After Gucci, Louis Vuitton; Prada finally sells online in China after dipping sales

The Internet has fast become the norm of life and the one to encash on this spectrum are ‘ready to wear’ and ‘pret lines’ of high-end luxurious brands. These flourished houses think of it as an opportunity of bridging the gap between the consumer and them by serving the former with a silver plate served with affordability in it. China happens to be one of the largest markets for global brands to make profits from; Gucci, Louis Vuitton and Bally have already flagged their e-retail websites and are also minting high sales out of it.

The latest brand to join the bandwagon is Prada who realised their mistake of understanding the importance of an e-commerce website way after their contemporaries. Prada said that this well-thought move was to stabilise the company profits and also to recover from the declining sales in the past few years.

Back in 2014, when Patrizio Bertelli, CEO of Prada was asked, “Why not e-commerce?”, he responded saying, “more important things to do, like opening stores, for example.” However, in spite of the store expansions, it couldn’t add value to the profits. The profit rate fell to 27 percent in 2016 and was the lowest in last five years. It’s interesting as, during the same period of time, sales of Gucci and Louis Vuitton saw a significant rise.

The CEO since then realised that Prada was indeed wrong in underestimating and understanding the importance of the digital market for luxury sales.

Prada’s online website boasts of a wide range of products. However, the digital e-commerce director Tosato projected that the e-commerce site will only churn out 5% of total sales by the end of 2018.