Rolls-Royce opens a new British 'embassy' in Sardinia
In its clubby pop-up boutique in Porto Cervo, Rolls-Royce endears itself to 'time-poor' rich with breezy test drives, spoonfuls of caviar
7 June 2016
YOU CAN'T EXPECT A CAPTAIN OF INDUSTRY to walk into your frontage-road auto dealership, even if you are Rolls-Royce Motor Cars. Instead, you’ve got to find your customer where they are. And in the summertime, and if you happen to be Rolls-Royce Motor Cars, that’s Porto Cervo.
Porto Cervo is the most expensive city in Europe by some measurements; rather definitively so if that measurement is total board-feet of luxury watercraft. The port town is on the Italian island of Sardinia, in the very Medi of the Mediterranean, and the megayachts fill the harbor there every summer as if it were the breeding grounds for fiberglass cetaceans.
“This is a rarified niche,” says Rolls-Royce’s James Warren, of the potential market for the roughly 4,000 bespoke automobiles that the company produces annually. “These people are incredibly wealthy and incredibly discerning, but,” he sighs, “These are time-poor people.”
Too time-poor to shop, perhaps, but they are not too time-poor to relax, so Rolls-Royce has created a spot for them to chill. Company representatives spent a summer scoping out the scene in Porto Cervo (after considering the west coast of the US and Monaco, among other places), and located a sizeable art studio along the Promenade du Port. Then, they created the Summer Studio — a space in which not to sell Rolls-Royces.
“You’re not buying the car, you’re buying the lifestyle” says Gerry Spahn, spokesman for the Rolls-Royce in the Americas. “If you own a Rolls, you are part of the family, so we have to show you what being part of that family is like.”
More:
http://www.bbc.com/autos/story/20160607-rolls-royce-new-british-embassy-on-sardinia
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