The changing face of China's luxury market

With the pandemic shutting down travel options, many Chinese consumers, including a significant younger cohort, are redirecting their spending into fashion-related luxury products, a new report says. 

Why it matters

The New Faces of Chinese Luxury Shoppers report from consulting firm Oliver Wyman predicts that these first-time luxury fashion consumers will be responsible for 88% of the country’s luxury fashion market growth in 2021. And what they are buying isn’t what a previous generation of entrants bought, The Business of Fashion notes. 

Key insights 

• Forty percent of the first-time luxury consumers surveyed were under 25 years-old.
• Their entry purchases tend to be ready-to-wear fashion items (ten years ago it was leather items). 
• Sales associates are an important point-of-contact with luxury brands for Gen-Z consumers. 

The Evergrande cloud

Loaded with $300bn of debt, the future of property giant Evergrande is in doubt. If it were to go bankrupt, the impact on the wider economy would be significant. A financial crisis “will drastically slow down, if not stop” luxury purchases by the 75% of buyers who aren’t in the ultra-rich bracket, says luxury consumer trend publication Jing Daily.

Sourced from Business of Fashion, Jing Daily