China to become the world’s largest luxery consumer market
Straight from Yahoo — Here is another wakeup call for web developers who may be neglecting the international market:
Just five years ago mainland buyers accounted for 1% of global sales of luxury handbags, shoes, jewelry, perfume, and the like. Today the Chinese are the third-biggest high-end buyers on earth, with more than 12% of world sales, Goldman, Sachs & Co. reckons. Within a decade, China will likely leapfrog Japan and the U.S. to become the top luxury market, predicts Goldman analyst Jacques-Franck Dossin.
Which begs the question, how much longer until Weblogs Inc/AOL rolls out a Chinese version of Luxist? (they already have Chinese versions of Autoblog & Engadget)
Well the questions is will there need to be a Chinese version? My guess it that the Chinese people who can afford the luxury goods are reading English anyways.
If not, well I guess I better go take some language classes to stay relevant.
Comment by Steve — February 2, 2006 @ 3:48 pm
Straight from the article –
“Zhao Hui, a chain-smoking 38-year-old restaurateur, real estate developer, and Ferrari owner from Shanghai, says he speaks no English, but he manages to pronounce “shopping” and “Tiffany” as he shows off his $50,000 Franck Muller watch.”
Comment by Andrew — February 2, 2006 @ 9:51 pm
There’s certainly a lot of hype about China - but here’s a note of caution from somebody over there:
http://www.chinawhite.net/archives/2006/01/all_change_roun.html
Comment by Brian Turner — February 5, 2006 @ 3:41 pm
Thanks posting that link. I’ve read quite a lot about it and China is by no means an easy market. However, it is a very profitable one when you know what your doing.
Comment by Andrew — February 5, 2006 @ 8:06 pm