Perth back on radar of luxury retailers with new mining boom in Western Australia forecast

In 2008, halfway through the last Western Australian mining boom, sales staff at Louis Vuitton’s flagship store in Perth started keeping packets of Wet Ones at the boutique’s entrance.

According to former Louis Vuitton Oceania chief executive officer Philip Corne, who regaled local media with the story at the time, the disposable wipes were intended for all the cashed-up workers coming into the store straight off mining sites, covered in dust.

During the boom, the world prices of Australia’s mining exports more than tripled and real per capita Australian household disposable income rose by 13 per cent, according to the Reserve Bank of Australia. At the boom’s peak in 2012, an estimated 67,000 FIFO, or ‘fly-in, fly-out’ mining workers, often on six-figure salaries, became notorious for boosting sales in Western Australia of luxury goods, notably prestige cars, boats and jet skis.

At the time, Western Australia was Australia’s fastest-growing state. In July 2013, Perth, the state’s capital and home to 79 per cent of its population, was named the most expensive city in the southern hemisphere by Numbeo, a cost-of-living data aggregator.

Not surprisingly, this period saw a spate of luxury brand store openings in the city, creating in King Street Perth’s first luxury retail precinct. Today King Street is home to stores of Gucci, Tiffany & Co, Chanel, Prada, Miu Miu, Watches of Switzerland, Georg Jensen, and Australian fine jewellery retailers Hardy Brothers, Linneys and Kailis.

“[The boom] was unbelievable. For about five or six years it just grew and grew and grew – people coming in, spending like there was no tomorrow, A$20,000 to A$30,000 [at a time],” says Victor Tana, the owner of 123-year-old Perth gentleman’s outfitter Parker & Co, which offers made-to-measure suiting from Ermenegildo Zegna, Brioni, Kiton, Del Siena and Pal Zileri.