Chinese shoppers on their Lunar New Year holiday were less lavish than Hong Kong jewelers expected, curbed spending on beauty brands and spent less at South Korean stores. They may keep that pace in the coming Year of the Dragon, analysts say.
Holiday sales in China grew 16 percent to 470 billion yuan (US$75 billion), according to data from the Ministry of Commerce, the slowest pace since the 2009 financial crisis and 3 percentage points below last year’s increase. China is finding it is not immune to global economic forces and the slowdown is hitting Chinese consumers.
This may mean trouble for the growing number of foreign companies rushing into China, especially luxury brands, said Jason Yuan, an analyst at UOB Kay Hian in Shanghai.
“This year is going to be tough, probably the toughest year for many foreign luxury brands since they entered into China,” he said.
“Sales of jewelry and valuable watches during Chinese New Year were quite disappointing,” said Caroline Mak, chairperson of the Hong Kong Retail Management Association.
“Sales growth of over 30 percent last year is unsustainable against a worsening macro-economic backdrop,” she said.
Some member jewelers reported customers buying smaller diamonds than they used to, she said.
Hong Kong jeweler Chow Sang Sang Holdings International Ltd, whose sales grew as much as 28 percent in the first three days of the holiday, expects quarterly sales growth to slow to 10 percent in the second quarter from 15 percent in the first.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day