Sharing, caring: Chinese luxury resale blossoms
Once culturally “shunned”, the Chinese second-hand luxury goods sector has caught fire recently.
While a joint report by China’s University of International Business and Economics and the Chinese app, Isheyipai (meaning ‘luxury fashion’), estimates that the sale of second-hand luxury goods accounts for just 5% of the overall Chinese luxury market, local online platforms such as Plum, Ponhu and Feiyu are betting on strong growth.
Xu Wei, Beijing-based Plum’s founder, notes how the retailer’s income “surged” this year (averaging over 25% growth, month-on-month, in the first half), on account of the covid-19 pandemic, which caused offline shops to close their doors.
Plum is particularly popular among millennial (those born between 1981 and 1996) women from China’s lower tier cities, who seek to attain high-level goods at lower, “more economical”, second-hand prices, Xu says.
In China, the past decade has seen pre-owned luxury goods increasingly embraced by younger, more environmentally aware, consumers. The joint university-Isheyipai report suggests that 52% of Chinese second-hand luxury goods consumers are under 30 years old – and that this is a market segment that is larger than the entire US population.
Bain & Company has estimated that Chinese consumers will account for almost 50% of a global luxury market that will be valued at around $375 billion by 2025.
As Sun Shaqi, a popular live-streamer on Douyin (the Chinese version of TikTok), told her 6.5 million followers recently: “Who will know it is a second-hand bag when you carry it?”
