The Business of Fashion
Agenda-setting intelligence, analysis and advice for the global fashion community.
Agenda-setting intelligence, analysis and advice for the global fashion community.
BEIJING, China — China's luxury-goods market is growing steadily again, nearly five years after it was knocked off course by President Xi Jinping's anti-corruption drive.
But the sector looks very different from back in 2012, when conspicuous spending by officials greasing the wheels of contracts was a key driver — spurring the crackdown on graft. Today, newly affluent consumers unaffected by government curbs are setting the pace. China's rising middle class is so important that it's set to be a main engine for luxury growth globally, Bain & Co. said in a recent report on the outlook to 2020.
“The anti-corruption campaign has removed the froth from the market, as spending and consumption is now very largely legitimate,” Luca Solca, head of luxury goods research at Exane BNP Paribas, said in a Sept. 25 email.
The composition of China’s high-end spending has also changed over the past half decade. Gift-giving used to be dominated by purchases for males, with luxury watches a particular favourite. The anti-graft push caused such sales to plunge. Now, the emphasis has switched to spending by women on designer handbags and costly perfume.
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Swiss watch exports to Hong Kong, a favourite destination for Chinese buyers, fell 25 percent last year, and the value of the market has halved in four years, according to the Federation of the Swiss Watch Industry.
China’s luxury market "was mainly dominated by the male segment," Serena Rovai, a professor at France’s La Rochelle Business School, wrote in her book “Luxury the Chinese Way.” Now, there’s a more prominent female presence, "thanks to the increasing purchasing power of women and the anti-corruption policy regarding often male-driven gift-giving," she wrote.
Companies that have seen strong results in China this year include:
Results are proving so strong that Erwan Rambourg, global co-head of consumer and retail research at HSBC Holdings Plc, says his bank’s already bullish forecast of 10 percent growth for China’s luxury market this year versus 7 percent globally — could be surpassed.
The upturn, which started in the fourth quarter of 2016, has been helped by a turnaround in China’s exchange rate, along with gains in real-estate and equities — all of which have boosted the spending power of the nation’s consumers.
“You’ve had a bit of excess purchasing reversing very low purchasing, and we don’t think that can go on forever," Rambourg said in an interview by phone this week from New York. “Pent-up demand, by definition, doesn’t sustain.”
Yet an expanding mass market is lifting some high-end goods, like the premium Chinese liquor segment that was hit hard after 2012.
Aidan Yao, a senior emerging markets economist at AXA Investment Managers, said this week that the liquor increase is consistent with broader strength seen in domestic demand, retail sales and consumer spending.
By Colin Simpson; editors: Christopher Anstey and Ravil Shirodkar.
The luxury goods maker is seeking pricing harmonisation across the globe, and adjusts prices in different markets to ensure that the company is”fair to all [its] clients everywhere,” CEO Leena Nair said.
Hermes saw Chinese buyers snap up its luxury products as the Kelly bag maker showed its resilience amid a broader slowdown in demand for the sector.
The group’s flagship Prada brand grew more slowly but remained resilient in the face of a sector-wide slowdown, with retail sales up 7 percent.
The guidance was issued as the French group released first-quarter sales that confirmed forecasts for a slowdown. Weak demand in China and poor performance at flagship Gucci are weighing on the group.