3 ms·
I bought a luxury handbag (thankfully not a Hermés Birkin). This comment completely misunderstands the market. Nobody knows the name of the artisan who creates
by thephyber 4y ago
I bought a luxury handbag (thankfully not a Hermés Birkin). This comment completely misunderstands the market.
Nobody knows the name of the artisan who creates their Hermes Birkin bag. The value in the bag is the exclusivity, the exotic leathers, the
gold/platinum/palladium metals, the sales boutiques, and the marketing/PR.
While artisans contribute to the quality of the end product, a new hire can easily cost the company a significant fraction of the cost per unit while they are learning. And I’d guess that not every person who starts an apprenticeship will make a customer-ready unit, so some contribute to only costs and no revenues.
Nothing a new apprentice touches will ever be seen by a customer. Those companies burn tons of units per year that don’t meet their QA standards for their brand value.
- ceejayoz 4y agoCool, but no bags without someone to craft them. My issue here is more the fact that the FT let them get away with a hand-wavy “oh we pay more than minimum wage” that sure sounds like it conceals a salary issue. I tend to think they make a decent chunk of profit on a 22k Euro bag, even after they pay for the gold trim.
- thephyber 4y agoWhat private business shows you all of their internal numbers? We know that it's an unknown (from our perspective). We also know that the counterfactual is mostly untestable (clone the company but raise artisan wages and see which version of the company survives). Just assume that this might be a PR piece that benefits the company and move on.