Savoir faire
Hong Kong's French community is branching out from traditional business activities and using their French connections to promote their brands, discovers Shirley Lau
These days, the trick to up the style quotient of a product is to give it a French name. Or at least that's what some local businesses seem to believe, even if there's nothing Gallic about their products.
In Tai Hang, a café-bar serving cakes and savoury hot pies goes by the name "C'est La B". In Sheung Wan, "Chinoiserie" is a bridal gown shop that "serves the fashion elites" with exquisite Chinese gowns with a modern twist.
In Kowloon City, a new residential development is called "Billionaire Avant", which literally means "billionaire before". So are all the residents trillionaires now?
Such attempt at stylishness might amuse native French speakers. But then not all French names in Hong Kong are style over substance. As the city's French expatriate community has swelled by 60 per cent over the past five years to some 16,000 today, a growing crop of upmarket brands created by young French entrepreneurs have sprung into being in Hong Kong.
Capitalising on the French art de vivre, these brands are often characterised by tasty design and limited quantities. They were born in Hong Kong largely because of the ease to set up business here, but their target is the wider market in Asia and around the world.
A case in point is Pont des Arts, a new French wine label launched by two twenty-something Frenchmen with exceptional social and business networks.
