London's Bond Street goes upmarket with more ultra luxury brands

By

Sandra Halliday

Published
Aug 25, 2017

London’s Bond Street is evolving into a home for ultra-luxury brands with fewer affordable luxury or premium labels occupying stores there, a new report shows.

That’s perhaps no surprise given that the shopping street is the second most expensive globally (after New York’s Fifth Avenue).

The new data comes from Savills and shows that super-luxury retailers now occupy 73.9% of Bond Street’s retail space, up from 62.8% over the last five years.

The report also said that the street will see 12 new stores by year-end, a high number and on a level with the peak reached in 2012. As those new stores will include several ultra-luxury names, such as Alaïa, Delvaux and Officine Panerai, then the percentages could shift even further by this time next year.

Delvaux said this week that it has agreed to take the former Pinet store on New Bond Street at a rent of £1.5 million a year, and other openings this year will include stores from LVMH brands.

ASPIRATIONAL EXIT

Savills also said that “aspirational mid-market” now account for a derisory 4.5% of the stores on Bond Street, down sharply from 11.5% five years ago. Meanwhile “accessible luxury” brands have fallen since 2012 too, but not by a much, being down to 21.6% today from 25.7%.

Interestingly, as Regent Street has continued to develop as a key shopping destination, more affordable brands have migrated there, with the upcoming openings for Sandro and Maje, and this month’s Arket debut showing just how big the appeal of that street is to mid-market/premium/affordable luxury labels.

Savills said that other streets, such as South Molton Street are also picking up more premium and affordable luxury names as Bond Street sheds them.

But also interesting is that those more affordable labels choosing to stick with Bond Street are concentrated at its upper end north of Brook Street, with 63% of the brands there now coming under the accessible luxury banner. And Savills expects that percentage to rise to 75% once the Hanover Square development is complete next year.

FASHION IS KEY

Fashion and footwear remains the dominant category on Bond Street with 46.5% of the space, down only slightly from 48.5%, while single brand watch stores and bag/luggage brands are on the rise and now account or 10.1% and 3.1% respectively.

The geographic mix has shifted in mainland Europe’s favour in the past five years with the number of European brand stores up to 58% from 49%. Many of the newer ultra-luxury names that have opened on Bond Street have been big-league Europeans, such as Louis Vuitton.

But just as those from mainland Europe have grown, the number of home-grown British brands has fallen to 32% from 39% and US names have dropped to 6% from 9%.