How do luxury brands grow without diluting desirability?

For most brands, growth means more. More customers, more distribution, more availability. But in luxury, more can sometimes mean less.

How do you reach more customers and create new opportunities when more reach, distribution and availability can work against what makes luxury special?

The Luxury Landscape

Luxury experienced extraordinary value growth between 2019 and 2024, particularly across personal luxury goods. But much of that growth came through price increases rather than an expansion of the customer base.

In 2025, a significant slowdown in the luxury industry impacted brands worldwide, as consumer dynamics changed with luxury fatigue, weakened demand in China and the US, and a visible generational shift placing importance on authenticity ahead of price.

Global luxury spending reached about €1.44 trillion in 2025 and is broadly stabilising in 2026, with low single-digit growth expected. Personal luxury goods have projected growth of around 2-4% in 2026, while experiential categories including hospitality, travel and wellness continue to outpace goods in both growth and share of wallet.

The luxury client base is also shrinking and concentrating. Active consumers fell from about 400 million in 2022 to 330 million in 2025. The top 2% of clients now generate 35–45% of revenue for many maisons, making HNWIs and UHNWIs increasingly important.

If the customer base is becoming smaller and more concentrated, growth may increasingly be about getting closer to the right customers, rather than simply finding more customers.

Consumer behaviour is changing too. According to Bain & Company, around half of luxury shoppers now consult the second-hand market before buying new, with AI rapidly becoming part of the luxury purchase journey.

While the specific behaviours vary by market, four broader shifts are reshaping how consumers engage with luxury. In both the United States and China, emotional connection is overtaking status as a driver of desire. Experiences increasingly compete with products for discretionary spending. Exclusivity is shifting from scarcity to insider recognition. And discovery is moving beyond boutiques and brand-owned channels into AI platforms, resale marketplaces, and peer networks.

Sources: Bain & Co; McKinsey; Capgemini

Strategic Considerations

How can luxury brands continue to grow within such a challenging environment and behavioural shifts?

Reassuringly, the key drivers of brand love in luxury do not change: quality, craftsmanship, heritage and authenticity. What is changing is how brands create desire around them. What must be reassessed is the ability to create personal emotional connections, underpinned by a genuine sense of discovery which unlocks brand meaning and ultimately luxury value.

Scarcity can fuel desire, but true desire is ignited by a deeper personal bond.

Creating brand meaning relies on a great understanding of consumers' motivations, interests and what they hold dear. This is where identifying the elements of HNWIs' lifestyle choices and their passion points play a major role in defining the brand experience and creating a strong, close relationship with the brand, befitting specific occasions.

Distinctiveness, brought to life through consistent and personal brand narrative, can establish memorable luxury experiences that feel earned, not bought. This should be the focus of every brand owner.

Desirability is a function of controlled scarcity and, provided brand equity is strong and aligned with expectations, growth relies on purposeful management of awareness, visibility, availability and access.

The strongest luxury brands deliberately maintain a gap between demand and access. The challenge today is that, as a result of fast growth, many brands have become ubiquitous and over-relied on price to signal their value, leaving consumers hungry for new personal discoveries.

Invariably, declines in desire occur when availability increases without a corresponding rise in symbolic value.

Here is where translating cultural relevance into brand distinctiveness becomes critical, and retaining authenticity in a fast-moving world of trends and influencers requires staying true to brand values and what these represent to audiences. Innovation as a strategic pillar can sharpen differentiation, sustain interest and enhance desirability. Luxury brands must therefore grow through differentiation and cultural expansion, executed with immersive experiences that feel personal.

Growth doesn't necessarily mean becoming bigger or more available, but rather becoming more valuable to the right people, through greater relevance and distinctiveness.

So what is the path to sustainable growth without diluting scarcity and desirability?

1. Grow meaning before distribution

Understand which elements of your brand are truly distinctive and deliver meaningful value to consumers. Are there specific attributes that set you apart in heritage, craftsmanship, quality and authenticity that need to be dialled up?

2. Scale-up curated experiences 

Identify how your brand world can engage consumers creatively in experiences that feel unique, retaining a sense of exclusivity and 'by invitation'. Are you using data to personalise touchpoints? How do you show up in your audience's ecosystem? How is AI supporting your consumer journey?

3. Elevate cultural capital

Integrate your communications efforts and tailor channels to deliver brand narratives that are culturally resonant. Are you investing in global/local partnerships? Is your earned media focused on consistent brand narratives?

Strengthening brand strategy in a slowly recovering luxury market will require a refinement of objectives, be it distribution, pricing or recruitment, and brand executions that are well targeted on HNWIs, consistent in messaging and innovative in how they create true personal engagement.

Ultimately, the opportunity isn't necessarily to be available to more people, but to mean more to the right people.