The short version: China’s secondhand luxury market grew 15–20% in 2025 while new luxury sales on the mainland fell 3–5%, according to Bain & Company, and AFP reported on 19 October that Western houses are now feeling it. For anyone who buys luxury, the resale price has become the more honest one.
China’s market for pre-owned luxury is growing while the market for new luxury shrinks, AFP reported on 19 October, in a piece carried by FashionUnited. Bain & Company, the consultancy, estimates that mainland China’s personal luxury goods market fell by as much as 19% in 2024 and contracted by a further 3–5% in 2025, while the secondhand luxury market grew 15–20% over the same year. Insight & Info Consulting, a Chinese research firm cited by AFP, puts secondhand luxury sales at 38.4 billion yuan (about $5.7 billion) in 2025 and forecasts more than 100 billion yuan by 2030.
The pressure is visible on the ground. Louis Vuitton has closed five stores in mainland China over the past two years, including a chocolate boutique in Shanghai, and Galeries Lafayette shut its Beijing flagship in May, AFP reported. LVMH, which owns Louis Vuitton, blamed a slowdown in demand in China for the fall in organic sales at its fashion and leather goods division in the third quarter — results we covered in LVMH’s fashion sales fall in the third quarter.
Bain’s own reading, published in January, is that this is a reset rather than a recovery. Bruno Lannes, a senior partner at Bain in Shanghai, described the market as “not a broad-based rebound, but the start of a recalibration phase”.
The evidence: where the money is going instead
The figures from Bain’s January report show a market that has not stopped spending, but has stopped spending the old way.
By category, the declines are steepest where Western houses are most exposed. Bain estimates mainland leather goods fell 8–11% in 2025, fashion 5–8% and watches 14–17%. Jewellery was roughly flat to down 5%, and beauty grew 4–7%. Bain also found that Chinese consumers are becoming more selective, favouring value-driven purchases and experiences such as travel and wellness; that spending is concentrating on a smaller set of preferred brands; and that local Chinese brands are gaining share.
Secondhand is still small — Bain puts it below 10% of the primary luxury market — but it is the part growing fastest, and it is growing in the categories where new sales are falling. AFP’s interviews with young shoppers in China pointed the same way: one 24-year-old told the agency that Gen Z prefers trendy Korean brands to the Louis Vuitton monogram.
Chen Luo, head of China consumer research at Bank of America, told AFP that foreign brands have to work hard to stay relevant in a market driven by digital and social media, and that China will remain important but may not be a growth engine within two to three years.
Why the secondary market grows when the primary one shrinks
When shoppers keep buying a brand’s goods secondhand while buying fewer of them new, they are not rejecting the product. They are rejecting the price.
That is the structural point the headline numbers hide. A pre-owned Louis Vuitton bag bought in Shanghai is still a Louis Vuitton bag: same canvas, same hardware, same name. What the buyer refuses is the boutique premium — the gap between what the house charges for the object new and what it fetches the next time it changes hands. The resale market is where that premium gets stripped back to what the object is worth to the next owner. When that market is growing 15–20% a year and the boutique market is shrinking, the resale price is the one consumers are voting for.
Two other forces make it sharper in China. The first is logo fatigue among younger buyers, the shift AFP’s interviews describe, which hits the monogram-led houses hardest and the quiet, construction-led ones least — a split we saw in Brunello Cucinelli’s raised forecast while logo-led luxury stalled. The second is that luxury’s intellectual property, its most protected asset, can now cost it goodwill. AFP noted that LVMH won a trademark case against the Chinese tea chain Molly Tea over a four-petal floral pattern, and that the ruling drew a backlash because the motif shares roots with traditional Chinese patterns; LVMH called its intellectual property a key asset but acknowledged the furore had a negative impact.
The Faz read: scale was the strategy, and scale is the problem
The Western houses built their China business on scale — more stores, bigger flagships, the same monogram in every city. That worked while Chinese buyers accounted for roughly a third of global luxury spending, as AFP noted they once did. It works much less well in a market where buyers have learned that the same object is available, authenticated, for less, from the previous owner.
Scale creates the very supply that undercuts it. Every bag sold at full price in a boom year is a bag that can come back onto the market in a slow one. The more of a single design a house sells, the deeper and cheaper its resale pool — and the easier it becomes for a buyer to skip the boutique. A house that made fewer things, or made things that are harder to find twice, has a much thinner secondary market competing with it.
That is why the pressure in China is landing unevenly. Houses whose value rests on recognisable volume products are competing with their own back catalogue. Houses and independent designers whose value rests on cloth, cut and scarcity are not, because there is less of their work in circulation and it holds its price for reasons a buyer can see. The conclusion is not that luxury is finished in China. It is that the version of luxury built on selling the same thing to everyone has met a buyer who has noticed.
Three ways to read a brand through its resale market
One. Compare the resale price with the boutique price. If a current-season piece trades secondhand at a steep discount within months, the boutique price is mostly premium. If it holds close to retail, as some classics do, the price has a floor beneath it. Our piece on the Louis Vuitton Speedy topping Fashionphile’s resale ranking shows how uneven this is even within one house.
Two. Look at how much of it is for sale. Search a resale platform for a design. Hundreds of identical listings mean the house sold it at volume and the next buyer has bargaining power. A handful means scarcity is real.
Three. Ask what you would be paying for new. If the only difference between the boutique piece and the resale one is the box and the shop, the resale piece is the better buy. If the new piece offers something the old one cannot — a better material, a fit made for you, a maker you can name — that is a premium worth paying.
Frequently asked questions
How big is China’s secondhand luxury market?
Insight & Info Consulting, cited by AFP, estimates sales of 38.4 billion yuan (about $5.7 billion) in 2025, with a forecast of more than 100 billion yuan by 2030. Bain & Company puts the market below 10% of primary luxury sales, growing 15–20% in 2025.
Is luxury still growing in China?
Not overall. Bain estimates the mainland personal luxury market fell 3–5% in 2025 after a steeper fall in 2024, with beauty the only major category growing. It expects modest growth in 2026, with results varying by category and brand.
Why are luxury brands closing stores in China?
AFP set the closures — including five Louis Vuitton stores over two years and Galeries Lafayette’s Beijing flagship — against China’s slow recovery from the pandemic. Bain points to more selective spending and local brands gaining share, and younger shoppers told AFP they are turning to Korean labels.
Where this leaves you
For a buyer anywhere, China’s numbers are a useful instruction. For monogram classics and high-volume designs, buy secondhand from an authenticated platform or a reputable vintage and estate dealer; the price is closer to what the object is worth. Pay full price only where the money buys something resale cannot: independent designers and craft workshops making in small runs, accessible-luxury brands that price for materials rather than marketing, and the narrow slice of mainstream luxury whose construction justifies its tag. The mid-tier mass market, which offers neither resale value nor real make, is the one to skip.
The resale market has always been where fashion learns what things are actually worth. In China, it is now where luxury’s biggest houses are learning it too.
The next move is yours.
Sources: Bain & Company, China luxury market report press release · AFP via FashionUnited
