Beijing : Salvatore Ferragamo Italia SpA, whose shoes are worn by celebrities including Jennifer Lopez and Zhang Ziyi, expects sales in China to expand as it opens more stores, CEO Michele Norsa said.
"We still can expect a double-digit growth in the next years," Norsa told reporters in Shanghai.
Still, "it would be relatively unwise to think it will keep growing 30 per cent as it has been growing."
The company will open as many as 10 stores in China this year, including its biggest outlet in Asia outside Japan on April 27 in Shanghai, and shops in Suzhou, Hangzhou and Guangzhou, Norsa said.
It opened eight stores in China last year, he said, declining to give sales or profit figures for 2009.
Greater China, including the mainland, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan, may overtake Japan as the company's largest market after the US by the end of this year, Norsa said.
Surge in consumption
Western luxury companies are looking to China for growth as consumption surges in the world's fastest-growing major economy.
Worldwide spending on high-end apparel and other goods may rise six per cent this year, driven by China, where the super-rich and middle class "want to show off their status in life," HSBC analysts Erwan Rambourg and Antoine Belge wrote in a January report.
China may account for 35 per cent of the industry's growth in 2010, they said.
China overtook the US as the biggest market for the Montblanc group in the second half of last year, Edward Lu, managing director of Montblanc China, told reporters in Shanghai.
Depending on economic developments this year, China should remain the number one market in 2010, he said.
Montblanc China's sales this year will exceed those of 2009, when revenue saw a "double-digit" increase, Lu said.
The company expects growth in so-called second and third-tier cities and plans to have new openings in tier-two cities, Lu said, without identifying them.
The size of Ferragamo's Greater China market is now "very close" to Jap-an's, and it's "possible" that it will overtake Japan by the end of this year, Norsa said.
China is a more important market than the US because of its growth potential, he said. Separately, Norsa said the company has no timetable for when it will sell its shares in an initial public offering.
Chairman Ferruccio Ferragamo said in February he remains committed to selling a minority share holding through such an offering.
Florence, Italy-based Ferragamo, whose shoes were also worn by Greta Garbo and Marilyn Monroe, is valued at about 1.55 billion euros (Dh7.7 billion) to 1.7 billion euros, estimates Sanford C. Bernstein analyst Luca Solca. JPMorgan Chase, Mediobanca SpA and UBS AG are advising on an IPO.
