Business
Lunar New Year gives luxury brands a chance to win back big spenders in China
Luxury brands from Harry Winston to Loewe are going all in on Lunar New Year collections in a bid to attract Chinese customers.
Ahead of the Year of the Horse, which starts on Tuesday, Harry Winston unveiled a limited-edition, $81,500 rose gold watch with diamond bezels and a red lacquer horse. High-end fashion brand Chloé released a capsule collection, ranging from $250 silk scarves to a $5,300 snakeskin and leather shoulder bag with a horse head and tail linked by a horsebit chain. A slew of other brands, including Loewe, Gucci and Loro Piana, have introduced new bag charms with horse motifs.
The Year of the Horse arrives at a time of cautious optimism for designer brands and could mark the start of a China’s luxury market comeback.
Chinese consumers were once the primary driver for the global luxury sector but have cut back sharply in recent years, weighed down by the country’s slowing economy and depressed housing values.
The Chinese luxury market stood at about 350 billion RMB in 2024, or about $50 billion, according to estimates from Bain. While the consultancy estimates that market contracted by 3% to 5% in 2025, Bain analysts noted that the sector started showing signs of recovery in the second half of 2025 on the back of stronger stock market performance and consumer confidence.
Loewe celebrated Year of the Horse with storefront installation in Shanghai, China.
Ying Tang/NurPhoto via Getty Images
Bernstein senior analyst Luca Solca said he predicts Chinese luxury spending will stabilize, forecasting mid-single-digit percentage growth in 2026. However, the market is still far more competitive than at its peak, he said.
Before the Covid pandemic, Chinese consumers accounted for about one-third of the global luxury goods market, according to Solca. That percentage has since dipped to about 23%, he said.
The luxury market’s fortunes do not solely rest on Lunar New Year, but it is an opportunity for Western brands to show respect for Chinese culture, he said.
The annual holiday is associated with the colors red and gold, which symbolize good luck and fortune in Chinese culture. Each Lunar New Year is represented by one of 12 Chinese zodiac animals. Last year’s animal was the snake.
But Solca said in order to best capture the Chinese luxury consumer, brands need to go beyond the expected motifs.
“The Chinese are no longer in awe of anything that comes from the West,” Solca said. “A perfunctory interpretation of CNY is not going to go far.”
Veronique Yang, who leads BCG’s consumer practice in Greater China, said literal interpretations can come across as lazy or even disrespectful to Chinese consumers. Younger shoppers are also looking for fresher takes, she said.
“Chinese young people, they respect the old Chinese culture, but to be honest, a lot of parts of it they don’t understand, or they want it to be reinterpreted in a modern way,” she said. “It’s important to weave a narrative that connects the heritage with a contemporary vision.”
Lunar New Year collections date back to the early 2010s, as Western brands were eager to tap into the rapidly growing Chinese luxury consumer market, according to Daniel Langer, professor of luxury strategy at Pepperdine University. At the time, newly wealthy Chinese consumers were eager to spend on designer goods, especially when they traveled abroad, he said, as there were few luxury boutiques in China outside major cities like Shanghai and Beijing.
Now, with broader access and more choice, brands have to work harder to bring in new clients.
And in the 12 years since the last Year of the Horse, Chinese high-income consumers have become more discerning, Langer said.
“They’ve been to the best places in the world. They’ve dined in the best restaurants in the world. They’ve shopped in the best shops in the world. Their expectations towards brands are significantly higher,” he said. “China has completely changed from a country where there was pent up demand for luxury goods to a country of the highest sophistication.”
Burberry’s Lunar New Year products.
Courtesy of Burberry
They also have grown accustomed to spending less on Western brands between pandemic travel restrictions and the rise of domestic high-end labels, according to Langer.
Before the pandemic, Chinese consumers did most of their luxury shopping abroad. Pandemic travel restrictions permanently changed that dynamic. According to Bain, two-thirds of Chinese luxury goods spending was done abroad in 2019. Last year, overseas spending made up only a third.
The Year of the Horse provides a natural opportunity for a sizable number of Western brands to connect to the holiday. Langer said he preferred brands who take a less literal approach, such as Loewe, which adorned its signature Puzzle bags with fringes and tassels for a cowboy aesthetic.
Yang noted, however, that the year’s zodiac animal is a good luck symbol only for people who were born in that year, which makes playing too much into horse imagery a risk.
Instead, she said, brands can use immersive experiences to connect to Chinese customers, especially younger ones, in a more authentic way.
Valentino, for instance, held a three-day lantern festival in January at Tianhou Palace, a historic temple along the Suzhou Creek in Shanghai. Burberry launched an extensive Lunar New Year campaign in mid-December, with Chinese brand ambassadors and a pop-up boutique and ice rink in Beijing.
“There’s a lot of different cultural elements that you can integrate and build a narrative around,” Yang said. “It’s not only about animals.”
The combined market valuation of six of India’s top-10 most valued companies rose by Rs 74,111.57 crore last week, with Reliance Industries emerging as the biggest gainer. The rally came during a volatile trading week in which the BSE Sensex advanced 177.36 points, or 0.23%.According to news agency ANI, Reliance Industries added Rs 24,696.89 crore to its valuation, taking its total market capitalisation to Rs 18,33,117.70 crore.Tata Consultancy Services saw its valuation jump by Rs 19,338.68 crore to Rs 8,38,401.33 crore, while ICICI Bank added Rs 14,515.93 crore to reach a market capitalisation of Rs 9,06,901.32 crore.The valuation of Life Insurance Corporation of India climbed Rs 9,076.37 crore to Rs 5,14,443.69 crore.Meanwhile, Bajaj Finance gained Rs 3,797.83 crore, taking its valuation to Rs 5,70,515.57 crore, while Larsen & Toubro added Rs 2,685.87 crore to Rs 5,40,228.21 crore.
