From rock'n'roll leather jackets to hip-hop's love affair with sportswear, music has made an indelible mark on the world of fashion. And this season, the British brand Superdry continues this legacy with the launch of its new musical approach, SuperdrySounds. Driven by the brand's desire to find and support credible and authentic musicians, the project enables some of the best emerging artists from around the world to perform on a global platform. Meanwhile, a new space on superdry.com will offer readers exclusive interviews, new releases from up-and-coming acts, and a wide range of music-related blog posts. The hero artists selected for the show are Aaron Unknown, a British rapper and model who worked with Stormzy; Santino Le Saint, Brixton-based R&B singer-songwriter; 2018 American independent singer and Vevo star, Au / Ra; British DJ Ami Carmine; American singer, rapper and dancer Lexie Liu; Chinese actor and singer Timmy Xu; and Sam Blacky, the int...
This year more than any other year before, the online
popularity of the best luxury brands in the world is a dependable predictor of
future sales but also a lifesaver for many luxury brands. Even the most
digitally averse brands are now embracing online channels to reach and engage
with their affluent consumers.
There is a newer version of our ranking. Check our list of the best luxury brands of this year to see the latest ranking.
It is the fourth consecutive year that Luxe Digital publishes a list of the top luxury brands online ordered by popularity. Our ranking has, over the years, become an important and reliable indicator of future performances for the world’s best luxury brands.
The digital transformation of luxury is accelerating in 2021. Changes that were already underway are now at the forefront of every brand’s strategy: profound shifts in consumption and consumer preferences. Relevancy is the new legacy, as you’ll see in our luxury predictions for the year.
Online luxury sales reached €49 billion at the end of 2020 (up from €33 billion in 2019) according to estimates by Bain & Company. More interestingly, the share of purchases made online for luxury goods nearly doubled to reach 23 percent of total sales in 2020 (up from 12 percent in 2019).
As a result, we’re now expecting nearly a third of global luxury sales to take place online by 2025. (5 percentage points higher than previous estimations.) As luxury ecommerce sales grow and affluent consumers increasingly turn online to make purchase decisions, a luxury brand’s digital acumen is more critical than ever. How do we estimate the online popularity of a luxury brand? We took into account a combination of brand value, search share of voice, and social media conversations to create this list. You can read more details about our methodology and data sources at the end of this article. For this ranking, we focus exclusively on brands in luxury fashion, beauty, and “hard luxury” (jewelry and watches). We have a separate report for the best luxury car brands.
In what might be of little surprise to many, Italian luxury fashion house Gucci maintains the top spot on the 2021 edition of our list of the most popular luxury brands online, well ahead of all its competitors and for four consecutive years. The popularity of the Kering-owned brand continues to decline in 2021, however — Online searches for Gucci dropped by 13% year over year.
This ‘Gucci fatigue’ became visible in the brand’s latest sales figures, with a 22.7% drop in revenue in 2020. Online sales however continued to enjoy fast-paced growth, up nearly 70%.
Nevertheless, Gucci remains one of the industry’s best in class digital performers, by leveraging digital storytelling, elevated ecommerce, and a constant drive to experiment and innovate online. From digital gifting with split payments to AR-powered try-on features on Snapchat and the Gucci App, the brand is constantly experimenting online.
The brand with the capital G’s also doubled down on the Chinese market by selling products on Tmall’s Luxury Pavilion, China’s largest ecommerce platform, to reach new digitally savvy affluent consumers.
Gucci also maintains a particularly strong presence in the coveted designer sneakers market. The Italian luxury label took a step further by selling the first pair of virtual luxury sneakers this year. The Gucci Virtual 25 digital-only sneakers launched in March 2021 are indeed only available through the brand’s Sneakers Garage, a digital experience on Gucci’s mobile app. People can “wear” the shoe virtually and take photos or videos to be shared online.
Social media mentions and actions for the brand across all digital platforms dwarfed most of the other luxury fashion brands worldwide. The brand records over 10 million engagement actions per month, on average. Only Dior and Louis Vuitton are doing better with 13.2 million and 11 million respectively.
Gucci is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year. This milestone most likely won’t go unnoticed.