“China's volatile demand for luxury has left industry executives scratching their heads. How much longer will anti-corruption measures weigh on sales? Are Chinese becoming more value-driven as they travel more and more sophisticated? Ultimately, how should global luxury brands set their pricing, supply, store openings, and digital strategy to capture Chinese consumers? The Bling Dynasty is an insightful read for luxury managers, consultants, and anyone who wants to understand consumption trends and China's role in shaping them. As a former marketing manager in the industry, author Erwan Rambourg understands how the brands operate inside and out. As a co-head of global consumer and retail equity research at HSBC, he has taken his analytic depth to his first book, filling it with interesting numbers and interviews with executives. Mr. Rambourg has a unique background as a Frenchman growing up in the U.S. and being based in Hong Kong for the past four years has given him a front-seat view of how the Chinese consumers operate and a broad perspective of the often opaque global world of luxury.”
—Wei Gu, Wall Street Journal editor for China wealth and luxury
“The Bling Dynasty puts doubters of China's appetite for luxury goods to the back of the queue. Erwan Rambourg's clever use of avatars to portray the true nature and extent of the huge desire for luxury goods in China makes this informative but also easy read. It is a must for anyone hoping to understand what drives the consumers of the world's second largest economy. Rambourg, based in Hong Kong at HSBC, is one of the leading experts on the luxury goods sector and in The Bling Dynasty he successfully combines well-researched data with access to the real shoppers on the street.”
—Laura Chesters, business reporter and luxury goods specialist at London Evening Standard and The Independent
“Erwan Rambourg adopts an engaging, conversational voice to explain the complexities of the Chinese market—as if inviting his readers to a dinner party at his Hong Kong flat. He answers the questions on so many minds with clear explanations peppered with parables, literary references, hard data and genuine, wide-eyed discovery.”
—Miles Socha, European editor of Women's Wear Daily
“In this book, Erwan Rambourg has managed to combine his vast knowledge of the luxury goods sector with ideas drawn from his personal experience as a Westerner who has re-located to Hong Kong. The result is an interesting and entertaining viewpoint of the Chinese consumer and of the luxury goods world in general. In a simple but efficient manner, the book covers an important and current issue in a way that allows the reader to view the dynamics of the world of luxury goods from an unusual perspective. I particularly enjoyed being able to re-visit, through the book, some of the feelings that I have experienced during my many visits to Asia.”
—Diego Della Valle, Tod's group chairman and CEO
“Erwan Rambourg knows the luxury goods industry inside out. His on-the-ground work in China yields deep insights into the mind-set of the local consumer and a clear analysis of the unparalleled opportunities this market offers to attractive, global brands.”
—Claus-Dietrich Lahrs, chief executive officer, Hugo Boss AG
“Erwan Rambourg is a marketer, an analyst, and a thinker and has used his broad experience of the luxury industry to write The Bling Dynasty a bit like an international correspondent. He's exploring China, the new Eldorado for luxury, and his inside knowledge and the focus on consumers have produced an analysis that is both sharp and concrete. A few memorable moments as well as a very personal touch make this book very informative and entertaining to read.”
—Francois Le Troquer, executive director luxury division, Watches of Switzerland—Mappin & Webb
“China's middle class holds the key to the future of luxury. Erwan Rambourg demonstrates this with extensive insights into both the luxury industry and what Chinese want.”
—Francis Belin, senior vice president Asia Pacific, Swarovski Consumer Goods Business
“Through firsthand knowledge and unique facts and anecdotes, The Bling Dynasty provides an in-depth analysis of one of the most important markets for luxury brands, China. Erwan shares his insights with incisive scrutiny and wit, and offers a unique perspective on a sector that is both abundantly discussed yet still filled with misconceptions.”
—Ketty Pucci-Sisti Maisonrouge, luxury entrepreneur, adjunct professor at Columbia Business School, associate professor at IE Business School, author of The Luxury Alchemist
“I have been speaking with Erwan Rambourg for years and have benefited considerably from his ideas. Anyone who wants to understand the luxury market must first understand the Chinese consumer. The Bling Dynasty is a must-read for investors, marketers, or anyone who wants a deeper understanding of the future of luxury in China.”
