Global Powers of Luxury Goods 2019

Bridging the gap between the old and the new

Despite the recent slowdown of economic growth in major markets including China, the Eurozone and the US, the luxury goods market looks positive.

In an age of fast changing trends, luxury companies have started to keep an eye on the new consumer classes of the future, are committing to make significant investments in digital marketing and increasingly using social media to engage their customers.

Companies are re-examining the value of brand heritage and brand history for their new customers and are adopting an omni-personal approach, focusing solely on the consumer, even prior to channel identification. To do that, they rely on the support of digital technologies.

In this path between the old and the new, companies are faced with consumers’ increasing sensitivity towards privacy, but are trying to convert it into an opportunity to offer more personalized products and services to their customer base.

The world’s Top 100 luxury goods companies generated revenues of US$247 billion in FY2017, up from US$217 billion in the previous year (an increase of US$30 billion). Annual growth jumped to 10.8 percent, on a currency-adjusted composite basis, much higher than the previous year’s 1.0 percent growth. Seventy-six percent of the companies reported growth in their luxury sales, with nearly half of these recording double-digit year-on-year growth.

The report discusses the trends and issues that are driving the luxury industry. It suggests why luxury goods companies should be aware of the changes brought about by the new affluent class of customers. It also identifies the 100 largest luxury goods companies based on publicly available data for FY2017 (which we define as financial years ending within the 12 months to June 2018), and evaluates their performance across geographies and product sectors.

Key findings from the report:

• In FY2017, the minimum revenue threshold required to enter the world’s Top 100 list of luxury goods companies was US$218 million, up US$7 million from FY2016, with an average company size of US$2.47 billion.
• The Top 10 companies accounted for nearly half (48.2%) of the total luxury goods sales of Top 100 companies, an increase of one percentage points over the previous year.
• France has the largest companies and is the best-performing country, achieving 18.7% composite sales growth, and also contributed the largest share to the total sales of Top 100 luxury good companies.
• Cosmetics and fragrances was the top-performing sector in FY2017 with 16.1 percent sales growth, which was majorly due to the double-digit year-on-year growth of seven companies out of the total 11 in the sector.