One of the more interesting features about Cartier’s new store in Madrid has nothing to do with its design or inventory, but rather its Mandarin-speaking staff. According to Spain’s largest Chinese-language newspaper Ouhua, in order to better serve the increasing number of mainland Chinese tourist-shoppers that are heading to Madrid every year, the new Cartier boutique is aggressively hiring Mandarin-speaking salespeople and increasing its Chinese-language signage.
 

Speaking to a Spanish-born, ethnic Chinese staff member, Nico Wan Daying, Ouhua noted that European luxury brands, which now count Chinese tourist-shoppers among their most important customers, look for employees who understand brand history and pedigree as well as Chinese buying behavior and psychology.
 

As Olivier Gay, general manager of Cartier Spain, said this week, the rising importance of the Chinese luxury market, and growing spending power of Chinese consumers, has made Chinese spenders “the major consumer base” in the global luxury sector. When in the planning stages for new stores, Olivier said, Cartier now considers how best to cater to Chinese shoppers, which is a major factor in the priority the company now places on hiring bilingual sales staff. This is part of a greater trend that we’ve seen gaining strength throughout major luxury markets like France, the UK, North America and Japan in the last decade, with major retailers in New York, Paris and Tokyo increasingly putting a premium on Mandarin-speaking staff as Taiwanese, then mainland Chinese, tourist-shoppers started to supplant the Japanese and Korean travelers who preceded them.