Xiong Mengge graduated with a Bachelor’s Degree in International Business with French from Nottingham University Business School China (NUBS China) in 2011 and gained her Master’s Degree in Management with specialisation in Marketing from ESCP Europe in 2014. She formerly worked in Paris for Lighthouse and Louis Vuitton, and currently works at the headquarters of Richemont Group in Geneva, Switzerland as the International Senior Chinese Business Development Manager of Piaget. Founded in 1874, Piaget is a famous watch and jewellery brand owned by Richemont, the world’s second-largest luxury goods company.
Scheduling an interview with Xiong Mengge took some time since she is often busy making business trips around the world. On a free afternoon, the interview took place virtually, connecting Ningbo with Geneva, Switzerland. See below for our interview with Mengge.
Days at university: Met the best people in my life
Though her days at UNNC lie long in the past, in retrospect this bright period of her formative years remains clear as if they happened yesterday.
In 2007, Mengge, from Xuancheng, Anhui Province, was admitted into the University of Nottingham Ningbo China (UNNC). Her father is her best supporter, helping her apply to UNNC. As someone in the education industry, he once visited the University of Nottingham in the UK in a national English teaching networking event and discovered this “treasure” of a university. He comments that UNNC “resembles universities in the UK” and “has an excellent academic atmosphere”. After visiting the university on-site with his daughter, they fitted in easily and decided to apply for it as the first choice.
The campus unfolds with vast greenery and soaring birds. “I’ve never seen such a place. UNNC always encourages you to think actively about whether you have any questions about your studies or practice, what interests and abilities you have, what courses or extracurricular activities you want to choose, or what else you want to improve on, etc. You have to think for yourself. The university will provide you with much guidance and support to help you achieve what you want,” Mengge said.
In addition to the philosophy of freedom and firm support, there are also excellent teachers and friends. “The best people in my life I met while at UNNC,” Mengge said.
She described the teachers who taught her French as humorous, idealists and sophisticated. Due to the small-size seminars, teachers and students actively interact with each other and build close relationships. “They not only gave me a lot of guidance in my studies, but they also made me much more interested in the French language and culture.” Yin Xingxing, her Student Support Advisor, was always with her. “She did not treat us with a managerial attitude, but in a very humanised and approachable way, and was willing to carefully listen to our views. We felt that she wanted to help us.”
If memories of UNNC were like a book, then friendships were the best chapter. “I’m so lucky to have these friends in my life. It is they who made me into a better person.” After graduation, although we have moved to different countries, we still visit each other every Christmas and accept invitations to be bridesmaids when getting married.
Mengge’s husband was also one of her friends at UNNC. He went to France with Mengge after graduation for further study and now works for HSBC in Paris. The couple has been with each other for nearly a decade. “He is my first love,” Mengge said with a contented smile.
In 2011, Mengge graduated as an “Outstanding Graduate” from UNNC and went on to study at ESCP Europe in Paris, which is one of the top business schools in the world. Its Master in Management programme, which Mengge was enrolled in, is ranked 5th worldwide in the 2019 Financial Times Master in Management rankings. According to Mengge, it was the international education, the exchange programme to the UK campus and other opportunities provided by UNNC that made her stand out among other applicants for this programme, which prefers students with cross-cultural backgrounds.
Career path: The more challenges, the more growth
Mengge completed many excellent internships in Paris, including the consulting firm Lighthouse, Richemont Group and Louis Vuitton. As a result, she is often invited back to ESCP to share her job hunting experience. She summed it up as first, have a clear and realistic goal; and second, spend sufficient time and effort on preparing for interviews. “For almost every interview, I prepared in advance with dozens of pages of materials.”
Mengge’s expectation for her first internship was that the more she could learn from it, the better. After all, she specialises in marketing, and more specifically, brand management, a career path that requires a lot of practice. She further analysed that in comparison with the marketing department in big companies, consulting agencies treat interns and permanent employees equally. Interns are thus able to participate deeply in specific projects. Although tasks in these agencies are often more difficult, they are more essential as well. Therefore, Mengge chose Lighthouse, a leader in the field of brand management consulting. This choice proved to be a wise one. She comprehensively and rapidly improved as she expected, especially in a project that had to provide research and a complete analysis of a luxury company to help its rebranding. Her work in it almost covered all the fields of marketing and became the most eye-catching experience when she later applied for Richemont’s position.
