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.
The country will be the first to hit the milestone, according to a new eMarketer report, which forecasts that over 52 percent of China’s sales will take place online in 2021, up from almost 45 percent in 2020.
Other economies — even those with sophisticated digital landscapes — lag behind. In South Korea, the country with the next highest rate of e-commerce against overall sales, just under 30 percent of transactions are predicated to take place online this year. The US is expected to see just 15 percent, with China likely to outpace it by $2 trillion in e-commerce by the end of 2021. eMarketer pegged the average among Western European economies at around 13 percent.
With consumers tightening their belts in China, the battle between global fast fashion brands and local high street giants has intensified.
Investors are bracing for a steep slowdown in luxury sales when luxury companies report their first quarter results, reflecting lacklustre Chinese demand.
The French beauty giant’s two latest deals are part of a wider M&A push by global players to capture a larger slice of the China market, targeting buzzy high-end brands that offer products with distinctive Chinese elements.
Post-Covid spend by US tourists in Europe has surged past 2019 levels. Chinese travellers, by contrast, have largely favoured domestic and regional destinations like Hong Kong, Singapore and Japan.