{"id":23449,"date":"2026-05-25T07:44:07","date_gmt":"2026-05-25T07:44:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/23449\/"},"modified":"2026-05-25T07:44:07","modified_gmt":"2026-05-25T07:44:07","slug":"china-sales-stable-as-european-luxury-brands-tally-first-quarter-impact-of-iran-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/23449\/","title":{"rendered":"China sales stable as European luxury brands tally first-quarter impact of Iran war"},"content":{"rendered":"

Europe\u2019s luxury sector is heading into the summer with divergent regional prospects: Middle East headwinds are deepening yet underlying momentum is quietly improving, with the American market holding firm and China stabilising.<\/p>\n

The war in the Middle East<\/a> was on everybody\u2019s mind as major European luxury product groups wrapped up their first-quarter earnings season recently, wary that the conflict could derail what was expected to be a year of recovery.<\/p>\n

Geneva-based Richemont, which on Friday became the last major group to report its first-quarter earnings, embodied that tension. The jewellery giant posted a 13 per cent rise in quarterly sales, with the Americas up 18 per cent and the Asia-Pacific region, excluding Japan, up 14 per cent, yet company chairman Johann Rupert still cautioned investors about persisting uncertainties, \u201cnot least in relation to developments in the Middle East\u201d.<\/p>\n

LVMH<\/a> CEO Bernard Arnault offered one of the earnings season\u2019s starkest assessments, warning shareholders at its annual general meeting on April 23 that the crisis in the Middle East risked becoming a \u201cworld catastrophe\u201d, though he stopped short of despair, expressing hope for a quick resolution that would allow businesses to \u201cresume their normal course\u201d.<\/p>\n

The French luxury giant reported organic growth \u2013 including a negative impact of 7 per cent from currency fluctuations \u2013 of 1 per cent during the first quarter, and said it would have been around double that if not for the war. LVMH said its core fashion and leather goods business saw a 2 per cent drop in organic growth during the quarter due to the crisis.<\/p>\n

Kering, another French-based luxury group, saw sales of its main brand, Gucci, sink by 9 per cent. In its first-quarter results announcement it said that the war\u2019s broader impact \u201crelates to potential impacts on global tourism trends and the macroeconomic backdrop\u201d. It said 8 per cent growth in North America was not enough to \u201coffset declining trends in Asia-Pacific and western Europe\u201d.<\/p>\n

The impact of the war also touched Hermes<\/a>, usually considered one of the sector\u2019s most resilient players due to the popularity of its handbags. Weaker-than-anticipated tourist flows in Europe saw Hermes miss first-quarter expectations \u2013 something that HSBC analysts called \u201ca rare occurrence historically\u201d \u2013 as the group reported a 3 per cent drop in sales in France, its home base.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Europe\u2019s luxury sector is heading into the summer with divergent regional prospects: Middle East headwinds are deepening yet…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":23450,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12700],"tags":[17281,355,12711,1165,73,13101,6551,4953,17280,309,17279,2514,13410,4955,72,12701,9494],"class_list":["post-23449","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-lvmh","tag-american-market","tag-asia-pacific","tag-bernard-arnault","tag-china","tag-europe","tag-geneva","tag-gucci","tag-hermes","tag-hsbc","tag-iran-war","tag-johann-rupert","tag-kering","tag-luxury-brands","tag-lvmh","tag-middle-east","tag-moet-hennessy-louis-vuitton","tag-morgan-stanley"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23449","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23449"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23449\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23450"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23449"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23449"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23449"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}