Airtel, HUL among laggards
On the losing side, Bharti Airtel witnessed the sharpest erosion in market value, losing Rs 20,229.67 crore to settle at Rs 11,40,295.49 crore.The market valuation of Hindustan Unilever declined by Rs 16,212.18 crore to Rs 5,17,380 crore, while State Bank of India lost Rs 12,784.4 crore in valuation to Rs 8,76,077.92 crore.HDFC Bank also saw its market capitalisation dip by Rs 2,094.35 crore to Rs 11,79,974.90 crore.Reliance Industries retained its position as India’s most valued company, followed by HDFC Bank, Bharti Airtel, ICICI Bank, State Bank of India, TCS, Bajaj Finance, Larsen & Toubro, Hindustan Unilever and LIC.
Markets end volatile week with modest gains
Ajit Mishra, SVP, research at Religare Broking Ltd, said markets ended the week with marginal gains amid a “highly volatile and range-bound trading environment”.“Benchmark indices witnessed sharp intraday swings throughout the week, driven by persistent rupee weakness, mixed global cues, sectoral rotation, and continued uncertainty around inflation and interest rates,” he said, as quoted by ANI.Benchmark indices recovered on Friday, with the Sensex closing 231.99 points higher at 75,415.35 and the NSE Nifty rising 64.60 points to settle at 23,719.30.Analysts cited optimism surrounding possible progress in US-Iran peace negotiations and easing Middle East tensions as factors supporting market sentiment.Vinod Nair, head of research at Geojit Investments, was quoted by news agency PTI as saying that domestic markets traded with a “mild positive bias” due to buying at lower levels and constructive global cues.“Globally, the AI investment theme remained the primary driver, while domestically, financial stocks led the gains,” he said.Brent crude prices climbed 2.3% to $104.7 per barrel, while foreign institutional investors (FIIs) sold equities worth Rs 1,891.21 crore in the previous session.
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LAHORE:
Imagine a country sitting at the crossroads of South Asia and Central Asia, with a population of 250 million, abundant natural resources, and a GDP exceeding $450 billion, yet struggling to convince even its own businesspeople to invest at home.
That is Pakistan’s continued uncomfortable reality in 2026, and the way things are going, the business community believes that even after elevating higher, in the past one year due to perfect diplomacy, the government needs to take strict action against those civil servants and state officials, who still try to slow the pace of overseas and local investment as well as development work, which has jeopardised the growth of the country.
“Foreign direct investment (FDI) in Pakistan fell 31% during the first 10 months of financial year 2025-26, with total inflows coming in at $1.409 billion against $2.035 billion during the same period a year earlier,” said Mian Shafqat Ali, Founder of the Pakistan Industrial and Traders Association Front. He raised alarm over what he calls a deepening investment crisis, warning that both local and foreign investment has dipped to one of its lowest levels in recent memory.
He added that the root cause of this decline is not a lack of opportunity, but a system that actively discourages investors at every step. “The real obstacle in the way of investment is the layers upon layers of bureaucratic hurdles. Without removing these barriers, the dream of increasing investment cannot be realised.”
He noted that investors, both domestic and foreign, are deeply sensitive to the environment they operate in, and Pakistan’s current legal and regulatory framework, unpredictable energy policies, fluctuating exchange rates, and ad hoc government decisions have created an atmosphere of uncertainty that keeps capital away.
The business community by and large thinks that once the US-Israel-Iran conflict is settled fully, Pakistan can have better opportunities; however they simultaneously say that to grab those opportunities, “we need to settle our systems, which are dominated by anti-investment and anti-business culture”.
There are systems, which welcome and protect overseas as well as local investment; those societies belong to the first world or second world; “unfortunately here in Pakistan we are still unable to manage the smooth flow of Chinese investments, whom we call ‘iron brothers’,” said Bilal Hanif, a Lahore-based businessman.
“We keep building new institutions and launching new investment windows, but nothing changes on the ground because the real problem is structural. A foreign investor does not just look at your pitch; he looks at your court system, your tax regime, and whether rules will be the same two years from now. On all these counts, we are falling short,” he said.
Pakistan has averaged barely $2 billion in annual FDI over the past 26 years; a figure that expert bodies like the Pakistan Business Council say should be at least $12 billion per year, or roughly 3% of GDP, to meet basic development benchmarks. Meanwhile, regional competitors such as India, Vietnam, Indonesia, and even smaller economies like Bangladesh have consistently attracted far greater inflows, benefiting from predictable regulations, stronger investor protection, and long-term policy continuity.
Mian Shafqat Ali was clear that the failure does not rest with any single institution. He said the problem is not the fault of the Special Investment Facilitation Council (SIFC) or any other body, but rather the deeply entrenched systems that make doing business in Pakistan unnecessarily complicated.
“Until policymakers are willing to make difficult structural and political decisions, investment will remain weak, no matter how many new institutions are created,” he warned.
What investors consistently ask for is not complicated; it is political stability, simple regulations, and confidence that policies of today will not be reversed tomorrow. Pakistan, unfortunately, has struggled to offer any of these in a reliable manner. Frequent political disruptions, leadership changes, and policy discontinuity have created uncertainty that discourages long-term capital, and the capital does not avoid Pakistan because of a lack of opportunity, it avoids uncertainty.
“Government should move beyond announcements and focus on real structural reforms, overhauling the regulatory framework, simplifying business registration processes, ensuring energy availability at competitive rates and most importantly, providing a stable and consistent policy environment as without fixing the foundation, everything else is meaningless,” Ali added.
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