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Week Around the Ists
Cheap Louis Vuitton bags are all the rage for Chinese customers in the UK
In the U.K., the combined effect of lower taxes on luxury goods and the plummeting British pound have meant that even full-priced items are effectively 50% off to Chinese shoppers.
Many who've recently traveled to the U.K. report that branches of Louis Vuitton now employ Mandarin speaking sales assistants and, at the Manchester store, customers are restricted to a maximum of 5 handbags per customer.
If that's put you in the mood for an English vacation (and a quick shopping trip for a stunning Valentine's Day gift), Virgin Atlantic and British Airways fly daily from Pudong to London's Heathrow airport.
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Doesn't it seem silly that a sore would put a limit in the number of bags sold to a customer? defeats the purpose of maximizing profits eh? And to deny them after they sometimes have to wait in lines to get into the store to even find the bags they want...
I know, it's bonkers, but definitely true.
The photo was taken by a workmate who just came back from the UK- his wife had given him a list of 7 bags to buy so he had to ask someone else to use their allowance.
He asked all of the Chinese guys in the shop, but they were all planning to buy the maximum 5 - so he went out to the street and found another Chinese guy to help him out.
It's the same with at the LV store in Paris on the champs elysee; they have so much higher prices in both China and Japan that there is a huge profit making potential. At least here the price difference is (mostly) due to import duties; in Japan the price is higher simply because the company makes it so, they know they can get away with it.
The sale assistants in Paris are real snobs. I went to one near the Arc de triomph maybe around 12 years ago. If the sales assistant found out you were Chinese, they'd assume you were buying for profit to sell to brokers who then resell these bags in Japan. Because of this, the sales assistants were very nasty to Hong Kongers and Taiwanese (you don't have many mainland Chinese buying LVs back then). Now, The mainland Chinese are the big buyers, dwarfing the Japanese in total spending power, so I think the assistants are a bit nicer to Chinese people. Most Chinese buyers will also check the origin of the bags. If they are Made in Spain, they won't buy. It's gotta be made in France. If I remembered rite, The only LV shop where I saw them limiting people going in at any one time is the LV shop on Nanjing Xi-Lu, near my home.
I've seen them restricting the numbers of people going into the LV store in Plaza 66- it seems like a gimick to me. Or maybe just to put off the rubber neckers.
Why anyone would want one of those incredibly common bags is beyond me- having no individual sense of style or taste is OK- but why would you spend 1,000s of RMB just to announce it to everyone?