Amid Global Luxury Slowdown, SSI’s Anton Huang Says Filipino Consumers Remain ‘Resilient’
For anybody following the business of luxury fashion, 2024 hasn’t exactly been rosy. In the first quarter of the year, the market for personal luxury goods dropped an estimated one to three percent. That might not seem like much, but considering how the market grew four percent in 2023 to a record 1.5 trillion euros, the decline is not insignificant.
Key to the drop is the slowdown in the Chinese market, which global consultancy group Bain & Company attributes to “the revival of outbound tourism and the weakening local demand caused by rising economic uncertainties.”
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The situation hasn’t escaped the attention of Anton Huang, who leads the country’s biggest luxury retailer, SSI Group. At the grand opening of four new luxury boutique stores at the mall at Nustar in Cebu City, Huang acknowledged the challenges currently facing the luxury goods industry and its impact on the Philippine market.
SSI Group CEO Anton Huang with daughter Nikki Huang
“Globally, based on what we've been hearing, luxury will still continue to be challenged,” he told Esquire Philippines. “I think, definitely, here in the Philippines, at least. But as far as luxury sales to the Filipino customers, it's remained resilient. But of course, we've likewise lost the mainland Chinese that were shopping in our stores, and that's understandable.”
But Huang emphasized the resilience of the Filipino luxury consumer and highlighted how long the company has been around providing local consumers access to the world’s best luxury brands.
“I think over the past, at least for SSI, the past 37 years now, we've really been focused on serving the Filipino customers. That's what we know, and that's what we do best. So that's what we're focused on at this time.”
For the first six months of 2024, the SSI Group reported gross revenues of P13.277 billion, up 6.7 percent from the P12.434 in the same period last year. Net income, however, fell nearly 28 percent from P1.006 billion to P726.3 million.
Actress Gabbi Garcia and model and influencer LA Aguinaldo
The SSI Group have opened some of the world’s top luxury brands at the new Nustar Mall, located at the Nustar property in the Queen City of the South. Earlier this week, Huang joined some of the country’s most prominent influencers and lifestyle and fashion journalists for the simultaneous opening of Kenzo, Givenchy, Versace, and Loewe. Nustar is hoping to attract luxury shoppers not just from within Cebu City, but across the Visayas and Mindanao and even overseas.
Huang says he believes Filipino consumers are especially well-suited to current trends in luxury fashion.
“The Filipino luxury consumers are very sophisticated,” he said. “(They’re) not a loud customer so to speak as far as aesthetics are concerned, and that bodes well now because the fashion trends are very much aligned to that.”
