For the latest episode of The Future of Luxury Podcast, I traveled through Shanghai with Patrick Kaminski, one of the few non-Chinese executives who has spent more than two decades living in China, holding senior leadership roles in blue-chip companies, and building his own ventures there. We did not sit down in a studio. We spoke over dinner at the Shangri-La, walked down Nanjing West Road, stood at the Bund, visited a Huawei flagship, and ended inside the Yangwang showroom of BYD’s luxury division.
The city itself became the third voice in the conversation.
When I asked Patrick about the widely repeated notion that the Chinese market is declining, his answer stopped me. In more than twenty years, he has heard that claim roughly fifty times. His verdict is uncomfortable for many boards: blaming the market is an excuse. There is no reason a foreign company cannot succeed in China. The companies that struggle are the ones that stopped listening.
The evidence was everywhere around us. Consider one number from our conversation: roughly 100 million people in China now earn money as content creators, a job category that barely existed six years ago. China was already the youngest and most digital luxury market in the world before the pandemic. It has since accelerated further. Yet in the board meetings I joined over recent months, not one leadership team proactively raised digital in China. Every conversation defaulted to stores.
Then there is the customer side. In discussions with UHNW clients during this trip, one theme kept surfacing. Many of China’s wealthiest are flying to Japan to shop, and price arbitrage explains only part of it. The deeper reason is service. When clients describe feeling dismissed at home and exceptional abroad, the sales numbers stop being a mystery. Much of what brands attribute to market weakness is homemade.
We also spent time with the cars, and I will say this carefully. What I experienced inside the vehicles on Shanghai’s streets, from the material quality to features built entirely around how people actually live, felt like a Nokia and iPhone moment for parts of the Western auto industry. The Chinese approach starts with the client’s life and works backward to the product. Much of the West still starts with the product and hopes the client follows.
That difference in thinking is the real subject of this episode. Not cars. Not phones. The direction of design itself.
My guidance for brands: before accepting the story that China is slowing, ask what the winners in the market are doing differently, and be honest about whether your difficulties are external or self-inflicted. This episode gives you the questions to ask.
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