—Robert Dunphy, portfolio manager, OppenheimerFunds
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In memory of my father
To all the contacts within the groups, the brands, their suppliers, the retailers, the media, thank you for sharing your enthusiasm and insights. Keep 'em coming! Former colleagues, colleagues of former colleagues, friends, friends of friends, and more: I will not name you to avoid the embarrassment but I'm very grateful for your time.
Shaun Rein, five years younger than me but has seen it all: cheers for the great advice! Tom Fishburne: congratulations on living your passion. Steve Richter: thanks for inspiring me to move to Asia.
Three special mentions:
For Francis Belin, thanks for all the feedback and constructive criticism as well as all the great insights on Japanese and Chinese luxury consumption.
For Michael Gilmore, thank you for sharing twenty years' worth of experience on Asian consumers—and a few bad jokes—two passions we have in common!
Last but not least, to my real boss, Dorothée, thank you for mastering mellowness.
Erwan Rambourg is a managing director at HSBC in Hong Kong and the co-head of Global Consumer & Retail Equity Research. He has been a top-ranked analyst covering the luxury and sporting goods sectors for the bank for the past ten years. Rambourg joined HSBC in 2005 after working for eight years as a marketing manager in the luxury industry, notably for Richemont and LVMH.
He is regularly featured in the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times and appears on CNBC and Bloomberg. He earned his master's degree from Aston University (Birmingham, UK) and graduated from the EDHEC Business School (Lille, France).
Rambourg grew up in New York and has lived and worked in Paris and London. In 2011, he moved to Hong Kong with his wife, Dorothée, and three children, Manon, Benjamin and Baptiste.
Visit the author's blog at www.erwanrambourg.com for more information.
One of the challenges in writing about China's luxury market is the speed with which it is evolving. No market for luxury goods has grown more quickly.
In fact, over the last decade, the Chinese consumer has been a major growth driver for most luxury brands, whether spending ‘at home' or spreading the wealth in global travel retail locations. Therefore, it is not surprising that the Chinese consumer has become the primary target of international luxury brands.
Looking ahead, the Chinese should dominate the luxury space: the change we are seeing with the Chinese is a once-in-a-generation transformation; no other nationality will influence luxury consumption as much as the Chinese in our lifetime.
Irrespective of any near-term challenges that the China luxury market may be facing, its medium- to long-term future is unquestionably bright.
While a shift from traditional corporate gift giving and evolving government regulation may limit growth in certain categories, many factors point to significant opportunities for growth in luxury consumption. These include: an increasingly urbanized population, a large and rapidly growing middle class, continued investment in luxury retail infrastructure, policies favoring domestic consumption as export-led growth slows, and the increasing sophistication of the Chinese consumer thanks to both travel and the amazing access to information via the Internet.
The Chinese consumer is a citizen of the world and adopting luxury brands will remain a key sign of moving forward, advancing in life while showing hope for the future.
Erwan Rambourg's The Bling Dynasty is a valuable contribution to the understanding of China's luxury market in a period of rapidly evolving government policy and shifting macro trends and consumer behaviors.
His insight into the socioeconomic and consumer landscape in China combined with his knowledge of the world's leading luxury brands and their strategies for China help give a clear picture of the many factors at play in the largest and most important luxury market the world has experienced.
Victor Luis, Coach CEO
The New Silk Road
Let China sleep, for when she wakes, she will shake the world.
—Attributed to Napoléon Bonaparte, 1816
Europeans used to crave Chinese luxury goods. So seeing Chinese buying European luxury goods could be the contradiction of an era. That contradiction could last.
