I’m pretty sure I’ve written about luxury products before. I’ve certainly written about how to sell them; even when there are free options available.
What “luxury” constitutes changes over time. In the Internet era, that’s already changing and it will continue to change.
What Is “Luxury?”
The politically correct response to the question above will be the one you’re most familiar with:
Luxury is a set of sensory feelings. Great coffee tastes better than the cheap stuff. Looking at a master’s painting or listening to Bach is a deeper, richer experience than checking out hot girls on Instagram or listening to the latest pop princess.
And Rolex watches are totally worth it because of the artistry and engineering despite being objectively less accurate than a $10 digital watch.
There are people who are into these things. Niche markets within niche markets. Some people love luxury items and would no doubt collect them even if they weren’t an investment. Even more people fall for the marketing buzz and think they’re buying something amazing when they aren’t.
But the above things are all politically correct definitions.
In reality, almost every luxury market works on the basis of primal desires: status symbols that show you’re better than everyone else, the need to bonk your secretary behind your wife’s back or proving that you’re smarter and more of an aesthete than the people you talk to at the company meeting.
Bear those things in mind when you’re selling them.
How Luxury Is Changing
Once upon a time, if you were fat, then you had it made. In a nation full of starving peasants, a metric for how aristocratic you are is the amount of courses you can serve your guests.
Nowadays, salt isn’t a luxury and being fat isn’t so great.
Those things are obvious.
What’s not so obvious is that the way business works is going through the technological revolution and that’s changing everything.
Case in point: I used to pay to have some of my favourite bands’ CD’s imported because you couldn’t get them in the UK. Now, that’s showing my age despite me not being that old. You can access whatever music you want now from anywhere in the world.
But again… that’s pretty obvious.
Here’s something that stupid old people on YouTube, Facebook and the like fail to take into account when they say things like, “Millennials have no identity they just copy or rehash older ideas.”
Millennials are the first generation to grow up with access to all of humanity’s cultural history accessible to every single one of them. The average 60 year old might have – to use the music thought again – spent decades collecting rare Vinyl records. This pursuit is obviously the pursuit of a connoisseur.
It’s also utterly worthless in an age where some kid can have the whole lot in digital format delivered for free within thirty seconds.
This speaks to a wider issue; everything is available at the touch of a button with very little effort. This completely affects everything to do with what “luxury” is defined as.
Experience As Luxury
Now, when I’ve read ideas along this line elsewhere, most people stop at the easiest conclusion: “Experiences are more valuable than products.”
It’s the minimalist digital nomad trap in action.
Except you only have to look at the average digital nomad to see how that argument is false.
Travel is becoming really easy and it’s only going to improve as time marches on. (Short of the sort of economic catastrophe we put in our Prepper sales letters.)
The fact is you can go from one end of the globe to the other without speaking anything other than English and a trip to the other side of the world can be had for £500 and half a day’s travel.
But you don’t have to go that far to get the whole “Global experience.” You just have to go to your nearest city where you can eat kebabs from Lebanon, catch an Opera from Italy and then watch an American TV show on your Super HD LED SMART TV courtesy of the finest engineers in Japan or Korea or wherever.
In short, that too is an easy way out and the majority of people will either see through it or have access to it soon anyway.
So what’s a poor salesman who wants to sell hugely-marked up stuff to do when everything is so readily available?
The Easy Way: Completely One-Off Products
The easiest way to differentiate yourself is to – ironically – go back to the good old days before mass production occurred. Become the blacksmith who makes tailored horse-shoes or the legitimate tailor who cuts to your measurement specifically and then gets little oriental kids to hand stitch every piece together from the golden hair of angels or something.
The detail here is crucial because if you want to do this, you need two elements:
- A completely bespoke approach (people will see “off the shelf bespoke” from a mile away)
- It has to be immune to automation. If a robot can make it, then you’re out of luck and a job
The Medium Term and Way
Eventually, we’re going to be able to print our own everything from the comfort of our own home. For a great example; look at watches.
Once upon a time, getting a luxury watch was woah. The access to Swiss movements was limited to a few expensive brands and the start-up costs for new businesses combined with the limited access meant that the big companies could dominate. Rolex, Omega, Breitling and the like.
Now go and look at Kickstarter. Everyone and their mum has started a nice watch company using Swiss movements and everything from Italian marble to real denim watches have been created.
Now, the next step in that evolution will come when companies start to offer “Create your own bespoke watches” where the end consumer sets the limits.
Think “Choose Your Own Adventure” for physical products.
The Sneaky Way
If you want to provide a product or luxury service in the sneaky way, then think about things that are immune to any technological progress or industrial revolutions.
I’m talking about things like Spirituality and “meaning.” That is, the top of the Maslow pyramid.
In other words, start a cult.
Needless to say this isn’t a path for everyone. You either need a calling or a complete lack of scruples. But the fact is you can’t get more luxury than “you’re going to heaven with a beautiful brigade of buxom angels tending to your every whim.” Of course, when you start a cult, the whole “technological progress” thing gives you a built in marketing angle to exploit; that’ll be crucial in the age of everything available at any time.
Final Thoughts
The above section might not be totally serious, but if you’re looking to build a luxury business, then this article is a list of likely long-term trends that you’ll need to account for.
Now, you can extend some of the arguments above to the general consumer market, because after all everything is getting easier to produce and deliver, but the luxury market will be affected hardest.
Especially when you take the millions of other factors into account that I don’t have time mention.
Like ever-fracturing markets.
Global demographic shifts.
And a ton of other things that’ll impact macro-economic realities far beyond whether your jacket is really made from the finest velvet.