French luxury pen and lighter maker ST Dupont will soon enter the U.S. market and is predicting a 5-10 percent rise in sales revenue for the current fiscal year.
ST Dupont told the Reuters Global Luxury Summit it had obtained selling points at Saks as a foothold in the U.S. market.
ST Dupont also said that customers in Russia and Eastern Europe, which in the past generated 10-11 million euros of revenue for the company, were back after a year-long absence.
"We had no business from them (Eastern Europe and Russia) for about one year but now they are coming back," ST Dupont Chief Executive Alain Crevet said in an interview in Paris.
Crevet, a former LVMH executive, said he also expected solid growth to come from Asia.
He said the company did not have the resources for advertising but relied on celebrities and French President Nicolas Sarkozy's state gifts of ST Dupont pens for publicity.”