Why set your sights on China? “There are no interior designers there,” explains architect and designer Campion Platt in this week’s Business of Home podcast. Despite the learning curve for Mandarin and the metric system, Platt has done enough groundwork to recognize that China is the land of opportunity for interior design businesses. He believes the window of opportunity is open for those willing to try.
“You have a country with this incredible expanding wealth, a great interest in American design, construction on steroids, a lot of Western product there already—but nobody to connect the dots,” he says.
Platt wants to be the one to connect those dots. In an exclusive story in the summer issue of Business of Home, the designer unveiled his collaboration with a major Chinese developer on a million-square-foot design center for luxury brands within a 10.7-million-square-foot complex comprising an accredited design school, a performing arts center, a shopping mall, and more. (Platt will be designing the interior design school—the country’s first accredited one—and curating a 15,000-square-foot showroom on the American floor of the project’s design center.)
The new project comes with an open invitation to U.S. designers and manufacturers. And Platt isn’t worried about competition—the market is that big. “I want everyone to come over there,” he says. “If every great New York designer came over there, we’d only be touching one percent of the market.”
Now, on the podcast, he explains how he got involved, as well as the scope and scale of development and design opportunities in China. Listen to the full episode here:
