10 Biggest Luxury Brands Dominating the World

6. Prada
Brand Value: $5.8 billion
Prada's sales were up 42 percent in Q1 2012, and the group booked 541.5 million Euros in total revenues. Massive expansion in the number of its stores is considered a huge part of Prada's success. It opened 65 stores between April 2011 and April 2012. Millward Brown says: "Following its IPO (Initial Public Offering) in June 2011 on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, which raised over 275 million, Prada planned to add about 80 stores annually over the next three years, including a total of 30 stores in China. Most of the openings will be Prada brand stores, reflecting a general trend among luxury brands to assert tighter brand control by shifting away from licensing and franchising. The brand currently operates more than 200 stores worldwide and also distributes through an extensive wholesale network."

5. Gucci
Brand Value: $6.4 billion
Luxury goods holding company PPR scared investors in the first quarter by noting that revenue growth at Gucci slowed in the fourth quarter of last year. "Slowed," however, is a relative term. In 2011, sales at Gucci were 3.2 billion Euros, up 18 percent on the year prior. They were up by a similar proportion in Q1 2012, too. 56 percent of Gucci's sales come from leather goods. Unlike the other luxury brands, which operate in an almost obsessive culture of secrecy about them, PPR is rather more down-to-earth about how it intends to operate Gucci, which it acquired in 2004. It has centralized media buying for all its brands.