You just returned from the Baltic Amber Festival in Hong Kong \u2013 how do you assess this initiative from the perspective of promoting amber in that country? <\/b><\/p>\n
Recently \u2013 mainly thanks to the grant recently launched by the Ministry of Economy \u2013 we finally have a serious pretext for discussing how the strategic promotion of amber on the most important consumer markets should look like. I hope that this time it won\u2019t end just with funding for participation in the fairs of individual companies, which will take advantage of the opportunity to temporarily trade in their stock of inventory. Such \u201epromotion\u201d only contributes to further perpetuating the stereotype that amber jewelry is a product of the \u201echeap-for-the-weight\u201d category \u2013 with outdated design, sloppy workmanship and questionable authenticity. The intention of these types of promotional programs should rather be to increase the value (and not the quantity) of sales, and for this it is necessary to consistently plan and systematically implement activities that combine educational, scientific, image, and marketing aspects. Only all of this and in this exact order can contribute to sparking an interest, which in turn leads to a business effect. I think that\u2019s exactly the point. Amber Festival in Hong Kong<\/a> It could be considered a model example of promotion aimed at achieving a lasting and long-term effect. Its first element was fashion show by local designer Janko Lam and jewelry by Marius Gliwi\u0144ski<\/a>. It was accompanied by a carefully planned media coverage and the interest of journalists. The next step was a series of lectures and presentations on amber and jewelry design, followed by a two-day workshop for students of the Hong Kong Design Institute, where we introduced students and lecturers to amber processing and the methodology of jewelry design. It may be comforting to note that we still have an advantage in this field in terms of experience and stylistic insight, although not the technology anymore. The culmination of the festival was an exhibition of selected collections from the best Polish companies, including S&A, Art 7, NAC Amber and Mariusz Gliwi\u0144ski, as well as a presentation of projects awarded in competitions. Mercurius Gedanensis<\/a> i Amberif Design Award<\/a>. The presentation was not a commercial showcase of the fair, but a show prepared primarily for the media and opinion leaders, so its effectiveness should not be measured by a one-time commercial effect.<\/p>\n The organizer \u2013 the company Amberozia \u2013 managed to mobilize a multitude of industry, educational and business institutions from Hong Kong to support the project, attract journalists and television crews, local celebrities, the Chamber of Commerce, and the Polish Consulate General in Hong Kong to cover the event. The entire event, during which many formal and informal meetings took place, was only the prelude to the opening scheduled for this year in an exclusive district of Central featuring carefully selected collections of Baltic amber jewelry. Judging by the means and effort invested in the ongoing preparations, the project cannot fail to be a success.<\/p>\n There is a widespread belief that necklaces with natural amber balls sell best in China, yet at a special exhibition as part of the Baltic Amber Festival in Hong Kong, modern designs and works awarded in competitions were presented. Which ones have the best chance of success in this market?<\/b><\/p>\n It is difficult for me to assess what sells in Mainland China, but Hong Kong is still an enclave of exclusivity. But considering that Chinese people mainly come to Hong Kong to shop, the people standing in lines in front of the European fashion and jewelry brands\u2019 stores are certainly not interested in balls attached to a rubber band or bracelets glued onto silver cast metal. In China, a cultural tradition is to show off one\u2019s material status, so cheap, common, and mass-produced products are unlikely to become our export hit in that market. And that\u2019s a good thing!<\/p>\n From your perspective \u2013 as a designer and lecturer at the Gda\u0144sk Academy of Fine Arts \u2013 how should the further promotion of Baltic amber and Baltic amber jewelry on the Chinese market look?<\/b><\/p>\n I am absolutely convinced that the promotion of amber \u2013 not only in the Chinese market \u2013 should definitely emphasize its uniqueness. In this context, not only a high standard of product quality \u2013 design and workmanship \u2013 is necessary, but above all a recognizable authorship. Especially in China, such products as jewelry cannot be anonymous; behind every collection there must be a well-known face and name of the designer. For me personally, what was particularly surprising was the attention with which artists and creators are treated here. In Poland, a designer is often perceived as someone who does not engage in serious work, and many producers still believe that designs are \u201einvented\u201d while waiting. In every conversation I had in Hong Kong \u2013 and there were really many of them \u2013 a much deeper level of interest in the interlocutors was evident regarding the sources of inspiration and points of reference for individual collections, the names of the authors and designers, and the methods of their work. This had nothing to do with the \u201ebuy cheap, sell expensive\u201d negotiations that some wholesalers had become accustomed to with the manufacturers at the wholesale market. It\u2019s a bit of a paradox, because China has traditionally been associated with a tendency to plagiarize and a rather lax approach to copyright issues, although recently the Chinese authorities have been doing a lot to curb the production of counterfeit products \u2013 but this process affects the manufacturers, but in the case of consumers the situation is completely the opposite. China still exports mainly cheap clothing and manufactured products of mediocre quality in millions of copies to Europe and the United States, although the Chinese themselves buy only the best quality, brand-name products from well-known companies and designers from Europe. <\/p>\n Considering the pace at which Chinese consumers are becoming richer, this will certainly be a promising market in the near future, primarily for unique, original products of high quality. In this context, of course, it is worth taking care to carefully shape the image of amber, although the Polish market should be the primary market from which it would be worth starting its promotion, and the first step towards this should be eliminating the catalogue of naive stories about how magical and healing amber is, how well it floats in salt water, and how rubbing it against a sweater attracts paper money. Among the many harmful consequences of this kind of infantile propaganda, the worst is the self-fulfilling illusion that amber is enough to be worn on a belt or attached to a pin; and that\u2019s all because the whole rest of it is just a supposed legend. Although history has similar examples when the Aztecs gave the conquistadors pearls in exchange for glass beads, but that was almost 500 years ago.\u00a0Today, the basis of any promotional activities can only be a high-quality and decently designed product with proven authenticity and recognizable authorship \u2013 not only in China, but especially there!<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Designer, lecturer at the Gda\u0144sk Academy of Fine Arts and author of the \u201eTrend Book\u201d about the visit to Hong Kong at the Baltic Amber Festival and \u2013 tirelessly \u2013 about promoting amber as a unique stone, not a magical one.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":15905,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"slim_seo":{"title":"Unikatowy, a nie magiczny \u2013 rozmowa ze S\u0142awomirem Fija\u0142kowskim - Amber Portal","description":"Designer, lecturer at Gda\u0144sk Academy of Fine Arts and author of the \u201eTrend Book\u201d about the visit to Hong Kong at the Baltic Amber Festival and \u2013 tirelessly \u2013 about the promotion of amber as gemstones"},"_slim_seo_primary_term_category":0,"_slim_seo_primary_term_post_tag":0,"_slim_seo_primary_term_sekcja":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[118],"tags":[],"sekcja":[245],"class_list":["post-15906","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-wywiady","sekcja-ludzie-opinie"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amber.com.pl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15906","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amber.com.pl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amber.com.pl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amber.com.pl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amber.com.pl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15906"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amber.com.pl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15906\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amber.com.pl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15905"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amber.com.pl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15906"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amber.com.pl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15906"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amber.com.pl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15906"},{"taxonomy":"sekcja","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amber.com.pl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sekcja?post=15906"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}