The Price of Greed: How Years of Hikes Pushed Luxury Into a Reckoning With Its Own Shoppers

A Structural Reset, Not a Blip

For most of the past decade, the luxury industry seemed unstoppable, raising prices year after year while demand only appeared to grow stronger. In 2026, that era of easy expansion has come to a definitive halt, and the sector is now confronting what analysts increasingly describe not as a temporary dip, but as a deep structural reset.

The evidence is written plainly in the results of the industry's biggest names. Luxury bellwethers such as LVMH and Kering have reported declining sales and profit over the past two years, a sobering reversal for conglomerates that had grown accustomed to reporting record numbers almost as a matter of routine.

According to the consultancy Bain and Company, whose reports are closely watched across the industry, sales have been sliding from 2023 into early 2026, with a notably weak first quarter this year. The firm projects only a modest rebound ahead, suggesting the pain is far from over and the recovery, when it comes, will be gradual at best.

The Aspirational Shopper Vanishes

Two forces sit at the heart of this slowdown, and the first is geographic. Economic headwinds in China, long the engine of luxury growth, have sharply reduced demand from a market that brands had come to rely on for a huge share of their sales and their future ambitions.

The second force is arguably more damaging in the long run, and it concerns the so-called aspirational customer. These are the entry-level shoppers who saved up for a single handbag or a pair of designer shoes, and who carried the luxury industry through previous downturns with their aspirational purchases.

That crucial group has now been pushed out of the market almost entirely. Years of aggressive price increases have placed even so-called accessible luxury well beyond their reach, meaning the very customers who once dreamed of buying into these brands can no longer afford to participate at all.

A Shrinking Customer Base

The scale of this exodus is striking when translated into hard numbers. The global luxury customer base has shrunk to around 340 million people in 2025, down from roughly 400 million just three years earlier in 2022, a loss of tens of millions of shoppers in a remarkably short span of time.

Worse still for the industry, the bleeding is not expected to stop there. Forecasts suggest the sector could lose a further 20 to 30 million clients in the coming period, a contraction that threatens the long-term foundations of a business model built on ever-widening desire and an aura of attainable dreams.

Even the Wealthy Feel Betrayed

Perhaps the most surprising finding is that the discontent is not confined to those priced out. Bain reports that the relentless price hikes have left even ultra-wealthy clients feeling betrayed, a powerful word that signals a breakdown of trust between the brands and their most loyal, deep-pocketed patrons.

This sense of betrayal marks a stark reversal of the so-called elevation strategy that dominated the industry in recent years. Brands had bet that pushing prices ever higher would enhance their exclusivity and desirability, but instead many customers now feel the increases were driven by greed rather than any genuine improvement in quality or craftsmanship.

A Reckoning Over Pricing

Faced with this backlash, some inside the industry are beginning to admit that the strategy went too far. In a rare and telling moment of candour, Kering's chief executive Luca de Meo recently told employees in an internal memo that the group must rethink its pricing and product strategy after years of increases, an unusual acknowledgement from within a major house.

The road ahead will require luxury to relearn a delicate balance it seems to have forgotten. If the great houses want to win back the shoppers they have alienated, they may need to prove once again that their prices reflect real value and meaning, rather than simply testing how much the market will bear before it finally breaks.