French luxury luggage brand Goyard is returning to Hong Kong after leaving amid an acrimonious legal dispute two years ago.
FJ Benjamin, a Singapore fashion company, will open a 780 square foot Goyard store in the Peninsula Hotel in the first quarter of next year after signing an agreement with Algo, a Goyard family company for the rights to retail the brand in Hong Kong for five years, with an option to renew it for another five years.
In 2007, Harvey Nichols, a British department store owned by Hong Kong tycoon Dickson Poon, opened a 600 square foot Goyard flagship store in the same hotel, but the next year the Goyard family cancelled the five-year contract.
Harvey Nichols accused the French luxury-goods maker of reneging on a promise to give it the exclusive rights to sell Goyard products in Hong Kong, according to a writ filed with the Hong Kong High Court in October 2008. The department store sought unspecified damages and lost profits.
In response, Goyard's owners said Harvey Nichols had been allowed to sell its luxury goods only in Kowloon (where the Peninsula is located), while it retained the right to find another distributor to handle sales on Hong Kong Island.
'Obviously, something didn't work, something must have gone wrong. Goyard was the one who came to us in Hong Kong,' said Nash Benjamin, the group chief executive of FJ Benjamin.
'We approached them for the rights to Southeast Asia. Then they brought up the opportunity of Hong Kong, explaining there had been previous activity in Hong Kong. So we made a deal for Hong Kong. Obviously they see Hong Kong as a far more important market than Singapore,' Benjamin said.