Luxury in Myanmar is a 'long-term investment'

High-end brands are selling watches and other goods with an eye on future sales

"Every man has a crazy hobby," said U Thiri Thein Than, an automotive engineer from Yangon who also has a home in Tokyo. "For me, it's cars and watches." For years Thiri Thein Than, 40, has done his higher-end shopping overseas. But in March, he visited a boutique that the Swiss watch company Franck Muller had just opened in the upscale Sedona Hotel overlooking Yangon's Inya Lake - the company's 44th location worldwide, and Myanmar's first monobrand luxury watch store.

Thiri Thein Than bought a Master Calendar Lunar watch in pink gold with a tiny moon that rises and falls with the lunar calendar. He said the watch, which sells here for $33,500, has drawn compliments at his office and makes him feel distinguished in crowds.

"This is my jewellery," he said of the watch on a recent morning, sitting in jeans and a blue dress shirt beside a giant white vase of fresh orchids at the hotel, where the Muller boutique occupies 2,153 square feet.

Myanmar's economy, stunted for decades after a 1962 military coup, has grown swiftly since 2012, when landmark elections ushered in dramatic political reforms and a wave of foreign investment. Profits from the domestic timber, minerals, and oil and gas industries had been fuelling urban property markets and a high-end domestic jewellery trade, but international brands were virtually non-existent before the opening - even here in Yangon, Myanmar's business capital and most cosmopolitan city.

Many residents still patronise ramshackle wet markets and sidewalk tea shops, where a full meal costs far less than a Starbucks latte. But by 2015, the country's economy was growing by seven per cent annually, up from 5.6 per cent in 2011, and new high-rises and shopping malls were sprouting alongside the city's majestic, if dilapidated, colonial-era buildings.

Nearly all of Yangon's new retail space targets low- to mid-range buyers, and shoppers who can afford luxury goods typically buy online or on trips to Singapore, Thailand or Europe, several analysts and business people said. But a few overseas luxury brands are beginning to sell watches and other goods here, with an eye towards future sales.

"It's nice to be there at the very beginning," Nicholas Rudaz, director of Franck Muller, said in a telephone interview from the brand's headquarters in Switzerland. "And, of course, this is a long-term investment."

Even with the new malls, Yangon's total retail space is still minuscule, compared with that of Bangkok and other Southeast Asian shopping hubs. And Antony Picon, Myanmar managing director at the commercial real estate company Colliers, said he did not expect major luxury brands to enter Myanmar for another five years to a decade, although a few luxury cosmetics chains might open locations in Yangon's upscale hotels, a common pattern in emerging markets.

But in the longer term, the country's retail growth could be explosive, said Gregory Miller, managing partner at Myanmar Capital Partners, a Bangkok-based financial services company with staff in Yangon. "There's no point in trying to draw comparisons with Laos and Cambodia because they're not rich with resources," Miller said. Myanmar is "going to be more like Thailand."

© 2016 New York Times News Service