Luxury Brands and Amazon

 

When one thinks of luxury brands, designers like Givenchy, Celine, and Gucci pop up, each one more exclusive and unique than the other. Not many think of the fashion giants behind these brands. Richemont, LVMH, and Kering control around 80-85% of the luxury fashion industry. These companies together own almost every designer brand you can think of ( excluding Chanel, Hermes, and a select few). Everything these designers sell can be categorized under positional goods. To demand high prices, public image is everything. These companies have to create a situation where customers perceive an exclusivity with owning their goods. In this context, where these companies sell their goods comes into play here. Retailers like Farfetch, Moda Operandi, and Net-A-Porter are accepted by the fashion community and deemed reasonable websites to sell their goods. Why not Amazon?

 Amazon sells everything to everyone. This is the company's greatest selling point and asset, and specifically the reason why no designer brand in its right mind would offer its goods here. For people to covet these bags, and shoes and clothes, they have to seem unattainable. People are willing to spend any amount of money on goods that are exclusive and perceivably "luxury". The idea that they can buy their $20,000 handbags from a place that sells toothbrushes is quite off putting for most people. 

Today there is no one-stop online retail destination for every luxury ( or most luxury brands). Sure, Amazon isn't a viable option, but surely there must be feasible alternatives? The idea of a combined retail platform was suggested in 2015 by Richemont CEO, Johann Rupert but was rejected by both LVMH and Kering. Creating a platform like this is great in theory, but one company has to be overseeing and leading the other two in a venture of this scale. None of the companies are willing to give up control. As proven by Covid-19, online retail is the future, this leaves the fashion industry in a stalemate. 

P.S.

I'm not actually in third grade, this is my blog from a while ago and I can't think of a new name :)