Two thousand years ago, the world was economically divided between Rome and China. The Roman Empire was known to the Chinese as Daqin, meaning the ‘Great Qin', the Great other Empire to be reckoned with far away on the other side of Earth. The Han dynasty of 206 BC to AD 220 built and extended the original Silk Road1 and saw the development of wealthy merchants during what China remembers as a golden age. Roman consumers became obsessed with silk, fragrances, spices, jewellery, and anything coming from the East, really.
China was revered for the refinement and the quality of its products, and the scarcity value meant that it was acceptable to pay the equivalent of ‘top dollar' for them. As consumer spending started to weigh on the Roman finances, the Roman Senate ended up describing silk as a decadent and immoral cloth. And when the empire collapsed, the business on that Silk Road dried up.
Fast-forward to the eighteenth century: the West is still fascinated by Eastern luxury products such as tea, porcelain and, yes, silk. The British are getting ruined by paying for these goods with tons of silver and quickly find an alternative. Opium fields are cultivated in India by the British-owned East India Company2, which trades it in Canton and Macau, the two exclusive entry ports for British and Portuguese commerce into China. Opium was then banned in China, but Chinese consumers were hooked on it and soon the money flowed back from East to West and it all ended terribly with the opium wars.
The Silk Road running East to West is no longer in use for the luxury trade. Today, Chinese consumers are off of opium but on to imported Western luxury products. There is a New Silk Road that runs from the West to the East. It is a road that has not been open for long but it is a busy one and one where new lanes have been created quickly.
It is incredibly ironic that today's luxury goods are Western and Chinese consumers are buying silk scarves and “carrés”3 from French brand Hermès4 or, as history comes full circle, jewels from Bulgari and leather bags and fur coats from Fendi, two contemporary Roman icons.
The New Silk Road is catering to millions of Chinese feeding a new Bling Dynasty. Within this substantial empire, many characters stand out.
Let me introduce you to five of them.
Spending time in China and meeting Chinese consumers abroad has shown that some stereotypical luxury consumers do actually exist. Rather than quote real people who may find it uncomfortable or rude, I have decided it was easier to present you with five avatars. These are representatives who embody the thoughts and feelings of luxury consumers coming from very distinct subsets of the Chinese culture.
Here they are. (See Figure I-1.)
Figure I-1 Five Avatars of ‘Mass Lux'
Calvin is 26 and is brand obsessed, loves logos and while he's not that affluent, he wants people around him—friends, family, business partners—to know he's succeeded.
He is what the managers of Coach would call a ‘status lover', a somewhat disappearing breed of Chinese luxury consumers. He's after brands as he's eager to fit in to what he sees as modern China.
Calvin doesn't speak English and I don't speak Putonghua5 so every time we've had to chat, I brought a friend along with me for translation purposes.
Calvin works as a manager in a textile manufacturer. He lives in Jinjiang, a third-tier city6, and an hour away from Xiamen, where Calvin goes some evenings for fun.
His favorite brand is Louis Vuitton,7 but that's way too costly for him so midmarket imported brands like Calvin Klein work well. Three years ago, some Xiamen-based friends made fun of him as he was wearing suit labels outside the cuffs—these were the labels he was supposed to have cut off.
He is part of a few people in his entourage who bought brands that they thought were legit but ended up being interpretations of Western or Hong Kong–based brands: Qiaodan Sports8 (sued by Michael Jordan for using his Chinese name and a similar logo), Gio Amrami (instead of Giorgio Armani) suits and others.
Calvin's older cousin—he's 30 now—runs a property business in Xiamen,9 the city known to some as China's Saint Tropez. He is very rich by local standards. He was smart to begin with and has great business acumen and connections.
His English is not great, and some mistakes he makes are opportunities for us to spend more time talking and laughing and less time understanding each other. But he's a real entertainer and as long as he can get by, he's happy with that.
