Comprehensive Analysis of Value, Market Prospects and Investment Potential
Written by | Zhang Jing
In 2026, Laopu Gold is facing a severe state of fragmentation.
On one hand, the popularity of its offline stores remains undiminished. On July 23, the first day of Qixi Festival pre-sales at Beijing SKP, long queues formed again in front of the Laopu Gold store, creating a “Crazy Thursday” scene. Before the mall even opened, customers had lined up outside the main entrance, eager to grab Laopu Gold products. People familiar with SKP once said that SKP’s current performance is largely driven by Laopu.
On the other hand, the fragmentation lies in the continued slump of Laopu Gold in the capital market. Since the beginning of this year, Laopu’s share price has plummeted sharply, having more than halved from its all-time high set in July 2025. At the same time, gold prices in 2026 have experienced an epic wide-ranging fluctuation, falling back to levels seen in 2025.
Of course, there is also the slump in consumption in the second quarter against the backdrop of the macroeconomy. When the deep correction in gold prices, the high base growth from the previous period, and the weak consumer market all coincided, Laopu Gold underwent a comprehensive high-intensity stress test.
On July 27, Laopu Gold released a positive profit forecast: In the first half of this year, it achieved sales revenue of approximately 22.7 billion yuan to 23.35 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of about 60% to 65%; net profit was approximately 4.31 billion yuan to 4.36 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of about 83% to 85%.
The performance figures are sufficient to show that under the largest stress test in its history, Laopu Gold still delivered an excellent result in the industry — its half-year growth rate remains far higher than the industry average. According to statistics from Frost & Sullivan, Laopu Gold has ranked first in store efficiency and per-square-meter efficiency among luxury brands for 18 consecutive months, and it remains a benchmark in the high-end consumption track.
This reveals a noteworthy issue: Do investors have a thinking inertia, accustomed to pricing gold and jewelry enterprises using the logic of commodity cycles, while failing to recognize that a rising local luxury brand is charting its own independent market trend?
01 The Ice and Fire of Laopu Gold
After queuing for more than 2 hours at Beijing SKP, Amy finally got the “little gold ball” she had long desired.
Before coming, she never thought she would have to wait in such a long line for Laopu Gold. The people in the queue moved forward slowly and quietly. She watched the shop assistants behind the counter busily selecting products for customers, and some paying customers left contentedly carrying four or five orange Laopu shopping bags.
The crowd queuing to buy Laopu Gold at Beijing SKP on July 23
Looking around at the relatively quiet international luxury brands nearby, the passenger flow density of Laopu is significantly higher. The high popularity is directly reflected in the sales performance of Laopu’s single SKP store. According to reports, during the Beijing SKP anniversary celebration in April this year, Laopu Gold outperformed a host of international luxury brands and topped the sales chart of the event. In 2025, the sales of Laopu Gold’s SKP store were about 3 billion yuan, accounting for nearly one-seventh of SKP’s total sales.
While external observers focus on data, the luxury industry itself pays attention to channel layout. The floor, area, and location of a store are core indicators of industry influence in the luxury circle. Since LV entered China in 1992, almost no Chinese brand has ever secured a core store on the first or second floor of high-end shopping malls. Laopu not only became the first Chinese brand to enter the top ten leading commercial centers last year, but also made rapid progress this year to complete the “store track change”.
Laopu Gold, whose store in Shanghai’s Hang Lung Properties has been open for less than a year, carried out store adjustments in 2026. The entire store was moved down from the third floor to the second floor, and its area was expanded to 350 square meters. At the same time, adjustments were made to all five of Laopu’s stores in Shanghai, as well as multiple stores in Hangzhou’s MixC, Zhengzhou, and Shenzhen.
Such “store track change”, against the backdrop of the overall slump in the luxury industry, offers a glimpse into Laopu’s current influence in the luxury circle. By quickly securing a highly visible central atrium location in the mall, the brand’s status has been further consolidated.
Laopu Gold Classic Exhibition Debuted at Shanghai IFC
Under traditional perceptions, a sharp drop in gold prices means a cold gold consumption market, and demand for high-premium gold jewelry will collapse accordingly. However, Laopu Gold’s performance presents a different path: after undergoing a stress test of gold price fluctuations, the resilience of demand from Laopu’s core customer group has become more clearly highlighted.
Laopu Gold’s positive profit forecast shows that indicators such as high-spending customer consumption, gold product consumption, and repurchase rate have all improved. These are the indicators that highlight its core competitiveness and long-term growth advantages, and also prove that Laopu Gold’s luxury brand positioning remains strong.
02 How to Navigate Gold Price Fluctuations Under High Pressure
To understand the market’s fragmented views on Laopu Gold, we must first clarify the three layers of pressure the brand is currently facing.
First, the first layer of pressure comes from the severe volatility of gold as a commodity itself. Gold prices have corrected sharply, falling from their all-time peak of $5,600 per ounce to around $4,000 per ounce within half a year. The wide-ranging fluctuation of gold prices, coupled with consumers’ mindset of “buying when prices rise, not when they fall”, has dampened people’s demand for gold purchases.
