Word: britishism
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Jaguar, the British luxury automaker, is one of the godfathers of European licensing, but it is also just beginning a new wave of expansion. Jaguar began with a line of designer eyeglass frames 15 years ago. Today its licenses cover such products as clothes, fragrances and footwear. The company has just opened mall boutiques in the U.S., France and the Netherlands...
...value? What image does it conjure up? "You can't just put out a doodad with a name slapped on it," insists Michael Stone, co-director of New York's Beanstalk Group, another large licensing agency. Missteps abound among those who have held that simplistic view. Take Virgin Clothes: British entrepreneur Richard Branson has successfully etched his Virgin trademark onto a host of products, from CDs to cola. But his apparel line is struggling, mainly because its initial styles were pricey and somewhat conservative, which went against the trendy and value-conscious image originally established by the airline Virgin Atlantic...
...luxury cars in much of the rest of the world. Rovers are commonplace in Britain, but they are seen as classy foreign imports in Southern Europe. There is not even pan-European agreement on what constitutes quality. A T shirt made from a cotton-polyester blend may suit a British shopper, but French and German consumers want 100% cotton T shirts only, please. Licensing executive Gianfranco Mari, head of the agency DIC 2 in Milan, underlines that "what sells in Italy may not sell in France." Then there is the tangle of various legal requirements and trademark laws in each...
...content with selling 400,000 vibrators a year in Britain, privately held Ann Summers has embarked on an aggressive expansion program. It is increasing the number of its British stores to 75 and pushing its Internet sales. In July it opened the first overseas Ann Summers shop, in Sydney, Australia. Earlier this month it opened a new two-story, 5,000-sq.-ft. store--complete with a coffee bar--on Dublin's fashionable O'Connell Street. And the firm plans to open outlets early next year in Tokyo and even Saudi Arabia. Gold is also keen to take...
...shops: seedy, if not downright sinister; XXX signs plastered on blacked-out windows in shady neighborhoods; frequented mainly by men. When it comes to the flesh industry, Europe, for all its sophistication, wasn't much different from the U.S. Then along came Ann Summers, a British chain of sex emporiums, and things began to change. The 23 Ann Summers stores scattered across Britain are on main shopping streets and geared specifically to women. Brightly lighted and decorated in pastels, the shops manage to make the selling of erotic lingerie and sex aids seem more naughty than nasty...