Web photo from the Quartz shows the South Coast Plaza celebrating Chinese New Year.
Celebrations are kicking off around the world to mark the new Chinese year, the Year of the Monkey, and at the richest mall in America, the Lunar New Year is as big a deal as Christmas.
According to the Quartz, South Coast Plaza, the highest-grossing mall in the U.S., did 1.7 billion U.S. dollars in sales in 2015. Its peak season begins the day after Thanksgiving, known at the mall as "Fabulous Friday," not Black Friday and ends not at Christmas but at the close of Chinese New Year celebrations.
This week at the sprawling shopping center in southern California's Orange County, there are scarlet red dresses on the mannequins at the windows of Carolina Herrera and Balenciaga. Dolce & Gabbana is selling a monkey-print T-shirt, exclusive to the mall, in honor of the Year of the Monkey.
Shoppers who spend more than 2,500 dollars in a single day at the center get a crystal bowl from Tiffany's engraved with monkeys. The mall has prepared "thousands" of bowls to give away, spokeswoman Debra Gunn Downing said.
At this time of year, many U.S. malls, particularly those in West Coast cities with large Asian-American or Asian expatriate populations, feature Lunar New Year celebrations or decor. But South Coast Plaza is looking beyond its local clientele to a rapidly-growing base of wealthy Chinese tourists spending serious retail money abroad.
The center has assiduously courted China since the early 2000s, long before that country's boom in foreign tourism. It was the first shopping center in the U.S. to accept China UnionPay, the Chinese bank card. It was a prescient investment. Chinese shoppers now make up 30% of the global luxury goods market, with about half of spending done abroad, according to Bain.
