Luxury stores play nice with Chinese professional shoppers they once frowned upon, as brands’ sales and profits plummet

Personal shoppers buying for Chinese clients account for almost 20 per cent of luxury sales, and London stores that used to spurn them are wooing them instead

However, with students supplanting them and many Chinese luxury consumers buying duty-free at home, the personal shopper business may not fully bounce back

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Pre-Covid-19, professional shoppers could be seen in luxury London stores, WeChatting their China-based clients. A decrease in sales has led to retailers cultivating relationships with the professional shoppers they once shunned. Photo: Bloomberg

Published: 4:15am, 22 Apr 2021Updated: 5:34am, 22 Apr 2021

Expensively dressed Chinese professional shoppers, or daigou, were once a regular sight in the glossy boutiques of New Bond Street and on the more rarefied floors of Harrods, Harvey Nichols and Selfridges in London.

With Chinese social-media app WeChat open in one hand, and a designer handbag or a piece of jewellery in the other, these London-based shoppers analysed, described and bought luxury items – watches, jewellery, clothes and cosmetics – for customers in China.

Before the coronavirus pandemic began, these shoppers and the designer stores of London had a mutually beneficial, if often testy, relationship. Most high-end brands don’t allow photographs to be taken of their products, so Chinese professional shoppers spent hours in stores describing price, colour and product details over WeChat before buying and sending goods to China.

For a while, the industry thrived: Chinese customers were getting early access to collections at a lower price and could boast their products had been bought in Europe, while the shoppers – who usually charged a commission of five to 15 per cent – were making a healthy profit. Has all this been irreversibly damaged by the pandemic?

Professional shoppers spent hours in stores describing product details over WeChat before buying and sending the goods to China. Photo: Shutterstock

A glance at the current situation would suggest so. The drop in international travel has meant Chinese duty-free areas such as the island of Hainan have flourished, and many luxury brands have chosen to expand there rather than in Europe.