Sales growth will pick up the pace starting in 2025

Worldwide luxury sales will eke out 3.2% growth in 2024. Except for the pandemic year of 2020, when sales fell by 19.3%, this is the smallest gain we’ve seen since we started tracking the metric in 2018. After lagging overall worldwide retail sales growth (4.3%) in 2024, luxury will maintain a modest lead for the remainder of our forecast period.

Growth rates will remain under 5.0% annually through 2028. Luxury sales growth will tick back up during the remainder of our forecast period, and total sales will reach $513.31 billion in 2028, per our forecast.

The US and China dominate, but more spending is shifting to the rest of the world. The combined might of the two largest markets for personal luxury peaked in 2021, when they accounted for more than half (50.2%) of global sales. In 2024, personal luxury goods sales in the two markets will total over $190 billion, representing 44.3% of worldwide sales. The share will drop by another 1 percentage point through 2028. Sales outside of these two markets will increase by $52.05 billion during this period and account for nearly 62% of worldwide growth.

• Tourists are taking more spending to luxury hotspots. The French luxury retail market grew slightly faster than China’s in 2023 (14.6% versus 14.3%). The momentum was sustained in 2024 as France hosted the Olympics, with 9.6% growth (three times the global average) and total sales of $28.30 billion. Luxury sales in France will continue to track slightly above worldwide rates through 2028.
• India is poised for double-digit growth. The world’s most populous country accounts for just 2% of global luxury sales, according to Barclays estimates. However, strong GDP growth and a rising middle class position annual growth in the range of 15% to 25% through 2031, and total retail revenues could exceed $41 billion by then.
• The truly global upper echelon of luxury customers has taken a more prominent role. Between 2013 and 2023, the share of worldwide luxury spending attributed to the top 0.1% of luxury customers increased from 12% to 21%, as their numbers doubled to roughly 600,000, per July 2024 Boston Consulting Group (BCG) analysis. Meanwhile, the share of spending from the aspirational cohort dropped by 10 percentage points to 64%.

Read the full report, Luxury Ecommerce 2024