When the client overtakes the brand: China’s uncomfortable lesson for luxury

One hundred million. By the estimate of Patrick Kaminski, who has led major international businesses in China for more than two decades, that is roughly how many people in China now earn money as livestreamers and content creators. The job category barely existed six years ago. I recorded a recent episode of The Future of Luxury Podcast with Patrick across Shanghai, from the Bund to the showroom of Yangwang, BYD’s luxury division, and of everything we discussed, this number stood out. A population of sellers larger than Germany, manufacturing desire in real time, every day and night. Yet, most luxury boards have never heard of it. The number points to something bigger than a channel shift. Chinese luxury clients now live further in the future than the brands courting them. Take an ordinary day in a Chinese client’s life. They pay by face scan. They shop through a livestream hosted by a creator whose taste they trust more than any campaign. Their car was designed around the passenger seat because, in a city of 25 million, the commute is the experience that matters. One off-road model I saw even carries a drone on the roof that deploys to film the drive. Then the same person walks into a luxury boutique and steps backward in time. The heritage is intact. So are the codes. But the service model was built for a client who stopped existing years ago. The Chinese client is no longer looking up Luxury has always rested on a particular geometry. The maison stands above the client: more knowledgeable, more refined, and the keeper of taste the client aspires to. Aspiration flows upward. That geometry made every playbook in the industry work. In China, for the first time and across an entire market, it has flipped. The client looks at the brand and sees the past. What is being aspired to then? During my Shanghai trip, several ultra-high-net-worth clients told me that they felt talked down to in Chinese boutiques. Yet just a few hours away by plane, they received exceptional treatment. The problem is that staff still approach clients as if they need an education, rather than recognizing how much they already know. Patrick has watched a related pattern repeat for two decades. Talented international managers arrive with impressive credentials, then fail within two years because they carry an assumed authority their brand no longer holds in the local client’s eyes. The market notices fast. Automotive tells the same story with bigger numbers. Incumbents believe heritage is the moat. Meanwhile, their Chinese challengers start with the client’s actual life and engineer delight into it. On the streets of Shanghai, the comparison that kept surfacing in my mind was Nokia meeting the iPhone. Patrick has heard China declared “finished” roughly 50 times in 20 years. Blaming the market, he told me, is an excuse. The companies that struggle stopped listening to their clients. After two decades of my own project work there and a week on the ground with him, I share his verdict. I would just push it one step further: they stopped listening because they saw the client as standing beneath them on the aspiration ladder. In reality, the ladder has flipped. A test for brands This reaches far beyond China. A client in New York or Paris who is under 30 already manages their brand relationships through platforms most boards have never opened and performs purchase rituals no one on the leadership team has completed even once. China punishes that gap within a season. Western markets extend a longer rope, which is why the disconnect can compound unnoticed. In the brand audits and competitive retail assessments my team and I conduct across five key markets, early versions of the same inversion keep appearing. China is the preview. My guidance for brands starts with one strategic question: When the client has caught up with the brand, what replaces superiority as the engine of desire? The winners in China suggest an answer. They moved their posture from authority to relevance. They design for the Chinese client as the most advanced consumer in the world instead of translating a global playbook downward, and they hand decision power to people who actually inhabit that client’s world. Above all, they study local champions with humility. The self-test is uncomfortable. Put your China client journey next to the experience that same client had an hour earlier with a local champion, and measure the gap. Then ask yourself which direction your organization assumes aspiration flows. Your client has already answered. One hundred million creators are selling the future every night. Does your brand still live there? This is an opinion piece by Daniel Langer, CEO of luxury brand strategy firm Équité and Executive Professor of Luxury Strategy at Pepperdine University and NYU.

When the client overtakes the brand: China’s uncomfortable lesson for luxury

How Bottega Veneta weaved China’s forever it bag

Upgrade to Pro

Sectors

Insights

Company

When the client overtakes the brand: China’s uncomfortable lesson for luxury

How Bottega Veneta weaved China’s forever it bag