Thursday, September 22, 2011

The $4,800 Handbag Under the Tree - Another Jolly Season as Luxury Goods - NYTimes.com

In fact, numerous luxury products attempt a level of craftsmanship, substances and service that are steps above what is accessible for even expensive mass-produced wares. Most high-end leather makers, from Coach to Escada, promise to fix and retain their products for life. They likewise provide other shrewd guarantees to the acutely style-conscious -- making bags, case in point, in the same fashions year after year, ensuring that a $500 investment today will be chic 10 years afterward.

Of course, the shopper willing to buy 1.7 ounces of Sisley Paris's anti-aging lotion ($300 at Neiman Marcus) or the book-size black nylon Prada knapsack ($570 at Prada stores) -- the important carry-on for East Hampton socialites last summer -- does not worry much about how many it costs to make the product. And anyway, your average design-house executive would run a marathon in her Manolo Blahniks ahead coughing up that classified information. ''We are uncomfortable even with the question,'' said Christina Kim, a spokeswoman for Hermes of Paris, whose Kelly handbags (media size) sell for $4,800 at the Madison Avenue boutique.

Luxury merchandise are no, of lesson, necessarily expensive in absolute terms, yet they almost by definition cost more than the same products by other makers. It is, case in point, just for likely to purchase a $20 silk tie for a $75 edition.

Public companies have to report gross margins -- the money they take in later the costs of making their goods are deducted. For a well-run luxury enterprise like Gucci alternatively LVMH alternatively a cosmetic giant like Estee Lauder, that digit normally escapes scampers in excess of (sometimes well in excess of) 60 percentage of absolute revenue. That manner the tangible cost of making their stuff, from sweaters to thigh-high leather boots, is fewer than 40 percent of the mean price tag. (By contrast, gross margins at the Gap and other well-run shackle apparel stores rarely rise above 45 percent.)

Nicole Miller knots can retail as $75 apiece. The spend, said a spokeswoman,Mobile Television namely Gaining Ground, Meredith Wollins, namely partly because of aboriginal go along the company's graphics team namely namely then hand screened onto the silk in Asia. The By Terry line of lipsticks uses particularly valuable pigments and industries merely small batches, which, certainly, raises the cost.

In moments of reflection, every ample shopper suspects that there is as much art as material in the difference among a Revlon lipstick bought at the pharmacy for $8 and the By Terry similarity from Saks Fifth Avenue, working for $49. And that the margin between an Omega Speedmaster, which usually retails at well over $3,000, and a $65 Timex i-Control model is as attributable to pretension as to quality.

,,,,,deduct pandora charms,Pandora jewerly sale,

While most Americans would be content with a Sony Playstation 2 or a sweater dual set beneath the tree, for an increasing number of folk mere cashmere does not mention ''I adore you'' with quite the same authority as pashmina. Accustomed to luxury, these new-economy swells expect the most expensive version of everything -- and are possible to get it.

Pandora Beads on sale,,,

Theoretically, that might be true, but if 1 insists on putting a price on luxury, ample of the industry's mysteries have dripped out that it is possible to gain a tiny enlightenment.

Then there is the intangible factor of art. ''The genius apt fulfill excellence is someone you cannot put a price above,'' said Christiana Monfardini, one Escada spokeswoman.

The economic may be slowing and lots of dot-com stock adoptions are underwater, but the altitude slice of proceeds earners is still sitting on a mammoth heap of wealth and their free-flowing extravagance is expected to propel such altitude purveyors of gilded baubles and designer delectables as Tiffany & Company, Neiman Marcus Group and LVMH-Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton into anyhow variant banner financial year.

But high price is part of the appeal, and these products are designed to mess the sub-lobe of the head that makes cost-benefit measurements. The darkly shiny eye powders of Chanel or an elegant, logo-encrusted satchel by Louis Vuitton seduce in ways cheaper alternatives cannot: they cost more, but who can put a price tag on that one accessory that makes one feel, for an immediate, Vanderbilt-rich or Sophia-Loren-glam?

But since naught would be quite so deflating for this phantom business as for a purchaser to ascertain that a life-transforming cosmetic was actually mass produced on a plant layer for $2 (the average industry price for lipstick), luxury-goods companies guard not secret more ferociously than the cost of making their wares.

No comments:

Post a Comment