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Camper, a century-old Majorcan company, is the top seller of casual shoes in Spain and the most talked-about brand of its kind in Italy and France. But the manufacturer felt incomplete-nowheresville in the minds of millions of well-heeled shoppers-until it signed a lease early this month for a coveted storefront in SoHo.
"New York is cosmopolitan; it's cultured; it's open to new ideas," says Dalia Saliamonas, Camper's export manager.
The Spaniard's conviction that Manhattan is a must for global brand-building is shared by scores of other foreign retailers. While Fifth Avenue and Madison Avenue have long been home to emigrant businesses, what's different now is that so many of the shopkeepers clamoring for a piece of the Big Apple are moving beyond their home countries for the first time.
"Europeans think Manhattan is the center of the world," says Susan J. Kurland, director of Cushman &Wakefield Inc.'s retail brokerage, who negotiated Camper's lease at 125 Prince St. "It's a reverse-psychology thing, the way we think Paris is the cat's meow."
Unfortunately for their pocketbooks, these newcomers are rushing to set up shop here at a highly inopportune moment.
"The rents are higher than ever, and the supply of space is lower than ever,"...