10 Biggest Luxury Brands Dominating the World

4. Chanel
Brand Value: $6.7 billion
In the 1970s, after the death of Coco Chanel, the brand save itself by cutting the list of distributors selling Chanel No. 5 from 18,000 to 12,000 and thus making it more complicated and more desirable to find. The Head Designer Karl Lagerfeld, worked hard to retain this air of exclusivity. The company is said to earn about 1.8 billion Euros in revenues annually. But it has actually extended its brands to become more mass-market again, for instance with the Coco Mademoiselle sub-brand for younger women. Like a lot of luxury brands, Chanel has also opened new stores in Asia, and Lagerfeld pays special attention to Japan where Chanel has a store in the Ginza district.

3. Rolex
Brand Value: $7.2 billion
Rolex is closely coupled with Equestrian sports, golf, skiing, motor sports, tennis, and yachting. According to the Luxury Institute, as these activities are preferred by the super-rich, so Rolex watches are mostly admired by "pentamillionaires," or people with a net worth topping $5 million. Rolex rely most on print ads and sponsorships of tennis players such as Roger Federer, Ana Ivanovic, Andy Roddick and Justine Henin, but it has also runs ads on ESPN during major tennis tournaments. In 2008 CEO Patrick Heiniger resigned for "personal reasons" after reports that he had lost $900 million of the company's money in Bernie Madoff's ponzi scheme. He was replaced by Bruno Meier, who has maintained the company's culture of secrecy. Meier was replaced by Riccardo Marini, who was previously responsible for Rolex Italia in 2011. The brand's flagship London store was sold late last year for 12.5 million Pounds.