Luxury Everything
Luxury Everything
Last week, I had an awesome conversation with one of my favorite creators, Oren John (podcast will be out this week).
One of the best ideas that fell from the tree is what I call, luxury everything.
Society is primed to accept a luxury version in every category. 10x the price. 3x the quality.
We’ve seen this in typical luxury categories like handbags (Hermes), suitcases (Rimowa), planes (NetJets), watches (Audemars Piguet, Patek Philippe).
But we’re now also seeing it in commodity categories like shower heads (Jolie), cookware (Le Crueset), espresso machines (Breville), candles (Diptyque).
Consumers are willing to pay in excess because our current culture runs on status games.
One day, I’ll launch my own physical products company (for the sport of it).
And when I do, it’ll be designed around a single marketing principle (the most powerful flywheel in the today’s market).
The best products are ones where the viral loop comes from the status of owning the product.
There’s only one force more powerful than product quality…status.
Take Erewhon for example, a luxury, high-end grocery store chain in Los Angeles.
Erewhon is known for their smoothies, which they design in collaboration with celebrities/influencers like Hailey Bieber.
They sell them for $20…which for all intents and purposes, is a “luxury item” in the smoothie category.
Because the smoothie has embedded status in it, people order it so that they can post it on their IG…to unlock and capture that “status value.”
They get the smoothie (great product) plus the status.
This, of course, is driving a viral loop for Erewhon.
Their friends in the area see the smoothie, go to Erewhon, buy their own, and the cycle continues.
Commodity brands with great products only drive organic shares because of product quality or cult brand loyalty.
Luxury brands with great products drive organic shares because of product quality, cult brand loyalty, and embedded status.
Another example of this was the Apple Vision Pro.
The headset cost $4K, absurd for a first gen piece of hardware…but everybody who bought it, posted about it for weeks on social.
Why?
Because there was embedded social status in showing you could afford one.
There’s only two ways to create a product with embedded status:
A luxury brand (with a high price/quality bar)
A commodity brand (with scarce supply)
If you’re creating a brand, figure out how to tap into the status value, and you’ll have a infinite growth flywheel.
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