A new niche market is emerging out of China's insatiable appetite for luxury consumer goods. Specialized domestic vendors help their well-heeled clients clean and repair their prized brand-name accessories, often at a steep cost.

In Xi'an City, a "clinic" for high-end leather goods displayed an array of newly-repaired high-quality handbags, coats, shoes and chairs in its storefront display.

At the clinic, technicians typically charge nearly 100 yuan (US$15) to clean a designer handbag. Other services ranged from 200 yuan to 2000 yuan (US$30-385) depending on the brand and the level of difficulty, the clinic's owner said.

Presently, the majority of luxury fashion houses have not yet set up after-sales service centers in China's mainland. That means if a consumer wants to mail in a product to the company for repair, it often takes half a year or even a year to get it back. This lack of convenience has led domestic entrepreneurs to take advantage of the current service gap and open up repair businesses for the mainland market.

Due to the recent boom in the high-end consumer good repair market, many workers now consider a professional luxury goods technician to be a plume job. Because they require a high degree of skill to care for delicate items, technicians can fetch monthly salaries of 4,500 to 8,000 yuan (US$770 to US$1,230) per month.

"We provide service for high-end goods," said the owner of the Xi'an clinic. "We charge high fees, because the service is provided by professionals."

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