“Asia for sure is a focus because the young generation buying luxury is coming from Asia, and mostly from China,” said Andretta in an interview. “So we know that we have, used to have, a lot of Chinese tourists here [in Europe], but we want to have the same level of experience for our brand in Asia.”

“Sales for this year’s spring season are as much as 70 per cent lower than last year- not surprising, considering that consumers had little opportunity to explore the spring and summer collections in stores,” McKinsey & Co analysts Antonio Achille and Daniel Zipser wrote in a report last month.

They will need to deal with unprecedented levels of unsold 2020 inventory without resorting to steep discounts, which jeopardise brand equity, they added.

Chinese consumers are still the biggest source of growth opportunity for the luxury industry. In 2018, Chinese consumers took more than 150 million trips abroad and their overseas purchases made up more than half of China’s luxury spending that year, McKinsey estimates.

As Hong Kong shut most of its border checkpoints with mainland China in February to contain the outbreak, the dearth of visitors is upending the local retail industry.

Top-tier designer brands with their loyal legions of customers, fat profit margins and owners with deep pockets may be better placed to weather the slump than second-tier brands that lack the same advantages, some retail analysts said. Taken together, it spells the beginning of Hong Kong’s demise as an Asia-Pacific hub for shopping, they said.

London-listed Mulberry’s latest pivot to target Asia follows a 37 per cent slump in its stock price this year. Losses attributable to shareholders widened to £9.3 million in the first half to September 28, from £3.9 million a year earlier. It warned on March 24 of a “small loss” in the second half.

About 80 per cent of Mulberry’s stores have closed globally during the pandemic, with only those in China or South Korea reopened for business.

“Our research shows that demand for luxury remains high” after the Covid-19 outbreak, said Jacques Penhirin, a partner at management consultancy Oliver Wyman. “The appeal of store experience remains high, and stores should be able to recapture part of the lost ground within a couple of months.”

Founded in Somerset in 1971, Mulberry hopes to reduce its reliance on home turf and grow internationally, said Andretta, who became the CEO in 2015. Digital sales is also a key focus, as part of its direct-to-consumer approach adopted in 2017.

Last month, it announced it was making prices of goods equal worldwide by integrating individual countries’ local sales taxes or duties. This will bring global prices in line with those in the UK, where about half its bags are made.

“Our company is doing a little over 60 per cent [of sales] in the UK,” he added. “As with every luxury brand, you need to have a better balance between your country and international country visibility, so our goal is to go to 50 per cent in the UK, and then even to 40 per cent.”

“The expectation is really to pay the same price worldwide,” he said, citing young South Korean customers who can check the cost of a product five times online before deciding where to buy.

Mulberry’s new pricing strategy has been planned for a couple of years, and was ready to roll out in full – starting with leather goods products – once markets stabilised a few months after Britain officially announced it had left the European Union, according to Andretta.

The pandemic, however, has now made such timing fortuitous as global travel grinds to a halt, physical retail stores temporarily shut and consumers are forced to change their habits by turning to online shopping.

“[The new pricing] is even more important now that we know that some customers will not travel, because we will not have the same tourist traffic in Europe as before,” said Andretta. Some 30 to 40 per cent of sales in Europe are usually generated by tourists, he added.

In the interview, Andretta described the impact of store closures as “immeasurable”, adding that an ongoing growth in digital sales were not enough to offset a drop in brick and mortar stores. Besides, trading in Hong Kong has been “significantly affected” by ongoing market disruption, according to its interim financial report.

Digital sales accounted for 22 per cent of group revenue in the year ended March 30, 2019 – up from 17 per cent the previous year – and have continued to increase through coronavirus, he said. In the first half to September, digital sales grew 23 per cent globally.

Mulberry’s factories are currently closed in the UK, though some parts of its facility are making up to 12,000 reusable gowns for Britain’s National Health Service (NHS), and executive management have taken a 20 per cent pay cut, Andretta said.

“For sure coronavirus is now impacting every company in the world because much of our network is closed,” he added. “But digital is still open across the world.”