Luxury marque Rolls Royce arrives in crowded Manila market

 

The situation, the questions

A division of the Autohub Group , Rolls Royce Motor Cars Manila/BBA is the official distributor of Rolls Royce in the country. Autohub—headed by Willy Tee Ten—includes dealerships (Ford Bonifacio Global City and Hyundai), aftermarket products (Solar Gard window tints), and MINI vehicles (under British United Automobiles). 

 

Peugeot arrived last year, plus Bentley (under PGA Cars) this year, and a number of new brands would be launched in the next six months. The situation begs these questions: Is the segment beginning to look like sardines in a can? Or is there enough room for all to live out of the market for the long haul?

 

Of course, Rolls Royce regional boss Harris doesn’t share the skepticism that there’s hardly room for one more luxury marque. 

 

“We evaluated business prospects in the Philippines for a long time, for both short-term and long-term [five to seven years],” he said. “We think that the economy here is growing... We have a healthy portion of high net worth individuals (HNWIs) here that’s growing, an overall Filipino business mindset that is improving, the highest growth rate in Asia that I’ve seen—even greater than China in the past few months. It’s a positive place for us to be, that’s why we need to be here. 

 

“We’re seeing that the pinnacle of HNWIs is getting bigger in the Philippines, and that part of the pyramid is getting larger as the next generations succeed. And as those future generations become today’s HNWIs, it’s important to educate the market, to show what Rolls Royce is all about. We want to show the market there is a car that people will strive for, as the ultimate reward for HNWIs, as an arrival brand,” Harris added.

 

The need of the marque to expand in other markets due to saturation in previously invested geographical areas was another reason the Spirit of Ecstasy (the female statuette adorning all Rolls Royces, a common reference to the Goodwood marque) has landed in the Philippines. 
 

“When certain markets reach saturation—such as China’s—then the investor has to look for other markets to achieve growth,” Harris noted. “Hence, our targets for expansion in the Asia-Pacific region outside of China, such as the Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, western Australia [Perth], Japan [Osaka, aside from Tokyo and Yokohama] and even in Korea. That applies even to the Rolls Royce brands. We started out with just one line—the Phantom—and got even more commercially viable with the Ghost and the Drophead Coupe lines.” 

 

Asked what makes the Philippines different than its ASEAN or Asian neighbors, Harris claimed the local auto market is unique in that the mass concentration of the target market is in one city or region. “That aside, Filipinos’ desire for luxury is no different than that of other countries… There is a large appreciation for luxury goods here, and we want to be part of that…We just checked the recent history of the Philippines’ economic performance, economic indicators, etc. But at the end of the day, it’s all about the investors’ deciding if it’s the right thing to do or not.” 

 

Harris insisted on a clear distinction between Rolls Royce and other marques. “We are different from other luxury auto segment marques, in that our cars are never produced on a large scale. Several parts of the car are made by hand, such as the leather stitching for the seats, the wood veneer finish for the cabin. Every car produced takes 440,000 man hours. Every individual car is road tested before it makes its way out of the factory. I’d like to say that the DNA of every worker that works on our cars is transferred to the cars themselves. Rolls Royce goes beyond cars, they go into lifestyle—such as making the leather seats match the leather on your couch or sofa, color preferences, that attention to detail—the cars as a finite investment, like property or time.”