When the last 15 years happens to you

If you are in retail, the last 15 years or so have brought enormous change. Let me call out a few profound shifts: Winning business model bifurcation: Price and dominant assortments at one end (Wal-mart, Amazon); remarkable experience and assortment curation/product differentiation on the other (Nordstrom, Louis Vuitton). The result is death in the middle. [...]

Read Full Post »

Luxury’s Flight to Quality

Hermes. Bulgari. Louis Vuitton. PPR (owner of Gucci and Bottega Veneta). Richemont.  All have recently reported strong profits. Clearly, these firms have benefitted from their growing presence in the booming Asian luxury markets. But something else is going on. I believe this dazzling performance during a worldwide recession is about more than their global footprint. All [...]

Read Full Post »

Luxury Market Research Smackdown

A number of media outlets have picked up on the debate between Pam Danziger of Unity Marketing and Ron Kurtz of the American Affluence Research Center (AARC) concerning the future of the luxury market.  Let me boil it down for you. In a recent AARC report Kurtz recommends that: “Luxury brands and luxury marketers should [...]

Read Full Post »

Surgical Shopping and the Hangover Market

Last holiday season I coined the term “surgical shopping” to describe the highly precise way many consumers were purchasing.  While the panic of late 2008 and early 2009 subsided, consumers were only gradually opening their wallets, focusing primarily on needs vs. wants and often trading down to brands that gave very clear bang for the [...]

Read Full Post »