【China】In 2025, Young People’s First Luxury Item May Start with ‘Group Buying’

Currently, a wave of “group buying luxury goods” is sweeping across social media. Savvy young consumers have developed a new consumption strategy: purchasing luxury items through group buying, similar to the model used by Pinduoduo (referred to as “group luxury” hereafter). For just over 300 yuan, one can unlock a piece of Tiffany & Co. jewelry.
The trend originated from a post titled “Looking for 23 sisters to split this bracelet together” shared by a user named @天天好好吃饭 on Xiaohongshu on August 22. The post featured two products from Tiffany’s Return to Tiffany™ collection: a pure silver Multi-heart Tag bracelet priced at 7,150 yuan, consisting of 23 iconic heart-shaped charms, and a Heart Tag necklace with a single charm, priced at 3,900 yuan on the official website. The idea was that by gathering 23 people, each contributing 310 yuan, everyone could get one heart charm. By pairing it with their own chain, they could easily “replicate” the official website’s style at less than one-tenth of the original price.

Lai Junzhu, founder of Taibo Consulting Technology and former Chief Strategy Officer of East West Global Cultural & Creative Group, pointed out in an interview with Jing Daily that this phenomenon marks an evolution in consumption patterns from “product Pinduoduo” to a new sharing stage of “brand Pinduoduo.” Students and white-collar workers are attempting to access the aura of luxury brands at a lower cost to enhance their self-image and social visibility, with “superstitious” demands being just one form of emotional projection.
Perhaps inspired by the Tiffany group-buying idea, netizens quickly turned their attention to higher-priced luxury jewelry. Not only was Van Cleef & Arpels’ classic Alhambra® five-motifs bracelet targeted for disassembly, but even Bulgari’s high jewelry collections were not spared. Taking Van Cleef & Arpels’ red carnelian five-motif Alhambra bracelet priced at 42,300 yuan as an example, if split into single motifs, the cost could be reduced to 9,440 yuan per piece, far lower than the brand’s official single-motif necklace price of 14,300 yuan. However, while the idea is appealing, reality presents a technical barrier: the bracelet uses special welding techniques, and self-disassembly can easily cause damage, so most “group-buying dreams” remain just imagination.

An even more “hardcore” idea emerged regarding Bulgari’s high jewelry. A user named @5D3C886C jokingly shared a picture of a Bulgari necklace worth about 430,000 yuan on Xiaohongshu, stating that the necklace was set with 26 mother-of-pearl fans and 26 fully diamond-set fans. By gathering 52 sisters for group buying, each person would only need about 8,269 yuan to get one “original” fan charm—while Bulgari’s official single fan necklace often costs as much as 28,600 yuan.

On the positive side, this bottom-up social dissemination brings significant traffic dividends and discussion heat to brands. It effectively educates the price-sensitive youth consumer market, significantly lowers the experience threshold, and subtly cultivates potential future customers. Simultaneously, the items being split are often the brands’ most representative classic designs, such as Tiffany’s heart charms and Van Cleef & Arpels’ four-leaf clovers. This “group luxury” trend further solidifies the value status of these iconic elements in consumer perception.
However, the challenges it brings directly strike at the core value of luxury brands. “Scarcity” and “exclusivity” are not just slogans but the foundation of luxury brands. When iconic products become easily accessible through group buying, the carefully cultivated high-end image and brand premium are inevitably eroded.
A more profound crisis lies in the fact that group buying completely dismantles the carefully constructed experiential loop of brands. As Wang Ning of Pop Mart said, physical spaces are the entry point for brand immersion, and isn’t the same true for luxury goods? From the fragrance that permeates the boutique upon entry, the detailed explanations from professional salespeople, the ceremonial sense of unwrapping the packaging, to long-term reliable after-sales maintenance—these “soft experiences” that cannot be split are the key to making customers feel they are getting their “money’s worth” or even “more than their money’s worth.”
So, how should brands respond to the dilemma of diluted value? Lai Junzhu, an analyst with long-term experience in the luxury sector, pointed out that brands should formulate differentiated strategies based on their positioning. For top luxury brands, maintaining scarcity and a high-end image is crucial. They should adopt a more reserved defensive strategy, be vigilant against any behavior that may dilute brand value, and avoid losing core customers and facing public backlash. He suggested that such brands could launch collector’s limited-edition pieces for top-tier clientele to continuously strengthen their reputation and topicality in the high-end market.
For accessible luxury and second-tier brands, more agile responses can be adopted. Lai Junzhu believes, “Brands can consider launching entry-level products suitable for layering, sharing, or mixing and matching, actively responding to the market’s demand for low-cost experiences.” However, he also emphasized that brands must carefully manage marketing scale, pay high attention to public opinion trends, and avoid causing irreversible damage to long-term brand building by blindly chasing trends.

Group buying results in consumers ultimately obtaining only a “naked” product detached from the brand’s context, which not only greatly diminishes the luster of luxury goods but also poses an unprecedented challenge to their fundamental value core.

However, for consumers, while group buying offers the temptation of “high cost-effectiveness,” it also hides risks that cannot be ignored. Beyond potential pitfalls like encountering counterfeits and lack of after-sales protection, the behavior itself operates in a legal gray area.
From a legal perspective, group buying behavior itself operates in a subtle boundary zone. Wang Wei, a lawyer from Shanghai Junyue Law Firm, clarified the legal substance to Jing Daily: “Group buying among consumers itself is not illegal. Its legal essence is that one person acts as a representative to establish a sales contract relationship with the brand. Other group buyers have internal agreements with the representative. The brand is only contractually responsible to the counterparty (i.e., the representative), such as rights to return and refund.”
This means that group buying is legally viewed as a private commissioned purchase behavior. The relationship formed among group buyers is an internal contractual one, unrelated to the brand. Therefore, reselling the product after group buying or modifying it for personal use falls under the consumer’s right to dispose of their own property and usually does not constitute infringement.
However, Lawyer Wang Wei simultaneously drew a clear red line: “If consumers modify the product and then resell it, especially if the modified product is identical or similar to the brand’s similar products, they will face a high risk of trademark infringement.”
Nevertheless, legal warnings do not seem to have completely dampened consumer enthusiasm. The continued spread of this trend clearly reveals a deeper and irreversible trend: contemporary consumers, especially young people, have undergone a fundamental shift in their consumption logic towards luxury goods. They still value the emotional and identity value brought by brands but refuse to pay for excessively high brand premiums. They are more rational,渴望 brands to prove the value of their products with tangible craftsmanship, materials, and innovation.

This also means that luxury brands are being pushed into a new battlefield they must face directly: they must answer an increasingly sharp question, namely, why is each expensive product worth its price? Only brands that can truly provide an answer will be able to define the new luxury.