Don't be surprised when you find people these days on the mainland wearing an ever greater variety of brands whose origin they know little about and whose names they find impossible to pronounce.

Brands like LV, Chanel and Gucci that we cannot be more familiar with are no longer what luxury is all about. More and more Italian and French brands like Salvatore Ferragamo and Versace, which were basically unknown to mainland shoppers previously, have been making big strides here and are gaining popularity on a daily basis.

"It is just unbelievable," exclaimed Salvatore Ferragamo's CEO Michele Norsa on the company's achievements in the mainland market.

The company's Tsimshatui store in Kowloon overtook its New York store last month as Salvatore Ferragamo's champion store worldwide in terms of sales volume, Norsa told China Daily in an exclusive interview.

The city's retailers, particularly luxury goods vendors, have generally been reporting phenomenal sales growth in recent years as flocks of wealthy mainland tourists visit the city.

"The Chinese people are not just buying Ferragamo here. You'll find the Chinese buying Ferragamo anywhere else in the world. In New York, Italy, the Bahamas...aside from Hong Kong, already a world-class luxury goods capital, the mainland market is too important for us," said Norsa.

Sales volume in Ferragamo's mainland stores registered positive growth even in the toughest period of 2009 when the more mature luxury markets like the US and Japan saw negative growth, he said.

Salvatore Ferragamo, an Italian luxury brand most well-known for its footwear, declared an all-out war around five years ago to conquer what CEO Norsa calls tomorrow's No 1 luxury consumer - China.

Although Salvatore Ferragamo is among the earliest of luxury brands to plant its foot and shoes in China, with its very first store having opened in Hong Kong 20 years ago, its presence on the mainland has not been long-established, with only a few stores scattered in Beijing and Shanghai at the start some four years ago.

The company has so far opened 41 stores on the mainland, mostly in the past three years, the fastest expansion in the company's history, Norsa said.

People in the luxury industry, said Norsa, love to make projections for the future. However, such rapid growth of the Chinese luxury goods market was nowhere among his market projections three years ago. In the short intervening time, China has become the third-largest luxury market after the US and Japan, but "the potential is unlimited," said Norsa, adding that he is convinced that in less than five years China will become the No 1 luxury consumer market in the world.

According to a report by Bain & Company, a China-based management consulting firm, the Chinese luxury market recorded a turnover of approximately $9.6 billion in 2009, up from $2 billion in 2004 as indicated by a separate 2004 report released by McKinsey & Company, implying a 20 percent year-on-year growth in the country's luxury goods market.

Norsa is not alone in making that prediction. Ernst & Yung was even more precise in predicting that ownership of the title of champion for China would be achieved as soon as 2015.

"The rapidly rising economies like China and India are where the future of the fashion industry lies," he said.

China Daily

(HK Edition 06/15/2010 page3)