New boom in the luxury market

26-01-23

Bain & Company research revealed several surprises. While Wall Street fell 20% in 2022, luxury spending rose by the same proportion, fuelled by the younger generation. And it was not China that was the main driver, but the US.

We may be entering a global recession, but there is one group of people who can't seem to stop spending: the world's richest. Although overall retail sales have been declining, and the stock market fell 20% last year, spending on luxury goods and experiences actually grew by roughly the same amount in 2022, as wealthy individuals unleashed their "spirit animal".

The data, which comes from a new study of the luxury market by Bain & Company, challenges much of our conventional wisdom about spending on luxury goods and the wealthy in general..

For starters, last year's boom in this €1.38 trillion market was driven almost entirely by Generations Z and Y, which dominated the personal goods market (including clothing, handbags, jewellery, and other luxury items). According to Bain, "Generation Z spending, and even that of the younger Alpha generation, will grow three times faster than that of other generations through 2030". Where are the young people's preoccupations with materialism of their predecessors?

Other surprises

To further disprove our assumptions, this luxury boom was not driven by China, which was kept under containment for much of last year, but by the US, which led the market. And within the US, it was New York that reaffirmed its status as the luxury capital of the world. Although all the money from Wall Street and Silicon Valley has been moving to places like Miami, Los Angeles and Austin, New York is still the place where people go to spend big money on jewellery, watches, handbags and luxury tourism. Just look at the opening of the opulent new Aman New York, where room rates can reach US$15,000 a night.

It has to be said that this was a surprise. It seemed likely that even high net worth individuals would be somewhat more sensitive to the sharp fall in asset prices, given that these tend to be people whose money largely comes from assets rather than income. They would perhaps spend, but not in a way that mirrors almost the inverse picture of the fall in equities.

But luxury experts say that there has simply been so much wealth created over the past two decades that even a 20% correction in the stock market price is a negative but short-lived one for the top 5% of the market. And it is this 5% that accounts for 40% of total luxury market sales, according to Milton Pedraza, the executive director of the New York-based Luxury Institute.

"It's OK, the market is down. Maybe, if I have a family office that manages family wealth, the cheques I send out in a given month will be for US$80,000 instead of US$100,000," says Pedraza, who analyses the premium goods and services industry. But many families are undeterred, he says. "There is still a lot of wealth out there.

More time to spend

And rich people have more time to spend their money, as they now live about a decade longer than their low-income counterparts, thanks to better health care, diet, nutrition and rest. Pedraza believes the idea that the rich are workaholics is a myth. For them, says Pedraza, "it's a sprint, not a marathon. They may work hard to close a deal and then go on holiday. He estimates that the Ultra High Net Worth Individuals (Uhnwi) he interviews regularly work about six hours a day, "so they're less stressed.

The rich are not only living longer, they are more numerous than ever before, due to the continued growth of an asset-owning class in developing countries. And after half a century of accelerated growth, there is also more intergenerational wealth, says Claudia D'Arpizio, a partner at Bain. "You now have five generations" of luxury consumers buying brands like Vuitton, Hermès or Chanel, with whom they have literally grown up.

No complexes

It is brands like these that have fared best of late. They have done this by remaining extremely exclusive, rather than trying to appeal to the largest but most financially vulnerable part of the market: the bottom 80% of consumers. "They have focused more on a mindset than a demographic," says Pedraza.

This leads to another reason for the luxury boom: the growth of a secondary market. Purveyors of high-end retro items are ubiquitous in the cities where customers live and where they spend their holidays. But there are also mass-market online resellers, such as The RealReal, whose site offers professionals the possibility to resell luxury used clothing or jewellery.

One of the most interesting differences between the post-Covid-19 luxury boom and the post-2008 market is that, this time, there seems to be no preoccupation with conspicuous consumption. Perhaps this is a residual effect of the Trump era of "greed is good". Or perhaps it reflects different policy responses to the respective crises. After the global financial crisis, governments bailed out companies. After the pandemic, US consumers received US$2 trillion worth of stimulus. It is clear that consumers have been spending it.

Will this last? It is likely that as inflation begins to bite, you will see the bottom 80% of luxury consumers disappear. They may be willing to buy a Chanel bracelet or an Hermès scarf once a year, but they also have debts, which are becoming increasingly expensive.

As for the world's richest, their money - and their lifestyles - really do seem to reflect a new Gilded Age.