La Prairie will wait until 2012 for recovery
Swiss cosmetics group is not convinced that luxury is on the rise
Despite some predictions that Swiss cosmetics group La Prairie has said it does not expect its sales to recover to their pre-crisis level before 2012 with growth in 2010 in single-digit terms.
The company's president, Dirk Trappmann, speaking at a luxury products conference organised by Reuters in Paris, said sales had declined by 8% in 2009 to about €265m. This year so far the La Prairie brand has generated sales in double digits, Trappmann said, with those at group level achieving single-digit growth.
The company, owned by Beiersdorf, has reported some signs of recovery on the US market which accounts for 20% of sales. However, according to Trappmann, the Chinese market now accounts for a third of the sales generated in the US and in five years China will be a more important market for La Prairie than America.
