luxury goods

While retailers selling to average Americans are holding near fire sales, a recovery at the top is helping high-end retailers to sell out of their most expensive items.

Monthly spending figures from MasterCard Inc. show this year's late Easter holiday helped boost clothing and luxury goods sales in April but did nothing for electronics and appliance retailers.

As the wealthy slowly resume buying, business creeps back for yacht rental companies, jet brokers, jewelry stores and other purveyors of luxury goods.

After showing signs of improvement in early fall, sales of clothing and luxury goods weakened a bit the first half of November, compared with a year ago, when stores pulled shoppers in with massive discounts, figures released Tuesday show.

Oct. 20 - The global luxury goods sector will contract this year with even the world's fastest growing market, China, expecting sales to halve.

Louis Vuitton Malletier SA, a unit of French luxury goods maker LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton, said Monday that a federal jury in California awarded it $32.4 million in damages in a copyright infringement lawsuit against businesses that hosted Web sites selling counterfeit consumer products.

Luxury goods maker Hermes International on Friday reported a 7 percent drop in net profit in the first half of the year but said it still plans to open or renovate several stores in the second half.

Luxury merchants shouldn't expect affluent shoppers to go back to splurging anytime soon, says Claudia D'Arpizio, partner and luxury goods expert at consulting company Bain & Co., who anticipates that the global luxury business will not fully rebound until 2012.