A study published by Walpole and developed by Frontier Economics, featuring glass.ai data, has set out the value of the UK’s Luxury Sector. This groundbreaking report was commissioned by Walpole, who is the official sector body for UK luxury, with a focus on promoting, protecting and developing a key facet of the nation’s economy. The sector is world-renowned, characterised by iconic brands, and is driving towards a sustainable future.
As revealed in the ‘Luxury in the Making’ report, the study finds that the UK’s luxury sector is now contributing £81bn a year to the UK economy and is helping the Exchequer raise £25.5bn in tax receipts. The research illustrates that the luxury sector’s economic contribution (equivalent to 3.7% of the UK’s GDP) has grown an impressive 69% over the last five years to 2022, with companies operating within British luxury now supporting 454,000 jobs, directly and indirectly across a range of roles. Moreover, Walpole forecasts that, by 2028, British luxury could be generating more revenue than the life sciences and construction industries, combined.
Some of the headline findings are summarised in the infographic below:
glass.ai provided data and insights that allowed a new approach to be taken to researching the Luxury Sector. This used a sophisticated and bespoke web crawling method, allowing classification of companies within a sector that is challenging to define and cuts across an array of more traditional industry classifications. The result was a rich and segmented dataset, which highlighted globally significant marques, emerging brands and smaller, niche players within the sector, which serve British and international markets with high-value goods and services. The data has been used to understand market size, and value and build a much richer picture of companies and their products that have not been identified as important sector contributors before.
For more information on this study and Walpole, the full report is available here.
