Chanel unveils its first Wuhan store hoarding, at SKP on the Chu River
The store will join a 1.5-kilometre promenade planned to hold about 40 stand-alone stores, and Chanel has given no opening date.
Chanel has unveiled a hoarding for its first stand-alone store in Wuhan, the capital of Hubei province and China's ninth biggest city. The future door will overlook the Chu River inside the SKP Wuhan development, two years after the department store franchise entered the central China market.
The hoarding was shared by users on Xiaohongshu, the social commerce platform. Chanel's future SKP shop will be between Louis Vuitton and Cartier along SKP K Avenue, a pedestrian promenade that will hold around 40 stand-alone stores once the project is complete.
The 1.5-kilometre corridor is the outdoor luxury retail offering of SKP Wuhan. Chanel becomes the latest maison to claim a place on it as the strip fills toward completion, with the hoarding serving as its first public marker in the city.
Chanel now counts 13 boutiques in China, four of them inside SKP establishments: one each in Beijing, Xi'an, Chengdu and, with this store, Wuhan. It is also only the second Chanel door in the central China region.
SKP Wuhan is the fourth location for the established department store franchise and is in Wuchang District, a central cultural zone. The company framed the city warmly when it entered the market.
"Wuhan, a city that has weathered the storms but is still full of positivity and optimism, is a city where its people stick together; it's a place where people truly enjoy and celebrate life," SKP said in a statement at the time.
Wuhan is known as "the city of a thousand lakes" and has a population of more than 13 million. That scale makes it a natural target as luxury groups look beyond the coastal cities they have long relied on.
Chanel's wider China moves
Chanel is a French luxury fashion house founded by Coco Chanel in 1910. Its most recent China project was the reopening of its Plaza 66 boutique after an 18-month renovation, which brought the brand's entire ecosystem under one roof.
The Wuhan plan arrives while the market goes through a prolonged reset. Luxury brands are shutting stores that do not perform, testing regional cities they have not yet served, and using pop-ups to reach different crowds.
Away from the traditional mall, Chanel recently launched its Coco Neige collection, Matthieu Blazy's first for the house, at a Spanish-style villa on the tourism-friendly Wukang Road. Wuhan is a more conventional push, into a rising interior city.
The reset has pressed on the brand's numbers. In our analysis of Chanel's pricing strategy, we found revenue fell 4.3% in 2024 while China dropped 9.3%, the first limit that relentless price increases had met.
That analysis also recorded the Medium Classic Flap rising 95% in six years to $11,300, more than four times US inflation, as Chanel moved above Louis Vuitton toward Hermès-tier exclusivity. Resale values held at 80 to 100% of retail.
Pricing power rests on ownership free of outside pressure. As we set out in our profile of the Wertheimer family, Alain and Gérard Wertheimer own Chanel outright, the largest privately held luxury house, which lets it invest through downturns.
A brand still adding doors
We have also covered the resignation of Bruno Pavlovsky from the Chanel Ltd board, while he stayed president of fashion, and the deal in which F.P.Journe and Chanel agreed to acquire 95% of Ebel for $66.5 million.
Our valuation coverage put Chanel at $38 billion, overtaking Louis Vuitton at $33 billion as France's most valuable brand for the first time in years. The Wuhan door lands while the maison holds that ranking.
SKP Wuhan will also welcome openings from Celine, Giorgio Armani and Prada, timed to coincide with the launch of the WWD x SKP Global Fashion & Beauty Summit on Thursday. Chanel has not announced an opening date, size or categories for its store.
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Images: Chanel