The second layer of pressure comes from capital flows in the Hong Kong stock market. Since 2026, the consumer sector of the Hong Kong stock market has continued to see capital outflows, with a large amount of incremental capital shifting to the technology track, putting pressure on the valuations of consumer stocks. In addition, the overall retail data of China’s gold and jewelry sector has weakened, and pessimism has spread across the industry, which in turn has affected investors’ sentiment-driven pricing of Laopu.
However, in the face of these three layers of pressure, Laopu did not wait passively, but took the initiative to break through, hedging the pressure through product design, brand operation, and other aspects.
In terms of product strategy, Laopu Gold launched a variety of new diamond-encrusted products such as pink sapphire pendants in the second quarter of 2026, maintaining a high-frequency new product launch rhythm to continuously keep the brand fresh in users’ minds. In terms of customer operation, Laopu Gold has its own key customer maintenance mechanism. To continuously stimulate the repurchase willingness of its existing high-net-worth customers, Laopu set up a tiered reward mechanism during the Qixi Festival event, where customers who spend a large amount reaching a certain threshold will be gifted gold coins. Just like traditional luxury brands, Laopu Gold deeply understands how important VIC (Very Important Customers) are to the brand’s stable performance, and maintaining existing high-net-worth customers is far more efficient than acquiring new ones.
Among global luxury brands, Laopu Gold has ranked first in store efficiency and per-square-meter efficiency per mall for 18 consecutive months (Source: Frost & Sullivan)
In addition, as mentioned earlier, Laopu has also made active layouts in the channel side. The floor upgrade and continuous expansion of its Hang Lung Properties store are essentially aimed at firmly capturing the physical spaces with dense high-net-worth populations.
The result of this stress test is most convincingly demonstrated by Laopu Gold’s performance. At the same time, it highlights an important conclusion: the core base of high-net-worth customers who truly pursue craftsmanship, aesthetics, and cultural value remains stable, and their demand has been repeatedly verified and strengthened.
However, why has the stock market not reflected the boom in the consumer market? Some voices argue that the core contradiction here may lie in the path dependence of valuation models. Most investors are still accustomed to evaluating Laopu Gold using the standards of traditional gold and jewelry enterprises, focusing on gold price fluctuations, gold consumption cycles, and changes in volume and price, while ignoring a more essential difference: Laopu’s core demand belongs to self-reward consumption, and this kind of emotional value consumption is not as closely related to the ordinary demand for gold as a hedging and value-preserving tool as people might think. Because for high-net-worth consumer groups, price has never been a sensitive variable that determines purchase decisions — value is.
03 The Logic of Luxury Consumption Has Changed
If we take a broader view, the recent explosive popularity of Laopu Gold reflects that a value shift is taking place in the current logic of luxury consumption.
For a long time in the past, high-net-worth people bought luxury goods more for the brand logo. But today, the consumption concepts of luxury customer groups have matured, and people are beginning to ask another question: What else can this item bring besides the LOGO? In fact, in addition to identity recognition, high-net-worth people are beginning to pay attention to the cultural connotation, craftsmanship value, and long-term value-preserving attributes of brands.
We also found that high-net-worth people have not stopped consuming, but have shifted their consumption. The change in the queuing stores at SKP is a direct signal of this transformation. Multiple high-end consumer market studies have confirmed this structural change: as consumers pay more attention to the match between price and quality, the growth rate of categories that emphasize brand logos such as leather goods and watches has slowed down significantly, while categories that combine craftsmanship value and value-preserving attributes such as high-end jewelry have shown exceptionally stable market performance.
The consumer overlap rate between Laopu Gold and international luxury brands exceeds 80% Data Source
A March 2026 research report from Morgan Stanley is thought-provoking: China’s luxury consumption is undergoing a “wallet shift”, where consumers are firmly diverting their budgets that were originally spent on traditional luxury goods to Laopu Gold. The original wording of the report is even more direct: “Many of Hermès’ customers have recently spent their money on Laopu Gold.”
People are more willing to buy “wearable assets” like Laopu Gold, not just because it is “gold”, but because of Laopu’s intangible cultural heritage craftsmanship and Eastern aesthetics. This is what makes Laopu Gold different from other jewelry brands and traditional gold retail brands.
Riding the wave of iterative consumption trends, it is not surprising that Laopu Gold has successfully broken through. Hurun Research Institute’s tracking reports for consecutive years show that Laopu Gold has ranked on the list of the most favored jewelry brands by high-net-worth people for the 4th consecutive year, and entered the top three this year. Some foreign media commented that for a long time, Chinese brands have found it difficult to pose a threat to global luxury giants that excel at combining storytelling, heritage, and design premium, but Laopu is breaking through the ceiling of the luxury industry.
It can thus be seen that Laopu Gold is not a traditional gold wholesaler and retailer, but a scarce local high-end luxury asset. This is why an increasing number of international institutions and media are comparing it to the jewelry lines of Richemont and LVMH.
Therefore, perhaps this extreme stress test provides an excellent window to re-evaluate Laopu Gold.
