Will Your Luxury Brand Make It?
I am pleased to see so many entrepreneurs launching businesses with luxury in mind. If you sat in my chair, you would see this happening globally and in every luxury category. I began to see this rise coming more than twenty years ago, and since then, it has only accelerated. The creativity, depth, and variety of luxury offerings are impressive. Even more impressive are how young some entrepreneurs are, the diversity, and the inherent belief that this category can be conquered.
Since 2001 I have personally been pounding away at this business, studying, analyzing, advising, writing, speaking, working with those who are both serious and far from serious. When I began, there were few doing what I do. Today, a few sprout up all the time. Some are inspired by my presence. However, they usually go away once it becomes apparent this is no fast track to fortune. One popular and successful speaker claimed expertise in luxury but soon realized there were faster riches along a different path.
Emerging luxury brands (and those who advise them) stumble for the same reasons. Luxury has glamour built in, but underneath the glamour, is a need for scrappiness like I have seen in no other business. What makes a luxury brand endure is recognizing this requirement and wiring it into your culture from the beginning. Perhaps more important is understanding what kind of scrappiness is needed and when.
Luxury is smaller than other market segments. Although luxury is quite popular, fewer customers and clients exist for most luxury products, services, and experiences. Luxury is also a heavy “spectator” category. There are lots of lookers, admirers, and those who are fascinated but will not become buyers. Luxury is highly competitive. Whatever category you are in, you can count on many more competitors than you can imagine. For these reasons, a luxury brand is often a slow build, unless you are selling highly established luxury brand names at steep discounts. Hence the motivation of the organized crime we see hitting luxury retail today.
Whether your luxury brand makes it or not is largely based on whether you can infuse luxury into your operation in ways other than your product. Even some marquee luxury products are not crafted from the best materials and do not always have the best designs and manufacturing. But unlike big luxury brands, you do not have a prestigious name defined and amplified over many decades.
The fastest way to make it is to have the mindset that you will make what seems ordinary, extraordinary. While that might seem cliché, it is the best way of describing what I recommend for entrepreneurs and emerging luxury brands. Scrappiness is the hard work of creating prestige, and maintaining a luxury image, which often will outwardly appear, staid, pristine, and elegant. However, under the hood is a well-tuned sales, marketing, and service engine that is high-powered, relentlessly assertive, and efficient. Today, many in luxury jump to the expert phase. They’re saying, “I look good/I am relevant/I have answers,” when instead they should be operating in the “I am working on your behalf” phase, with dozens of tripwires making that obvious.
The good news is you will find little competition when you get this right. Most businesses will not be able to compete with you. They won’t have the vision. If they have vision, they often cannot execute. They won’t have the right style or tone. Discipline won’t be there. They’ll be afraid to take risks. And they will surely be far less patient than they need to be. Creating this kind of business does not happen overnight.
I regret telling many luxury entrepreneurs who contact me, there is no instant luxury. While image making tools are readily available today, A.I. can pump out messages to the masses on an endless stream of platforms, you are doing so in front of mainly spectators who are watching, reading, liking, and sharing but ultimately don’t care enough. Something else will get their attention in a minute or two. If you don’t have the stomach to build a real business, you will ultimately give up, because the financial returns are not typically fast and large.
Interestingly, as you proceed you will find that five years, and then ten years, or more will zip by. You will develop a master’s feel for what you’ve learned intellectually. You will hone your skill, and if you have been relentlessly bottom-line oriented (getting and serving clientele consistently) you will be better positioned than others around you. You will really be able to say, “I have the answers” and your income, followers, and retention graph will shoot straight up. Then you can say, “I’ve made it!”
Want to learn more about Making it In Luxury? Write me: info@andretaylor.com .
At Taylor Insight we help luxury and premier businesses excel and grow by attracting, retaining, and growing with affluent clients. We provide exceptional strategic, marketing, sales, and service guidance, and a portfolio of high-impact learning programs.