He seems fearless and clearly is enjoying life to the fullest. He's a loud man, likes a drink—and a few more—but he's a great laugh. Lewis has no inhibitions and when I think of him, it reminds me of Dr Seuss's words: ‘Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter, and those who matter don't mind'.10
A bit like Calvin, Lewis has ‘nouveau riche' habits, loves brands but can actually afford quite high-end kit. Unlike Calvin, he's got a passport—like 4% of Chinese (or more than 50 million in total)—and he can afford to buy a Louis Vuitton bag and has travelled in many Chinese cities. He went to Taipei late 2011, to Hong Kong for the first time last October, to Macau earlier this year and dreams of Milan and Los Angeles for his first ‘true overseas' trip.
I write ‘true overseas' as Calvin, like most Chinese, considers Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau part of China.
He's what the press calls Tuhao: tu is dirt; hao is splendor; so the meaning is along the lines of ‘parvenu peasant.' Chinese popular culture despises Tuhao and at the same time secretly is envious and jealous of them. Lewis bought the gold iPhone 5s that came out in 2013, the one Apple put out specifically for the Chinese market, known in China as the Tuhao Gold and in the Apple HQ as the Kardashian iPhone.
Tiffany just started her first job in Guangzhou11 at age 22 in an advertising agency. She's ambitious, graduated from a good school but has limited revenues in this first job. She's never been abroad but would love to go to Seoul or Tokyo as they seem so refined.
Her English is conversational and fine. She recently started taking a few Korean lessons, just because it's cool, and she'd like to figure out what on earth the K-Pop12 bands she loves so dearly are singing about. She also follows many of the Korean soap operas that air on Chinese TV channels.
She's the Chinese equivalent of the Japanese Office Lady13 (or “OL”) and has relatively limited needs, so she has quite a bit of disposable income to purchase brands. She's connected, quite active on Internet forums and blogs and a first-time buyer of imported luxury brands. She won't be spending often but she'll be saving up to buy brands where she gets the sense that she's rewarding herself.
Her wealthier boyfriend—by that I mean he's wealthier than she is; she only has one boyfriend—bought her a Tiffany ring recently, and she was absolutely delighted. Yes, it cost more than a similar ring at a family jeweller but the blue box, the Tiffany guarantee and the discrete yet recognizable design thrilled her.
She is one of the 2 million Weibo14 followers of Angelica Cheung, the editor in chief of Vogue China and a veritable fashion guru. She likes brands with history and reads about them a lot.
Brittany is Tiffany's aunt though she's just ten years older. She's a marketing director for a fast-moving consumer goods company in Shanghai.15
She's Chinese in her style and has a slight, recognizable accent when she speaks in English but if I hadn't met her in Shanghai, I would probably have never guessed she was a local as she could really be from anywhere, sounding as cosmopolitan as she does. Brittany goes to London for business and enjoys relaxing weekends in Taipei. She's planning to go to New Zealand with her husband and daughter soon.
She has known foreign luxury brands for a while and is very knowledgeable. Louis Vuitton doesn't do it for her. She likes more niche-y concepts like Miu Miu and Céline but has seen many Italian and French fashion brands and thinks British Burberry or Mulberry or American Tory Burch and Marc Jacobs are great alternative options.
Tiffany and Brittany are at the heart of the Chinese luxury market growth. They are putting pressure on traditional, historical brands as they are very knowledgeable and won't be moved by what most Chinese consumers have an interest in.
They know what they want, they are uncomfortable with brands that seem to cater too much for the Chinese, and they are much more subtle in displaying wealth than Calvin or Lewis.
When I asked him where he was from, Hermes said he was Canadian even though I now know he was born in Beijing.16 True, he spent more time growing up in Vancouver and studying in the United States and London than in China, where his parents have a place—they are globetrotters too.
He speaks and writes English much better than I do; but hey, what do you expect, I'm French!
He's 34. After working for a leading American consultancy firm, he's now in asset management at a hedge fund, which has offices in Shanghai, Hong Kong and Singapore. For the past three years, he's been based in Hong Kong and is hopeful he can become a partner at the firm.
