SFC Correspondent Li Yinong in Shanghai

Italian luxury furniture group Dexelance continues to enhance its international influence with a strategic investment in the Asian market. Recently, the company celebrated the grand opening of its new headquarter and showroom in Shanghai. As one of Italy’s leading companies in the fields of design, lighting, and high-end furniture, Dexelance’s new space reflects a harmonious blend of modern Chinese lifestyles and the timeless elegance of Italian design.

In an interview with SFC reporter, Giorgio Gobbi, Managing Director of Dexelance Group, highlighted that the company's goal in China is not just about introducing Italian design; it’s also about understanding and adapting to local preferences and habits.

Although China currently represents a small percentage of Dexelance’s global revenue, Gobbi remains confident about the market's potential. He points out China accounts for just under 4% of their sales currently, but they expect that to grow significantly in the coming years. “The Chinese market will become one of the most important for high-end design and lighting products,” he added.

SFC Markets and Finance: Why did you pick Shanghai for new headquarter in China?

Giorgio Gobbi: Actually, it's an easy question with an easy answer. If you want to be in China and play as a leader and as a real player, you have to be in Shanghai. So when we started with our project 10 years ago, we did already know that China would become one of the most important markets in terms of development for our products and our brands ultimately.

The first establishment of our offices was in Suzhou, but then we decided as soon as all the brands and all the organization was mature enough, just to move to where we had to be, where all the architect and designer communities were, which was basically in Shanghai.

To the same extent, we have another branch, another subsidiary in the U.S., and it's based in New York and the third one in London. So Shanghai was a choice.

SFC Markets and Finance: How do you balance Italian design and Chinese taste?

Giorgio Gobbi: That's an excellent question, and is also the reason why we have established a permanent presence in China with the subsidiary, with the permanent organization. Actually, the way we built up our Dexelance group was selecting high-end valued Italian companies in the world of design, furniture, and lighting with the idea to export the so-called Italian lifestyle worldwide.

So on one end, what each of our brands is proposing, is just how we are supposed to live in Italy, in terms of style, fashion, and habits. But of course, you need to have a sort of cultural translation. So that's why we have a permanent team here of valued people, because it's their job to translate into the Chinese habits the ways of working, the way of distributing our products, for all of our companies and our brands, which are basically Italian. That's exactly what we do.

SFC Markets and Finance: What keywords you will use to describe Italian lifestyle?

Giorgio Gobbi: You made me many easy questions. This is not an easy one. Italian lifestyle is something intangible that we as Italians cannot explain, and we don't have an explanation for that. But we clearly know that worldwide, almost in every country in the world, everybody thinks that we live in a magnificent, nice and funny way, which is not actually the truth in real life in Italy, because we have the same suffering pains as (people in) any other country in the world. But it's true that the average quality of life that you can enjoy in most parts of Italy is pretty much high. So it's quite understandable why we became as a country and as a population, a sort of inspiration for many populations around the world.

SFC Markets and Finance: Are you planning to work with local designers?

Giorgio Gobbi: Sure, why not? We're not only working with Italian designers, not at all. Our companies don't do that. Of course, each of our brands has a specific DNA and a specific set of values. The kind of designers normally selected are those that do respect the consistency of their proposal, of their brand image and brand value, and we have no problem to work with designers from any nationality, including the Chinese ones.

In our industry, when you play in the high-end market, designers, architects, and interior designers are basically as important as the final consumers. So anyhow, we have to address the A&D community in China as well as in any other place in the world. And the building where we are now, this three-story villa is just conceived for the purpose of hosting designers, to allow designers and architects to come here with their clients. So it's kind of a meeting point where the A&D community can get any kind of inspiration they like.

SFC Markets and Finance: Does China play a larger part of your global revenue?

Giorgio Gobbi: Unfortunately, not yet, but it will. Currently, China represents nearly 4% of our sales. So not yet so much. But we all know that the Chinese market will become in some years, nobody knows how many years, the most important market for high-end design and lighting products.

We all know that the market will be developed. The speed depends on many factors that are not under our control. We know that this is the trend. We want to be there. And I'm sure that in some years from now, China will be a much larger part of our sales.

SFC Markets and Finance: How can Italian aesthetics better connect with Chinese consumers? And do you have any plans to work with a traditional craft or Chinese contemporary artist？

Giorgio Gobbi: Well, actually not yet, but I'm sure it will happen in the future. To be more precise, we are selling through our brand and proposing to the market, as I said before, so far a sort of Italian lifestyle concept.

But even in China, local habits and traditions that have been neglected for many decades, it seems that they are coming back. So as soon as the Chinese design world will find a way to transform their origin into a modern way of proposing the tradition—the long, long, very long-term heritage—then we will probably find the kind of collaboration and cooperation that today we can only find through our local structure of people here, local organizations. And thanks to our local professional dealers, we get a lot of feedback from our dealers around China just in terms of what works, what doesn’t work, what should be changed, to make some adaptations to our proposal to the current Chinese lifestyle.

SFC Markets and Finance: How do you see next big opportunities or risks for “Made in Italy” in China?

Giorgio Gobbi: I don't see many risks, to be honest. As I said before, I see many opportunities in the future to inspire each other: The tradition of design in Italy is very old-rooted, but China has a much older tradition, I found here and there some attempts to revamp in a modern way the millennial history of China. As soon as this will happen, I don't see a risk. But I see a huge opportunity to combine and merge each other and to find out new ways of proposing lifestyle, not only the pure idealistic Italian lifestyle, but something probably more complex and more fascinating.

Chief Producer: Zhao Haijian

Supervising Producer: Shi Shi

Editor: He Jia 

Reporter: Li Yinong

Videographer: Hu Kaiwen

Video Editor: Li Qun

New Media Coordination: Ding Qingyun, Zeng Tingfang, Lai Xi, Huang Daxun

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