Why Australia Is Luxury’s New Retail Hotspot
Australia has been spectacularly successful in dealing with the Covid pandemic. Now the nation’s retail scene is surging back ahead of the rest of the world — and luxury fashion brands are opening stores. Snap lockdowns are still a feature of life in Australia, but consumer confidence in April reached its highest levels since August 2010, with the Westpac-Melbourne Institute Index of Consumer Sentiment increasing by 6.2 percent in March. The Australian luxury sector, while still relatively small globally, has had a buoyant run, amid the country’s commodity boom and its perception as a top travel destination for Chinese travellers. Now, even with among the tightest Covid-19 travel restrictions globally, annual luxury sales are expected to climb by 2.4 percent annually to AU$4.5bn in 2026, per IbisWorld, as local consumer sentiment and household disposable incomes climb. This, combined with low digital penetration, is why luxury retailers in Australia are bucking overall global retail trends to invest in new physical retail space. Read more at Vogue Business.
