Born to Shop

Christopher Yu says his mother likes to joke “you studied for eight years so you could be a shopkeeper like us”. The Wellingtonian, whose financial acumen has led him to a career developing luxury beauty brands, agrees that retail is in his blood.

It is easy to appreciate from the dapper detail of his dress and the career trajectory from corporate to entrepreneurial that he inherited much of his drive from his hard-working parents. His father ran martial arts stores and his mother worked in camera sales.

Yu lives in London, travels regularly to Paris and New York and has liaised with the likes of Karl Lagerfeld and Tom Ford. Though this may seem a world away from his small business beginnings, the skills he soaked up early have stood him in good stead. So too his New Zealand origins, says Yu, over a flat white on one of his regular trips home.

It’s time for New Zealand to have a moment, he maintains. All that talk back in the early days of Fashion Week about us being the next Belgium may just see this country’s true boutique breakout being in beauty. “The brands coming out of here have a very different aesthetic and different point of view. The commonality is freshness and originality,”

Our reputation for doing things with a creative rather than solely commercial focus — established in film, fashion and food thanks to pioneers like Peter Jackson, Karen Walker and Peter Gordon — offers a world of opportunity.

Yu keeps a close eye on what is bubbling up Downunder and has happily mentored several emerging New Zealand brands. He recently made international introductions for Tiffany Jeans, founder of candle brand Curio Noir.

We are joined by Ingrid Starnes and Simon Pound, the couple who have developed a fragrance line alongside their fashion label. Pound says Yu’s advice led to a packaging upgrade, better positioning their Vetyver-Bergamot natural fragrance and candles.

The connection came through Lucy Vincent-Marr, whose Sans hair and skincare brand is a prime example of an internationally convincing, home-grown brand.

“It’s a sign of how collaborative people here are,” says Yu. He clearly enjoys feeling part of this Kiwi club and has the expertise to add to it. “I’ve learned that a selective distribution business with one door can do as much as mass,” he says, explaining the growing differentiation of luxury retailing and niche businesses from the mass market.

As much as New Zealand’s natural environment and its natural products appeal internationally, he reckons that brands run by passionate people who back themselves are best able to make the all-important emotional connection with consumers. He cites Dion Nash’s Triumph & Disaster which cottoned on to men’s grooming ahead of the “bearded hipster trend” as being an example of “marching to the beat of their own drum”.

Yu, who made his reputation reinvigorating the Diptyque brand, is now managing director of United Perfumes, a company that works primarily in home fragrance. His partners have a long lineage in luxury brands and his own introduction to the world came while working at Deutsche Bank on a planned sharemarket float of Prada.

It was around the time of 9/11 and the IPO was shelved, but his interest in making a move from investment banking was piqued. “The Prada people said you speak our language.”

That language, where labels and sales converge, spoke to the retailer he was born to be. Yu went on to work with leading designers and perfumers to develop brand extensions and special commissions. United Perfumes now distributes ranges into 300 prized doors in 30 countries, including Liberty, Galeries Lafayette, Barneys, Bergdorfs, Corso Como and Lane Crawford.

It looks after the likes of Cire Trudon and the fragrance arm of Fornasetti and launched Maison Francis Kurkdjian and Apothia Los Angeles into the UK. The firm’s contacts have made it the choice for contract manufacturing for home design names Tom Dixon and Orla Kiely, leading hotels including Claridges and wealthy private clients looking for their own distinctive home fragrances. As a negotiator Yu helps secure the best deals from ingredient suppliers and from high-end retail outlets.

“The key thing that I’ve been doing for a long time is about relationships.”

His job is to talk to the right people at both ends of the supply line to ensure everyone is happy with the outcome. “I won’t phone Colette, if it’s not going to be right for their store.”

Yu admits he is no “nose”; it is his business contacts that get things done, but he does recall as a child playing with bottles of his mother’s Red Door and his father’s Polo fragrances. By 16 he had “geekily” graduated to mail ordering Acqua di Parma cologne after reading about it in a magazine.

After graduating in law and accountancy, he worked in tax at Pricewaterhouse Cooper on The Terrace before in 1999 making the inevitable OE to London with around 30 other friends. “Twenty nine have come back to have babies.”

Yu stayed on in a city he says he likes for its “villagey feel”. He lives in Queen’s Park, near Notting Hill, but aims to get home to see family two or three times a year. On his latest trip he spent time in Auckland as well as Wellington and checked out the Mackelvie St shopping precinct, Woodpecker Hill restaurant and picked up some of his favourite men’s streetwear brands I Love Ugly and Moreporks to wear for the UK summer.

“The dream is to never experience winter.”

When it comes to sentiment, Yu keeps it in check, but he says he would love to find the right New Zealand brands to back, with United Perfumes weighing up more actively investing in brands as well as managing them. His advice is for New Zealanders to be less self-effacing and recognise the country already has an amazing “soft power” resource in its creatives.

“I think the next big beauty trend or brand is going to come from New Zealand. I truly believe there is a moment on the world stage for New Zealand in fashion and beauty.”