Nanjing Deji Plaza and the winner-takes-most luxury market

What happened China’s luxury market is no longer expanding evenly. Instead, it is compressing. In 2025, China counted 17 luxury malls with annual sales exceeding 10 billion RMB ($1.44 billion) — a record in absolute number, but also a signal of extreme concentration. At the top sits Nanjing Deji Plaza, which posted 26.2 billion RMB ($3.77 billion) in annual sales, more than 4 billion RMB ($576 million) ahead of its closest competitor. That gap is no longer about better operations or smarter tenant mixes. It reflects something closer to structural dominance. For high-net-worth shoppers in Jiangsu province and surrounding regions, Deji has become a default decision rather than a considered choice — a place that captures nearly all “certain” luxury demand in its catchment area. Spending concentrated in a handful of trusted luxury malls The same logic applies nationally. Beijing SKP and Shanghai IFC function as unavoidable consumption nodes in their cities, while dozens of secondary luxury malls compete for increasingly cautious spend. Footfall data reinforces the picture. Only three malls surpassed 50 million annual visitors in 2025, while several top-tier luxury centers in Shanghai and Shenzhen recorded traffic below 10 million. In today’s environment, scale alone no longer guarantees momentum; trust and habit do. Meanwhile, performance among legacy landmarks has diverged. Shanghai Plaza 66 posted modest growth according to developer disclosures, while Taikoo Hui Guangzhou saw sales dip before stabilizing late in the year — an early sign that the floor may be forming. Fragile recovery signal from luxury Luxury groups are cautiously echoing that narrative. LVMH said demand from mainland Chinese consumers improved in the second half of 2025, lifting Asia’s fourth-quarter organic revenue growth to 1% — better than expected, but hardly a rebound. The Jing Take The takeaway is not recovery, but selectivity. Demand is returning unevenly, favoring places and brands that feel safest, most familiar, and most “worth the trip.” According to Bain & Company, China’s luxury market has recorded multiple consecutive quarters of contraction, reflecting tighter budgets, slower wealth creation, and a reset in consumer psychology. What’s changing is how and where spending happens. First, oversaturation has caught up with brands. In top-tier cities, years of aggressive expansion have left luxury houses competing not just with rivals, but with themselves. Dozens of boutiques in a single city now dilute productivity, driving store-level cannibalization and accelerating closures of underperforming locations. For instance, Louis Vuitton recorded 21 boutiques in Shanghai in 2022. In light of this, Gucci’s parent company Kering is aggressively closing stores, from the planned 50 closures in China at the beginning of 2025 it raised to 80 in the same year. Second, the consumer portrait is blurring. The shopper who buys Hermès, queues for fast fashion collaborations, and collects Labubu toys is often the same person — switching identities by mood, moment, and perceived value. Traditional segmentation models no longer hold. For landlords, this forces a rethink. The future isn’t about filling floors with more luxury logos, but about building ecosystems that can capture repeat visits across categories — fashion, food, culture, play. Malls that succeed will be those that concentrate trust, not just brands. The Jing Take reports on a piece of the leading news and presents our editorial team’s analysis of the key implications for the luxury industry. In the recurring column, we analyze everything from product drops and mergers to heated debate sprouting on Chinese social media.

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Nanjing Deji Plaza and the winner-takes-most luxury market