Cadillac expects China sales to increase 60 percent this year

General Motors’ Cadillac luxury brand anticipates its China sales to rise 60 percent in this year, faster than it had forecasted at the start of the year, on strong demand from more younger clients, the brand’s country chief stated.

The GM premium brand, which observed a sharp spike in sales after it opened its first devoted factory in the nation in 2016, had said in January that China sales would keep growing at a double-digit rate however at a slower rate than the approximately 50-percent growth it posted in last year.

Cadillac, reasonably late to present regional production in the country, is amongst a 2nd wave of luxury automobile brands in the country that seek to take market share from developed brands such as BMW, Daimler’s Mercedes-Benz, and Volkswagen’s Audi.

In order to sustain the momentum in Cadillac sales in the country, the brand plans to double the number of retail stores in the next five years to over 300, from the present 180.

“A lot of younger people in China are searching for something different to stand apart of the crowd. We have an extremely young target market. That is a substantial distinction to the other countries on the planet,” Cadillac’s China chief, Andreas Schaaf, informed Reuters.

The typical age of Cadillac buyers in China is 33 years, compared with 50 years in Europe and the United States both, Schaaf informed.