“On any given average day at our biggest flagship in China—which is in Beijing—we typically see between 600 to 800 people walk through the door, of whom around 90 to 120 make a purchase. Last week the most we had in one day was five.”That is a snapshot précis—and very much off the record—of the state of luxury retail right now amid the growing coronavirus crisis on the ground in China, as delivered by a senior executive at one of Europe’s largest luxury fashion houses.
In this context, the travails of the fashion and luxury industry are beyond trivial: a nothing. However, for those who do happen to look through the world via a fashion-tinted filter, this terrible and frightening health crisis is illustrating just how reliant upon—and exposed to—China the industry has recently become. Back in 2000, the Chinese market was a tiny sliver of the global total, representing only 2% of sales; now, it is the most profitable territory there is.
To its credit , the luxury sector is trying to be part of the solution. LVMH has already donated $2.3 million to the Chinese Red Cross Foundation and pledged to source medical supplies for China. Similarly,, L’Oréal, and several other fashion groups have made significant contributions to relief organizations, while others are working to fund the global effort to develop an effective inoculation to the coronavirus in the tightest time frame possible.
Metternich’s famous 19th-century observation that “when Paris sneezes, Europe catches a cold” was a reference to the spread of popular democratic revolution. Today his metaphor applies with troubling accuracy to the health of the Chinese people and that of many aspects of the wider world, economy included. And yet a threatened economy is a minor side effect compared to the much more vital, human factor at play here.
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It's obvious Coronavirus will affect Businesses badly.
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