Prada's No Good, Very Bad Year

Nothing lasts forever, and that includes Chinese consumers’ thirst for luxury goods, as evidenced by Prada’s no good, very bad year.

Via The Economist:

On March 30th Prada announced that profits for 2014 had dropped by 28% from the previous year, to just €451m ($484m). It is the first time that the firm has reported a drop in annual profits since it was floated on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in 2011. Sales of leather goods, a category with particularly high profit margins and which accounts for over 60% of net sales, fell 5%.

There were some gains for the group, notably in Prada’s menswear offerings and for the group as a whole in Japan and South Korea. But these were overshadowed by the effects of tough conditions in the Far East, particularly in Hong Kong and Macau.

It’s not the first time the luxury label has suffered blows in Asian markets: Bloomberg reported similar losses in September 2014, and global sales as a whole were down 1% last year.

Even though Prada, like many luxury labels, is owned and operated by a large conglomerate, Miuccia Prada seems like a pretty genuine, awesome lady—not to mention they make some pretty dope eyeglasses for us vision-challenged dames—so I hope they’re able to turn the company around.