SHANGHAI, April 14 - Don St. Pierre Jr., named the 37th most influential wine person globally, was recently released in Shanghai following a month-long detention and a major investigation of his firm’s wine importation business.

St. Pierre was being held as part of an extensive investigation of wine importers by the Chinese authorities looking for evidence that importers had been understating the value of wines they bring into the country in order to evade high customs duties in the growing Chinese wine market.

St. Pierre Jr., the company’s managing partner, and ASC vice president Carrie Xuan had been held in a customs department building, though neither was officially under arrest.

“The way the system works here is that they detain you while figuring out what to do,” said his father Don St. Pierre Sr. to the industry publication Wine Spectator. St. Pierre Sr., who has been doing business in China for 20 years, founded the company a decade ago with his son and currently serves as chairman. “There are 27 boxes of documents that have to be matched up with other pieces of paper to show that customs duty has been paid,” he said last week, prior to his son’s release. ”They have been going through them for three weeks now and found there is nothing wrong.” (more…)

Mar. 13 - Domestic retail sales leaped 20.2 percent to US$245.5 billion in the first two months of 2008, boosted by Chinese New Years sales and rising food prices, the National Bureau of Statistics said on Wednesday.

The figure was 5.5 percentage points higher than the same period last year. Food prices have risen steeply for more than a year, fueling inflation fears and prompting the government to prioritize the fight against inflation as its top concern.

Food costs surged 23.3 percent in February, while non-food prices edged up only 1.6 percent from a year earlier the NBS report stated.

Urban consumption hit RMB1.18 trillion, up 20.8 percent year-on-year, compared with RMB559.1 billion spent by rural residents, up 18.9 percent. (more…)

 China Mobile suspend talks with Apple over selling iPhone in China

China Mobile has announced they have just broken off talks with Apple over the sales of the iPhone into the Mainland China market. The deal’s bone of contention essentially is over the industry practice of mobile operators giving equipment suppliers a cut of the traffic generated from use of their phones, and Apple see the iPhone as a premium product. In Europe, T-Mobile of Germany, Orange of France and 02 in the UK, pay Apple a 10 percent cut of the revenue collected. That includes calls and data transmission made from use of the iPhone, and is not an uncommon phenomena in the world of international telecommunications, where global service providers often take a cut of revenues to assist with the R&D costs of getting the product to market – and enhancing the network usage. iPhone, somewhat uniquely, is also poised to enter the Japanese market – a rare occurrence for foreign handset manufacturers – and make arrangements with DoCoMo to market and sell the iPhone in Japan. Again, the same deal – 10 percent of the network revenues, that go via our phones, please.

China, however, sees things differently. With Apple’s global sales targets of the iPhone this year being 10 million handsets, China Mobile are looking at the strength of their subscriber base – 363 million of a total of 522 million mobile phone subscribers in the PRC. That’s a strong position to hold when negotiating with handset suppliers, and Apple’s request for 10 percent of revenues has just led to China Mobile suspending the talks – possibly opening the door for China Unicom – China Mobile’s smaller competitor - to steal a march over its larger rival by offering exclusivity over iPhone in China. But in this respect, it would have to give up revenues. (more…)

A court in Shanghai has ordered two Chinese shoe manufacturers and a French supermarket to pay American sporting goods giant Nike 350,000 yuan (46,000 U.S. dollars) in compensation for copyright infringement China Daily said today.

The two Fujian-based manufacturers, Jinjiang Longzhibu Shoes Co Ltd and Jinjiang Kangwei Shoes Co Ltd, made shoes bearing a logo that was “basically the same” as one of Nike’s - a silhouette of former basketball star Michael Jordan slam-dunking - the Shanghai No. 2 Intermediate People’s Court said yesterday.

The Shanghai branch of France-based retailer Auchan was guilty of selling the products without permission from Nike, it said.

“All three have conducted copyright infringement against Nike,” the verdict read.

The shoemakers were ordered to pay 100,000 yuan and 90,000 yuan in compensation and Shanghai Auchan Hypermarket Co Ltd 160,000 yuan. The three will also have to publish an apology to counter the negative effects of the infringement according to China Daily. (more…)

We’ve been looking at movement into second tier cities recently and China Daily today ran an article on just that.  The piece by Jiang Jingjing looks at the movement of top luxury brands into these emerging markets.

 The rapidly growing purchasing power and appetite for high-end products in small cities have drawn the attention of top international luxury lines, which are increasingly gravitating to second-tier cities.

Louis Vuitton, which entered China 15 years ago and has 16 boutiques spread across 13 cities, has opened shops in three new cities in the last two years - Wenzhou, Kunming and Shenyang. The company’s next targets are Chongqing, Harbin, Sanya, Suzhou, Ningbo, Nanjing and Urumqi, according to the company’s CEO Yves Carcelle. (more…)