Amsterdam-based AI company Narraid has tapped Amberich International (HK) Limited as its exclusive sales agent for Greater China, bringing Narraid’s podcast-style staff training platform to a key travel retail market.
Signed recently in Singapore, the agreement was timed to coincide with the launch of Narraid’s Simplified Chinese service, set to go live across the region on 15 May.
Developed by Narraid using each brand’s own data, facts and storytelling, the content is delivered as short audio episodes directly to smartphones in Simplified Chinese.
Under the agreement, Amberich will manage commercial development across Mainland China, Hong Kong and Macau, working with travel retail partners throughout the region.
The partnership will also support the onboarding of Chinese brands to the platform.
Once fully operational, the platform is expected to host more than 150 global brands spanning beauty, spirits & wine, confectionery, and fashion.
Narraid Co-Founder and CEO Melvin Broekaart said: “China has always been the obvious market for what Narraid does, and also the hardest to enter well. You cannot win Chinese travel retail from Amsterdam. Jason Cao [Founder & Managing Director] and his company Amberich bring the relationships, the cultural fluency and the commercial judgement this channel requires.
“With Mandarin content now live, and a partner on the ground who can open the right doors, the biggest staff training opportunity in travel retail is finally within reach.”
Building presence in Greater China
China is viewed as a critical hub for global luxury discovery, prompting Narraid to expand its service to strengthen customer interaction in the region.
The company underlines the importance of building brand loyalty, noting that travellers in key duty-free locations such as Hainan, Shanghai and Beijing continue their relationship with brands after departure, often acting as brand advocates in the domestic shopping environments they return to.
Viewing China as a market where travel retail shapes brand loyalty for the rest of the year, the key question is whether frontline staff can consistently help Chinese passengers discover, understand and trust the brands in front of them.
Narraid noted that, for much of the industry, the honest answer is “not consistently”, with frequent staff rotation a key challenge.
The company added that traditional training formats, such as classroom sessions, printed manuals, Teams calls and PowerPoint decks, have become increasingly less relevant to today’s frontline reality, failing to survive turnover or match how today’s staff consume information.
Citing independent research by PI Insight (2025), the data reveals that 83% of travel retail customers identify a staff knowledge gap during the purchase journey, while confident, well-informed staff influence up to 46% of purchase decisions.
Breaking the language barrier
Narraid has developed a solution built around podcast-style learning, which it describes as one of the most effective and preferred ways to absorb new information, including among frontline retail teams.
The AI-driven platform converts brand materials into three- to ten-minute short, story-driven audio episodes that staff can access on the go.
With completion rates between 75% and 93%, audio microlearning has outperformed classroom-based brand training.
Built on facts, figures and storylines from brand partners, Narraid delivers Simplified Chinese episodes via its app, available free on the Apple App Store and Google Play within about a week. Staff progress is gamified through milestones, awards and branded rewards on completion.
This creates a learning format that is fast to produce and refresh, delivered in the native language, and built for repetition.
The result is reflected in the interaction itself, where staff who can translate knowledge into natural conversation and drive immediate sales and lasting brand recall.
Amberich International (HK) Founder & Managing Director Jason Cao said, “In China, duty free is where a global brand either earns its reputation or loses it.
“For years, the weakest link has been the last three feet: the staff member standing next to the customer, often without the training to tell the brand’s story in their own words.
“Narraid changes that. For the first time, Western luxury brands can train Chinese floorstaff – in wholesale as well as monobrand – at scale, in native language, and with the quality control they expect. That is a genuine shift for our industry.” ✈
