🟢 The more critical inflexion point in the global market? China is now doing luxury on its own.

China’s luxury market is shedding an old operating system where venerable Western brands were the most aspirational and properly untouchable. In 2025, brands you never heard of, for now, like Songmont or Laopu Gold, are now rising to prominence. This is the same tectonic shift that occurred ten years ago with European and American automotive brands, which not only lost the Chinese market but are now losing ground in their home markets as well.

I will not spare you a "I told you so" moment. Here's what I wrote about China reinventing luxury in 2022:

Whether you are interested in the beauty market or not, this signals that from now on, Chinese consumers will demand brands that relate exclusively to them, their culture, and their tastes. The glamour of old Europe or the fanciness of U.S. technology is so 2018. This is not a fun memo addressed to the Teslas and the Starbucks in the region, not to mention Apple.

Outside of the luxury market, 14 Chinese brands are now part of Kantar's annual Most Valuable Global Brands ranking. If we have become peripherally aware of companies like Tencent, Xiamoi, or Alibaba, most Western analysts will struggle to know who Moutai is. It's OK; they're just five places ahead of Coca-Cola in this ranking, so no worry at all 🙄

And it's certainly time to remember that innovation is not about technology; it's about changing the market... or being able to deal with how the market is changing on its own, whether you're in China or not.

For twenty years, many Western luxury brands behaved in China as if heritage was a cheat code. Show up with a French name, a century-old anecdote about a craftsman in a Parisian attic, sprinkle a bit of scarcity magic, and the market throws money at you. To be fair, many brands also sunk a lot of time, energy, and money into educating the Chinese market about high-end craftsmanship, attention to detail, high-end service, and... taste–insofar as it was Western taste.

In any case, that playbook is now outdated.