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INVESTIGATION – The country’s economy has been running at a slower pace since the end of the pandemic. Still keen on Western brands but worried about their finances, buyers are turning to the secondhand market.
Wedged between Lanzhou noodle-soup stalls and real estate agencies, the glass-fronted shop blends into the landscape. Just a colored neon sign to catch passersby’s eyes. Inside, a couple in their Sunday best lingers for a long while in front of the display case, and the young woman in a long skirt eventually slips the glittering bracelet onto her wrist.
A Cartier piece is tagged at 220,000 yuan (about €27,000), notes the stocky salesman, a dragon-head pendant hanging around his neck. On the shelves sit handbags stamped with the most famous of monograms. The slightly creased brown leather barely gives away that it has already been worn. “This is from the latest Louis Vuitton collection. New, this bag sells for 20,000 yuan, but you can have it here for 7,000 yuan,” adds the placid young man, holding up a tag as a certificate of authenticity.
At the foot of these buildings in the Gongti district, near Beijing’s Third Ring Road, the MSH Vintage Luxury shop bears witness to the spectacular rise of secondhand luxury in China. As the world’s second-largest economy slows down, the phenomenon reveals new consumer habits. No fewer than five shops of this kind are set up within a radius of a few hundred meters in the heart of this residential neighborhood. Taikoo Li Village, an upscale mall lined with the storefronts of major Western brands, is nonetheless located not far away.
The wave of secondhand luxury goods is reaching other Chinese megacities, from Shanghai to Shenzhen. It is proof of a deep shift underway in the world’s second-largest luxury market after the United States. In China, which drove the sector’s growth for more than twenty years, sales by major brands have been losing steam since the end of the pandemic. Chinese consumers are tightening their belts, but their taste for luxury has not disappeared.
The key is speed
“Lots of shops like this have sprung up over the past three or four years,” explains the salesman. “It’s a business with a future, because people have less money and have become more sensible. They have to make choices, balance their budget.” Across the aisle, the owner of a rival shop, dressed in a tracksuit, says much the same, surrounded by his three employees. One of them juggles four cell phones to handle online orders, alert to the slightest interest via the WeChat messaging app. “Before, we used to wait, we played on scarcity,” she says. “Now, the key is speed. As soon as we get an offer, we sell.” Prices adjust in real time to supply and demand, for a young, hyper-connected, well-informed clientele.
In a China gripped by deflation, the shop’s owner points to spectacular price drops of up to 60%. “This bag was worth 20,000 yuan two years ago, and half that today,” notes his colleague, holding up an item from a major Italian brand. After Europe and the United States, the Middle Kingdom is now falling for secondhand luxury too. It’s a fast-growing new market, estimated at $30 billion in 2025, three times its size in 2020, according to Alexis Bonhomme, founder of Trinity Asia. “It exploded after Covid, especially since 2023, with annual growth of nearly 25%,” adds this Shanghai-based digital specialist. “It’s become one of the few growth drivers at a time when primary luxury is slowing sharply.” After years of heady double-digit growth, luxury goods sales fell by around 20% in China in 2024, according to Bain & Company. The rise of the secondhand market reflects the gloom among the middle classes, whose
confidence is weighed down by the property crash. The continued fall in real estate prices, which account for nearly two-thirds of Chinese households’ wealth, is dragging on household morale and spending. Retail sales are thus struggling, growing just 1.3% in November 2025, a sharp slowdown from the previous month.
A hyper-connected Gen Z
Even the wealthier classes are being cautious, after euphoric decades during which their wealth swelled visibly, in step with apartment prices in Hangzhou or Guangzhou. “The property crisis is fostering a sense of impoverishment. Consumers, who already own a lot, are now making trade-offs they didn’t make before,” observes Alexis Bonhomme, who nonetheless sees “stirrings” in high-end sales. Rising prices, worsened by currency fluctuations and the trade war, are weighing on buyers’ morale. Per-capita luxury spending is expected to fall by around 4%, even though most consumers remain optimistic about the economy’s trajectory, according to a study by consulting firm Kearney.
The blossoming of these secondhand shops reflects new ways of consuming, rather than a falling out of love with luxury. They signal a shift in values among younger generations, who place less importance on logos and status purchases, favoring instead the pursuit of personal fulfillment, at a time when economic and geopolitical clouds are gathering. A clear break from their elders, for whom the horizon once seemed limitless. “Young people’s appetite for the circular economy reflects deep post-Covid shifts in mindset that long escaped a luxury industry clinging to its codes,” explains Sandrine Zerbib, author of Dragon Tactics (Dunod, 2022). “Young people are turning away from materialism toward purchases with stronger emotional value, or ones that offer an experience.” Secondhand-goods warehouses, such as “Super ZhuanZhuan” in Beijing, are drawing in a hyper-connected, playful Gen Z that is more price-conscious, facing a tight job market, and, for some, shaped by an emerging environmental awareness. New trends now being closely watched by major groups looking for a rebound.
In this new context, many feel that “buying a luxury item is no longer essential,” even if it remains desirable, adds one salesman. Consignment shops help partly resolve these contradictions, though the question of product authenticity remains, despite new technological processes. Long a “blind spot” in China, secondhand luxury sales were associated “with a loss of face and didn’t fit the ostentatious logic of the 2000-2020 years. Today, that dynamic has reversed under the influence of a more rational consumer and a new digital culture. This kind of purchase lets Chinese consumers stay in the game,” says Alexis Bonhomme. In step with a struggling but still-growing Asian giant, and a society in constant flux.