In 2015, Mengge joined Richemont’s newly established China Affairs and Strategy Department. She spent five years making her way from a project analyst to a senior manager, and worked jointly with her colleagues to develop new business and recruit new members. The new department has grown rapidly and has won recognition and attention from various brands. Mengge has also improved a lot. “In this department, only with a very proactive attitude can I keep up with new ideas and make new attempts without being afraid of taking responsibilities and risks. Because everything is new here, and no one tells you what to do or who to learn from, we usually had a hard time.”
She works in the same way as superman does — flying around, full of vigour. It’s normal for her to have eight meetings with colleagues, superiors and business partners in a day, or to make a business trip to a different country every two days. However, she never admits that she is tired, “As long as I can see good results after making a big effort, hard work is not a big deal.”
Looking back at the heavy workloads and cultural barriers she faced when she first entered ESCP, as well as the high-pressure environment and the difficult time when she first entered Richemont, Mengge said these experiences have taught her that challenges stimulate improvement. “So whenever it was tough, I know for sure that if I hold on more and persevere, none of it will be in vain.”
After all, although perseverance may not bring success, it will bring improvement. As John Maxwell said, “Sometimes you win; sometimes you learn.”
Luxury goods: Quality matters
Mengge works in the luxury industry. From an economics standpoint, luxury goods refer to products that have the highest cost-to-quality ratio. In daily life, luxury brands, with their unique places in the market, represent social status. On the other hand, if seen from a marketing perspective, luxury goods are also the products that have the highest intangible value to tangible value ratio. According to Wikipedia, in economics, a luxury good (or upmarket good) is a good for which demand increases more than proportionally as income rises, so that expenditures on the good become a greater proportion of overall spending. Luxury goods contrast with necessity goods, in which demand increases proportionally less than income. A recent popular TV drama, Nothing But Thirty, created a stir about luxury goods on social media.
In the interview, we also discussed how to define the term ‘luxury’, and what Mengge’s attitude is towards luxury goods. Mengge explained that she entered the industry by chance, and said, “The term shechipin (luxury goods) reflects the people’s understanding of luxury, but the word often does not come across positively because it can exhibit a sense of waste and extravagance. Such a perception does not align with the historical nature of the industry, so we prefer to use the word jingpin (Luxury Goods) as in jingpin gongye (Luxury Industry) and jingpin shijia (Luxury Maison/Brand). Exquisiteness lies in the careful and persistent craftwork by generations of Swiss horologist, and their choice of handcraft in an increasingly industrialised society brings about a pure and elegant balance between craftsmanship and precision machinery.”
After watching Nothing But Thirty, Mengge indicated that her deepest reflection is that we need to learn to talk with our truest selves, giving ourselves respect and freedom. People are social beings, so we are often influenced and pressured by societal values. In the drama, the heroine Gu Jia tries with great effort to buy a limited edition luxury bag in order to enter into a social class that she does not belong to. In truth, what differentiates them is not their spending power, but the value they hold and look for in goods. Alternate consumers of luxury goods are becoming the ones that brands actually want to reach for—those who appreciate craftsmanship and enjoy the expressing the brands’ styles. Next time when you choose your luxury bag, jewellery, or watch, be sure to understand and appreciate the value behind the brand to see the true beauty of the piece, instead of being pressured to buy the luxury item.
After working and living with Europeans for a while, Mengge has learnt about the maturity of their self-awareness: they self-reflect to understand what they really want and enjoy experiencing different things to live for themselves. Similarly, many European brands are established not to sell a high price, but to honour the historical value behind each created piece.
To UNNCers
“I see some students are always in a hurry to move on to the next stage. In my opinion, every stage is the best stage as they can’t be lived over again. Cherish each stage, live in the moment, study hard, make friends, enrich yourself, and do those things that you want to do. As long as you make the most of the moment and enjoy yourself, the road ahead will take care of itself. Especially in a place as glorious as UNNC — we alumni often wonder how such a university could exist! You should enjoy your time here.”