He buys his girlfriend Saint Laurent bags and Van Cleef & Arpels jewellery and buys himself Hermès clothes—though he will not go for the too-obvious H-buckle belt—and he always wears a pair of Tod's, at work or on weekends. He's into Italian wine, Japanese whisky, complication watches and Maldives holidays. His consumption profile is that of a very affluent New Yorker, Londoner, Parisian or Tokyoite more than that of other Chinese.
Our five avatars are relevant for luxury demand today.
Tomorrow, they will dominate it. (See Figures I.2 and I.3.)
Figure I-2 Proportion of Sales to Chinese Today
Figure I-3 Proportion of Sales to Chinese in Ten Years
Why?
Luxury demand is not just going to increase with consumers trading up. The bulk of the increase in sales should come mechanically from the fact that the number of Chinese nationals able to afford the products will increase dramatically.
Sales to Chinese should broadly triple over the next ten years. This may read like a bullish statement, but it is not if the basic metrics of income creation in China is considered.
In 2015, Chinese should represent about 20% of luxury consumers (or 75 million) and as much as 35% of sales, as their average spending is much higher than that of other nationalities. (See Table I-1.) The table below shows the evolution of luxury sales by nationality over the next ten years.
Table I-1 Luxury Sales to Double, with Sales to Chinese to Soar More
| 2015 | 2025 | Average Growth per Annum | |
| Chinese | 35 | 100 | 11.0% |
| American | 15 | 22 | 4.0% |
| Japanese | 10 | 10 | Flat |
| Western European | 12 | 12 | Flat |
| Other Asian | 15 | 30 | 7.0% |
| Other* | 13 | 27 | 7.5% |
| Total | 100 | 200 | 7.2% |
Theoretical example for an average luxury brand making 100 in sales in 2015.
*The Brazilian, Middle Eastern and Russian consumers will dominate the “Other” sections before African nationalities—Nigerian, Ugandan, Kenyan, South African—start moving the needle in the longer term.
The ‘Mass Lux' pyramid shown in Figure I.4 is a tribute to Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs17 and illustrates how luxury will be driven by volume from the middle class. I have plotted our five avatars on different areas of the pyramid that correspond to their different purchasing power.
Figure I-4 The ‘Mass Lux' Pyramid in 2015
With the increase in the middle class, the pyramid in ten years' time could take a different shape. It would be a flatter pyramid with a large base if you believe that the middle class will focus simply on entry-level luxury goods.
It could evolve into an hourglass shape if there is a polarization of trends—the über-wealthy and value-for-money price points outperforming, which is usually a crisis configuration. Indeed, in crises, the very wealthy will continue to be able to spend whilst the middle class, feeling the pinch, may purchase brands at more accessible price points. As a result, brands stuck in the middle will lose out.
My view is that the shape will be neither flat nor hourglass. It will stay the same. The pyramid will simply get significantly bigger as existing consumers trade to higher price points and are replaced by up-and-coming consumers feeding the pyramid's base.
The 2015 pyramid is, in reality, the emerged tip of the iceberg.
Between 2015 and 2025, the number of Chinese luxury consumers should double—from 75 million to 150 million—while spending on luxury items by Chinese nationals should triple. Figure I-5 illustrates this growth. This means the average ‘dollar transaction' will be up 50% in the period. This will stem from the combined impacts of product price inflation (28% if we assume 2.5% price hikes on average a year) and general trading up of consumers linked to a greater purchasing power accounting for the rest. Luxury brands will benefit from the surge of a ‘middle-class kingdom'.
Figure I-5 The Chinese “Double-Triple” Pyramid in 2025
Assuming the target market is made up of Chinese 15- to 64-year-olds—which is a bit optimistic on teen consumption, but then again clearly leaves out seniors—you are looking at roughly a total of 1 billion potential consumers for luxury goods from 2015 to 2025. Indeed, the age pyramid will not have massively shifted over that ten-year period before the Chinese population is projected to stabilize in 2026 and then gradually decline, as China becomes a greying nation.
In 2015, 75 million Chinese consumers should be participating in the luxury market. This will be, roughly speaking, corresponding to the top 7.5th percentile of the population with a cut-off point corresponding to about USD24,000 in annual income.
