In Shenyang and in Beijing our company had a retail business called BMW Lifestyle. Here staff could purchase BMW-branded apparels and other items at a staff discounted price. I have always loved walking through the store quickly in between my meetings. Sometimes I do purchase some items but not very often as its quite pricey. In Shenyang, public who come for the plants tours and visitors such as suppliers, vendors etc also visit the retail store before they leave. In Beijing, it was situated in the lobby of the office building we were in. But what I didn’t know was that the company had retail stores in shopping malls. So you can imagine my pleasant surprise when one day I was in a high-end shopping centre and I stumbled upon a BMW Lifestyle store. Of course I went in to take a look at the products to see if there was anything different from the ones in our office. I also said hello to the staff who were working there and they were contractors. Anyways, over the course of my 4.5 years with BMW in China, although I didn’t myself carry any BMW branded items, I bought and gave away every year loads of BMW Group branded items such as key chains, T-shirts, jackets, wallets, haversacks, hand bags, caps, cups etc to families and friends, including MINI branded items.
