers with
a faster and more responsive service. This included the
full renovation and upgrading of the two main workshops
in Shanghai and Beijing. Group standards and procedures
covering the wide range of customer service functions were
implemented and the regional team now employs some 200
staff to meet client needs.
year was the opening of the Richemont North America
Technical Centre in Dallas, Texas. The new state-of-the-art
facility will serve as the primary technical centre for the
region's watch repair operations, encompassing all of the
Group's Maisons. The facility will also operate a watch-
making school and technical training centre in order to
further Richemont's objective of developing technical
watchmaking expertise in the region. The entire technical
centre encompasses over 3 000 square metres and will
employ over 100 people.
for the Maisons' watch models has put the respective
manufacturing facilities and our distribution system under
some stress. Whilst it is nice to have the problem of high
demand, we were frustrated not to be able to offer our
retail partners and ultimately their customers quicker
delivery of products. In many cases this was due to
component shortages, often linked to supply chain
constraints. It is this sort of issue that we are striving
to avoid through improved systems and by expanding
our in-house manufacturing capacity. The situation is
being monitored closely and the Group will be investing
significantly over the next few years to improve our
degree of autonomy in watch component supply,
whilst maintaining an appropriate balance of in-house
manufacturing and third-party sourcing.
logistics supply chain for our watch and jewellery brands.
Following the introduction of direct shipments from our
central distribution platform in Fribourg to all points
of sales in Benelux and Scandinavia last year, from the
summer of 2007 we extended the same process to all
customers in the UK and Ireland.
developing markets of Eastern Europe. Richemont's
wholly-owned Russian subsidiary has continued to grow
successfully, supporting the Maisons in the opening of four
new boutiques in Moscow, to bring the Group's presence
there to ten stores. In addition, Montblanc has opened
its first external boutique in St Petersburg, whilst Cartier
has opened a boutique with a local partner in Baku,
Azerbaijan. In Central Europe, Cartier opened its first
internal boutique in Prague, in spring 2007.
IWC's home in Schaffhausen
incorporate state-of-the art
energy saving technologies