Remember this is income, not wealth. Unlike income, the measure of wealth may be accumulated over generations, with property being one of the key notable factors. In other words, luxury consumers will earn USD24,000 or more a year but likely will be much wealthier than that.
Ten years later, consumers will have to be earning about USD30,000 a year to qualify, and those consumers will then be representing the top 15th percentile of the overall 15- to 64-year-old age bracket.
In those ten years, the middle-class wave, as you can see in Figure I-6, will help luxury demand ride high.
Figure I-6 Chinese Middle-Class Wave
I'm a thinker.
Well, kind of. When I was a student in France, longing to work in marketing, L'Oréal18—the French cosmetics giant—was the go-to company, the ‘school of marketing' as it were, the place to work at if your intention was to become, as it was for me, a marketing guru. I'm sure it still is. The legend at the time, exposed by some of my friends who worked there, was that L'Oréal saw staffers as being part of two possible categories. You were either a ‘poet' or a ‘peasant'. That is in modern-day speak a ‘thinker' or a ‘doer'. Trust me, I'm no philosopher, but I am not a doer for sure.
Whether you ask my team at work or my family at home, I am a thinker, not a doer; strategy makes me enthused, details beyond bored. I have taught myself to believe that, in a career, you logically should start off as a peasant before you can become a poet with the experience and maturity.
Surely the fact that I was a poet too early was the only reason L'Oréal never gave me that junior product manager job back in the day, despite all those interviews I had.
I'm a marketing guy.
Well, not literally. I used to work in marketing departments at LVMH19—Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton—and at Cartier.20 I now work for a bank as an equity analyst.
But the principle is the same: I develop a product—fragrances then, reports now—package it, advertise it and get help from a sales team to promote it.
When I speak to former ‘proper marketing' colleagues or, for that matter, to my kids—no offense to the former—to try to explain what I do, the simplest solution I have found is to say that I write books—technically true as of today—for people who tend not to read them and so I end up travelling a lot to explain to those people what's in the books.
The reports I contribute to mostly focus on the luxury sector. After working in Paris and London, I have settled down in Hong Kong for now, a better base to get a sense of where luxury demand is headed.
Working for luxury firms taught me passion, and a bit of work. Now, within a bank, I work even harder, and have kept a bit of passion.
Moving to Asia has been great for insights. This book is meant to share these insights in a lively manner.
The media has put in doubt the resilience of Chinese consumption of luxury. Brand CEOs have said that luxury is a global industry.
I disagree with both. I have no doubt about Chinese luxury consumption, and I believe the Chinese consumer will dominate this industry.
In January 2009, at the height of the global financial crisis, four months after Lehman's chapter 11 filing,21 one month after President Bush signed the USD17 billion automobile bailout for Barack Obama to distribute once he took office, the ubiquitous über-gifted design guru Karl Lagerfeld22 pretty much said: ‘Bling is dead'.
And how right was he, as ever. The timing was perfect and the assessment spot on, if looking at the fashion austerity and discretion that followed.
More recently, in China, the Xi23 administration's “eight rules” on official behavior made it clear to elites that it was time to set a new standard and project an image of reliability and trustworthiness. Global luxury demand continues to grow. Even in China, month after month, ever so subtly, there are signs that discretionary spending on high-ticket items is returning. Austerity has been short-lived really.
An investor once mentioned that ‘bling' was a passé expression and not just because the French right-wing ‘bling bling' president Nicolas Sarkozy had lost his re-election bid in 2012. It is a fair point, but it seems that Sarkozy has been looking to run again in 2017. While it is now clear that conspicuous consumption has taken a hit, this could well prove to be a temporary phenomenon.
Human nature—as always—should prevail.
Bling is dead?
Long live bling!
At the end of its era (1368–1644), the Ming Dynasty expanded the Great Wall of China.24 This book explains how over the next ten years the “Bling Dynasty” will continue to expand the “Great Luxury Mall” of China.