Luxury Stores Are Bursting With Unsold Stuff As growth slows across the luxury industry, designer labels need discreet places to unload excess inventory
(…) The boss of online luxury goods seller MyTheresa said the company is experiencing “the worst market conditions since 2008,” and had 44% more inventory by the end of its latest quarter than a year earlier.
Burberry is buying back unsold products from department stores. (…)
Luxury brands have spent the past few years diligently weeding out discounts. They have worked hard to pull products from independent retailers and websites that offer deep end-of-season price cuts.
Prada, for example, has halved its reliance on wholesale accounts since 2018. Now the Milanese brand sells mostly through its own stores, where it has full control over prices. With control has come discipline: Prada has stopped discounting in its own boutiques. So has its rival Gucci. (…)
After such a tight clampdown on discounting, where are luxury companies with too much inventory to turn? Off-price outlets are an increasingly popular option. Today, 13% of all luxury goods by value are sold through them, according to Bain estimates. A decade ago, only 5% was sold off-price this way. (…)
China to Step Up Fiscal Support to Strengthen Economic Recovery China says fiscal policy will be stepped up “appropriately.”
(…) Meanwhile, the monetary policy should be flexible, appropriate, targeted and effective, with the previous wording “forceful” dropped from the statement. (…)
While numeric annual targets are traditionally released in March, the Politburo meeting and an anticipated upcoming Central Economic Work Conference help set the tone for policy in the coming year. (…)
A stronger fiscal policy suggests the deficit ratio may exceed 3% again, said Xing Zhaopeng, senior strategist at Australia & New Zealand Banking Group. Beijing made a rare move in October to raise this year’s official deficit to 3.8% of gross domestic product, exceeding the long-adhered-to 3% limit. (…)
Apple Aims to Make a Quarter of All iPhones in India Supplier Foxconn plans to build more factories and give India a production role once limited mostly to China.
Apple and its suppliers aim to build more than 50 million iPhones in India annually within the next two to three years, with additional tens of millions of units planned after that, according to people involved.
If the plans are achieved, India would account for a quarter of global iPhone production and take further share toward the end of the decade. China will remain the largest iPhone producer.
Apple has gradually boosted its reliance on India in recent years despite challenges including rickety infrastructure and restrictive labor rules that often make doing business harder than in China. Among other issues, labor unions retain clout even in business-friendly states and are pushing back on an effort by companies to get permission for 12-hour work days, which Apple suppliers find helpful during crunch periods.
Apple and its suppliers, led by Taiwan-based Foxconn Technology Group, generally believe the initial push into India has gone well and are laying the groundwork for a bigger expansion, say people involved in the supply chain.
(…)Apple has also chosen India as its site for a manufacturing stage for lower-end iPhones to be sold in 2025. In this stage, known as new product introduction, Apple’s teams work with contractors in translating product blueprints and prototypes into a detailed manufacturing plan. Until now, that work was done only in China. (…)
Foxconn indicated its commitment to India by announcing on Nov. 27 that it was investing the equivalent of more than $1.5 billion in the country, money that people familiar with the matter said would include production for Apple. (…)
Supply-chain executives say hourly wages are now significantly lower in India than in China, but other costs such as transport remain higher, and labor unions sometimes resist rule changes sought by manufacturers. (…)
Apple is also making progress in India toward building a network of core suppliers, long a strength of Chinese manufacturing. Officials said this week that Japanese battery maker TDK would build a new factory in India’s Haryana state to manufacture battery cells to power Indian-made iPhones. A TDK spokesman declined to comment. (…)
On social media, Apple has assured Chinese consumers that iPhones selling in authorized channels are made in China. (…)