Affluent Singapore attracts luxury retailers in
force
SINGAPORE, Sept 11 - Luxury fashion brands are wafting into
Singapore in droves, betting on the city-state's ambitions of
becoming a playground for Asia's super-rich as it recovers from its
worst-ever recession.
Defying the global economic downturn, several high-end stores
have opened, or shortly will, in the Southeast Asian financial
centre, home to the world's highest density of millionaires and
which is positioning itself as a centre for luxury living, with
apartments with yacht berths and six star hotels.
A string of new malls is giving Singapore's main shopping belt,
Orchard Road, a facelift, and retailers are also expecting a boost
from the opening of the country's first two casino resorts next
year.
"Singapore offers flagship-style stores and strong facades, so
it is a good opportunity to present a brand in an important street
that hasn't seen that much new luxury retailers for some years,"
said Paul Husband, managing director of Husband Retail Consulting
and author of a book on luxury trends in Asia.
Orchard Road, which already has over 20 malls, opened its latest
offering, the Ion Orchard, in July with retailers such as jeweller
Harry Winston and designer Diane von Furstenberg, as well as larger
outlets for brands, including Louis Vuitton, that already have
boutiques in the area.
Visitors to another mall, the Mandarin Gallery which opens in
October, will see stores from designers such as Marc Jacobs and
Giorgio Armani, while its neighbour, Knightsbridge, will host 8 to
10 luxury tenants when it opens in May next year.
Add to that a raft of new outlets at the Marina Bay Sands casino
resort, opening in 2010, as well as rival Resorts World Sentosa,
which will house almost half a football field's worth of luxury
retail space.
And it's not just Singapore. Luxury brands are making inroads
into other countries in Asia such as Vietnam and India as firms
look to escape a gloomy landscape in the West by heading East.
From a retailing point of view, Singapore's got, and attracts,
more than enough local and Asian shoppers willing to spend on
luxury goods.
Economist Yuwa Hedrick-Wong, in his latest book "Succeeding Like
Success: The Affluent Consumers of Asia", predicts the number of
rich households in Singapore to rise to 31,700 or 2.5 percent of
total households by 2015, with each estimated to spend close to
$150,000 on discretionary, or non-essential, items.
Singapore's is also a magnet for wealthy Malaysians, Thais and
Indonesians, whose ranks are increasing.
"This is creating a bigger mass affluent market, dominated by
well-educated and therefore more technologically savvy and
sophisticated consumers," Hedrick-Wong wrote in the book.
"Make no mistake however, there will be a lot of nouveaux riches
in Southeast Asia in the next 10 years. Like nouveaux riches
elsewhere, they will be loud and they will be conspicuous. And they
will want attention."
