HONG KONG. Inflight Sales Group (ISG) Founder, Chairman and CEO Jean-Marcel Rouff has formed a joint venture company with China’s leading inflight retailer China Sales Group (CSG) called China Inflight Services. The new entity will focus on combined supplier negotiations and new business ventures.
Rouff (with whom we’ll bring you an interview soon) and CSG’s newly appointed CEO James Zhang will serve as Co-Chairmen. Patrick Garreau will be Director of Purchasing Services, heading up the new entity and working on day-to-day operations. China Inflight Service’s offices will be located in CSG’s current Hong Kong headquarters in Tsim Sha Tsui Centre.
ISG and CSG have enjoyed a close relationship for many years. As reported, until the end of 2013 ISG acted as CSG’s major supplier of duty free products for the latter’s various Chinese airline accounts – including Air China International, China Eastern Airlines, China Southern Airlines and Hainan Airlines. After that CSG began buying directly.
CSG is China’s dominant airline concessionaire. The parties said in a statement: “The new company will streamline and improve procurement for both ISG and CSG by synergising marketing, sourcing and logistics capabilities of both entities. This pooling of expertise will bring to brands better services and greater enhancement of their image and products thanks to increased training of airline crew and better inventory management.”
The statement continued: “China inflight Services will better meet the expectations of the airlines and their passengers in order to offer the best possible selection of products, thereby enhancing customer experience through preferred collaborations with brands and more relevant marketing programmes. Ultimately, this is expected to result in a growth of inflight revenue, thereby benefitting airline customers of both ISG and CSG.”
Rouff said: “I am very pleased to be deepening our partnership with CSG, which has been a very important one for me. We are confident that together, our synergies will allow both our companies to benefit in today’s environment. ISG has recently completed extensions with several major customers, and is well-placed to focus on improving both sales and terms with key suppliers.” [We’ll bring you an interview with Jean-Marcel Rouff soon.]
CSG’s Zhang added: “We are particularly pleased to be working with ISG to reinvigorate our airline inflight retail programmes. CSG has just been awarded a new long-term contract with Air China and with contracts of similar duration already in place for China Eastern, China Southern and Hainan Airlines. This allows us to focus on strengthening our position within the market, and working with ISG to advocate for the airline sector in Greater China and Asia Pacific.
China Sales Group, based in Beijing and Hong Kong, operates the inflight retail programmes for all Mainland China’s major international carriers and has over 20 years’ experience in the market.
Inflight Sales Group (ISG) describes itself as the pioneer of airline concession operations, management and marketing, with over 30 years of airline duty free concession management experience. It was founded by Jean-Marcel Rouff in 1982 as an exclusive distributor of duty free products for leading prestige brands. More information is available at www.inflightsales.com.
