This report differs from other Mintel retail reports in the sense that it looks primarily at companies that are involved in design, manufacturing and distribution, rather than pure retail. The turnover for these companies and therefore our market size includes elements of retail turnover, wholesale sales to franchisees and concessionaires plus income from licence agreements.

The report includes profiles of the top seven luxury operators by turnover including the major ‘multi-branded’ players LVMH, Richemont and the Gucci Group. Shiseido and L’Oréal also feature in our top seven although they have large mass-market operations. However in the case of L’Oréal we have been able to hone in on its luxury division, but Shiseido does not split this out separately and so it appears higher up our rankings than it would do otherwise.

We have also profiled a selection of 11 other luxury players including Burberry, Hermès, Tiffany & Co and Swatch, providing a good spread of interest in terms of product categories and geographic markets. In April 2008, YSL Beauté (part of the Gucci Group) was acquired by L’Oréal. Given its recent change of ownership, we have covered this business as a separate profile outside of either parent company.

The luxury goods market is notoriously difficult to put a size to, in fact it is hard even to find any consensus concerning what comprises luxury. Brands such as Tommy Hilfiger and Polo Ralph Lauren, which by European standards might well be perceived as having a casual focus, represent a significant part of the luxury end of the spectrum in the US market, which does not have a history of couture. For this reason they are included in Mintel's market size. Although more companies are starting to publish consolidated turnover, the mix of elements mentioned above further muddies the waters.

Mintel has derived its own global luxury goods market size using a bottom-up analysis of the top 27 companies operating in the sector, and by estimating the likely balance derived from the remainder of the market. In this report we have published four years of trend data, based on this methodology.

Our market size thus represents the collective consolidated sales of all the players operating in this market which we believe provides a useful guide to growth and the performance of each company within this framework.

In addition we have broken the market size down by region and by major product category over the four years. However, given the above caveat, we would advise readers not to regard these as absolute figures but as indicative only.

It should be noted that the market size does not represent the value of the global luxury goods market at retail selling prices. We have however included a figure for this in the report based on our estimate of average wholesale to retail mark-ups and licence income.