Queen of High Fashion – From small boutique to empire of luxury brands

Terry Sio

Three decades ago, a young girl scraped together her savings of 5,000 patacas to start a small boutique in Macau. Terry Sio, then a humble factory clerk, called her 100 square-foot boutique Rainbow – a name that reflected her dream to pursue a bright, colorful future.
Today, the small rainbow has become a premier international luxury brand retailer located in mainland China and Macau. Their brand portfolio comprises the retail rights of over twenty globally renowned luxury brands, including Giorgio Armani, Emporio Armani, Bally, Escada, A. Testoni, Cesare Paciotti, Rene Caovilla, Roberto Cavalli, Just Cavalli, Jimmy Choo, Jil Sander and Versace. Through their mono and multi-
brand stores, the Group offers a variety of apparel, footwear, handbags and accessories.
As one of the leading luxury fashion brand retailers in China, Rainbow always strives to target local demand, seek new business opportunities, and develop new markets. Experiencing exceptional economic growth in recent years, China has witnessed a surge in demand for luxury goods. The group sees tremendous development potential in China’s second and third-tier cities and has actively sought to enhance its presence in these cities.
Sio’s dazzling achievements have won her numerous awards. Among them are the Medal of Industry and Commercial Merit from the Macau government in 2006 and one of the 25 Influential Chinese in Global Fashion, according to Forbes magazine in 2011.
She also sits on many industry and business associations in Macau, helping the city to upgrade its fast-growing retail sector. The little rainbow girl has come a long way but she is not resting on her laurels. Sitting in her headquarters office in downtown Macau, Sio outlines ambitious plans for the future. Rainbow’s shops are already everywhere in Macau, in the glittering shopping malls inside Sands, Wynn, MGM, Galaxy, Dreams of the City and other prime retail areas.
It will further set up a 30,000-50,000-square-metre shopping mall in Hengqin, the newly developed commercial area in Zhuhai adjacent to Macau.
Sio is placing high stakes on the MSAR because she believes the city’s retailing industry is at the threshold of more phenomenal growth. “Macau has great potential to develop into a shopping paradise, with expansion in terms of the volume and range of products consumed. The growth will be beyond our imagination. At the moment, mainland Chinese come to Macau for the casinos; shopping is secondary. With more choice of goods, though, they will buy more,” she said.
Her company’s recent growth figures support such an upbeat prediction, a year-on-year growth in revenue of 32 percent and 23 percent in 2008 and 2009 respectively.
Sio, born to a humble local family, started work young, on graduation from secondary school in 1979.  In 1980, working as a factory clerk, she passed by a boutique in downtown Macau one day. She closely studied the store’s decoration and clothes displayed. “I could have a shop better than that,” she said to herself. Soon, she had saved enough to start her own business and sowed the seeds of a fashion empire.
Sio slowly built up her retail business with similar persistence and hard work. The business world was then dominated by men but Sio stayed strong in negotiating hard deals. “Women can use their softness to counter hardness; it is how hard rocks come to be eroded by mere drops of water over time. In posturing, you could look accommodating, but inside you maintain your principles and your ideas. This is about being soft but not weak,” she said.
As Rainbow grew to represent more luxury brands in Macau, Sio started to set her sights on mainland China. “Many brands wanted to expand in China. I was happy to help them develop the mainland market, on the back of my success in Macao,” she said.
Sio, like many investors lured by the potential of Shanghai, first went to the city to set up shop but quickly changed her strategy. “Shanghai may be a prosperous city, but the cost of doing business was very high.” Competition was also great, as many international brands wanted to develop their businesses themselves, not via representatives like Rainbow.
Sio moved to other second-tier cities, such as Dalian, Chongqing and Xian. “Developing those markets was not easy. Transport links were not well developed and it often took a whole day to fly from Macau to those cities. Customers there did not know the brands well. We had to do a lot of work on brand recognition.” Sio has different work teams to study closely the cultural and consumption characteristics of individual Chinese cities.
In the month of January in 2014 alone, Rainbow opened five shops in Chengdu, the provincial capital of Sichuan province. They are A Testoni, Escada, Armani Jeans, Emporio Armani and Giorgio Armani.
While expanding Rainbow’s presence in China, Sio has vigilantly kept up her business on the home front. Macau’s recent explosive economic growth has presented both an opportunity and a challenge. Major luxury retailers from Hong Kong and elsewhere have rushed to share the city’s bigger retail pie. Sio quickly responded with ambitious expansion of her retail network.
“Macau is evolving into a major metropolis. Our group has to keep up with the pace of change. It’s all very demanding and yet exciting for us. I won’t sit and wait for more competitors before launching my offensive. I have to prepare myself today, right this moment. It would be nice if I could take my time and to have my business grow slowly, but circumstances do not allow that. If you do not grasp the nettle and act fast, you’ll be overtaken by others eventually. Macau is my hometown. I cannot afford to fail.”
In 2014, Rainbow opened new shops in the casino-hotels MGM, Four Seasons and Sands Cotai. In 2015, there will be ten more new shops to be set up in new upmarket retail space in Macau, bringing a few new brands onboard as well.
“Each brand is like a child of my own. You cannot favor one against another. Once we secure the distribution rights of a brand, we do our best to promote it. Each brand will have a designated team to follow the business closely. It’s all a matter of responsibility and professionalism. All the brands we manage have confidence in us. We take great care to maintain the high standards Rainbow is known for.”
Many international brands have approached Rainbow for its quality management but Sio said the group stresses quality rather than quantity. “In the past, we grabbed as many brands as possible because we were small and felt insecure. Now, we’ll concentrate our resources on the best brands and phase out the less promising ones,” she said.
Rainbow will move into establishing more multi-brand stores. It is also keen on the management of shopping centers with high-end fashion boutiques, top restaurants and high-end supermarkets.
Sio said she wants to keep her retail empire to under 200 shops, to ensure quality management. “I am not going to impose too much pressure on myself and run 300-400 shops. I do not need to find another high mountain to climb. In the past, making more and more profit was the sole priority. Today, I need to think about consolidating the group well and to maintain our competitiveness. I also have to consider the welfare of our several thousand workers.”
Getting qualified staff to man the shops is a challenge. “Macau has a small population of 600,000 and yet there is great demand for manpower for all kinds of business.”
Sio said training sales staff is no simple matter. “Their attitude is crucial, as they are the face of the brands we represent. We cannot give them too much pressure and yet we have to train them properly. I try to set a good example to the staff. I hope to influence them with my passion and commitment to my job.
How does Sio balance her demanding career with her role as mother and wife? “Family is important to me. It is where I can relieve the pressure of work. When the going gets tough, I remind myself that my family members are on my side. To me, work and play are inseparable. Going to a business-related party is like entertainment for me. At this stage of my life, I want to give back more to society and to spend more time with family and friends,” she said. Louise do Rosario, MDT/Macauhub