Why China makes luxury goods but has no luxury brands

Transcript

China can make expensive goods but has no luxury brands. Why is that? It's certainly not a lack of craftmanship or history because silk, porcelain and jade were global luxury centuries before Hermes sold its first saddle. Here's my take. China has never lacked luxury value. What we don't have is the ability to with history, craft and identity into a version of Chinese life that people outside of China want to be part of. Three things matters here. Hear me out. First, continuation of exclusivity. Houses like Hermes have spent generations cultivating their craft, clientele and a way of elite living. Each generation has the next something to build on through the 1980s when groups like LVMH packaged that inheritance into global mythology. However, the elite living was interrupted in China because in the 1950s, businesses became state owned, price controlled and was made for everyone under communism, which is the opposite of luxury. We didn't lose the craft. We lost the elite status until private brands started rebuilding it after 1978. Second, exclusivity has to make something beyond product quality. Chinese brands focus too much on making products, the materials, the production and the certificates, constantly trying to prove that the product is worth the price. Luxury brands, however, sell you a shared understanding of what that product means. It particularly tastes a social identity and the word you want to belong to. Hermes Berking's carry meanings without needing a single word of explanation. Lastly, and this is the one nobody talks about. That meaning has to travel beyond its home culture. Paris was already the word ideal taste before French brands existed. Japan had craft and continuity for centuries, but its whiskey and designers only rose to fame after its anime and food. The designer for it brand is often a result of culture appeal. So which Chinese brand will create such a desire? Maybe Chinese luxury could emerge from gold, buy joe or tea, build around tastes and rituals that give people a different word to aspire to. What do you think?

Transcribed automatically from the video, so small errors are possible.