Lau concedes that Lai's formulas are not working as well as they used to. Now, the customer is bored with the same T-shirt that everybody is wearing. There comes a point when product innovation is the way to go, choice is the way to go. Going that way, Lau opened his first Giordano Ladies, an upmarket, single-sex version of the firm's standard format, in Hong Kong recently. The firm already has seven women's stores in Taiwan and three in Singapore.
Rivals are skeptical.
That consumer may not understand or accept it. Giordano has an even harder task winning understanding in Beijing. When the government isn't shutting down Giordano stores in fits of pique, the company does well on the mainland, where its products appeal to the modest means of China's growing middle class. Some analysts remain unimpressed, however. W.I. Carr's Alan Wong downgraded Giordano stock to a sell in mid-January, predicting that the company will fall short of its target of increasing China sales to a quarter of total revenues by the year 2000.