I have lived in Japan for several years and to be frank, I never seen a women who doesn’t own a LV bag. In fact, over 50% of japanese women over 20 years old own a LV bag. So basically, if you are LV, the earthquake and tsunami are not only a dramatic event but can and will affect your business.

Japan accounts for 23% of the world market for luxury goods according MF Global.  In comparison, China market is growing to reach around 13% of the global market. But 18% of luxury sales in Japan are made of Chinese tourist.

The Luxury Good index fall down over 4%. New York based Coach, which gets 20% of its sales in Japan with 163 stires, have dropped 9% in two days. Same for Tiffany. The brand has 56 stores in Japan. "While not all parts of the country were equally affected physically, recent events will almost certainly dampen the consumer mood/spending," says Nomura analyst Paul Lejuez.

A number of European brands are also taking a hit. In France, Hermes has the largest exposure to Japan, which accounts for about 19% of sales. PPR, owner of Gucci, gets 15% of its sales there. British clothier Burberry whose plaid designs are beloved by office workers in Japanese corporations, only makes about 5% of its sales in Japan, but gets between 18% and 20% of its earning from a licensing deal there.

Burberry's local partner is obligated to pay an $80 million annual licensing fee to the parent company, but Burberry has not decided yet whether to demand that payment if sales fall off. "They will have to work out whether it's in their brand's best interests to press for payment within these tragic circumstances," says John Guy, luxury goods analyst at Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) in London. "There is a risk that if they went ahead and did that, the brand damage could be more longer term if the Japanese consumer became aware that Burberry was pressing for this payment."

Guy notes that most measures of the sales losses expected to be caused by the quake have been limited to the Asian region, and don't include sales of things like sales of handbags to Japansee tourists in Paris. Hermes, whose famed scarves are beloved in Asia, makes one-fifth of its sales in Japan, but another 10% of sales at its French shops are also believed to be to Japanese tourists.

"There is a very high portion of Japanese exposure there as well," he says.

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