Luxuries lure Chinese spenders

Do luxury goods have markets in cities beyond Shanghai and Beijing? The answer is yes. In the past two years, many world famous brands of luxury goods emerged in Hangzhou, capital of Zhejiang Province, released by Market News, under People's Daily.

Along the West Lake, there are exhibition halls of Porsche and Ferrari.

In Hangzhou, there is a newly opened outdoor shopping center, called Europe Street. The sides of the street are filled with retailer shops such as Armani Casa, Dolce & Gabbana and other world known luxury goods. The Armani Casa shop there is the first one in China.

China is growing to be the huge market of luxury goods. In the year of 2004, China's luxury goods consumption accounted for 11 percent of the world's total, slightly lower than half of that of Americans and Japanese. The figure is expected to jump to 23 percent and China will become the largest luxury goods consumer by 2014.

Chinese luxury goods consumers will become as influential as Japanese consumers, as many luxury goods companies said. To many enterprises, China has become an important market. Paolo Gasparrini, president of Chinese division of L'OREAL, said the sales of its products increased by 15 percent to 340 million Euro last year, more than that in Japan.

Louis Vuitton has opened ten shops in Chinese cities, including Xi'an, capital of central China Shannxi Province and Chengdu, capital of Southwest Sichuan Province. It is rapidly expanding in China.

Meanwhile, Zegna has settled down in much less fashionable cities like Changchun, an industrial city in the Northeast and Taiyuan, coal center of China.

By People's Daily Online