FUTURE FOR LUXURY BRAND RETAILERS IN UK

Future for Luxury Brand Retailers in UK

Future for Luxury Brand Retailers in UK

Introduction

This paper analyzes the projected future of luxury brand retailers in UK. And many believe that to answer that challenge, companies will need to return to a more basic question: what is luxury? This is the question that everyone is asking: Because luxury matters in a way that it didn't matter before. Increasingly, luxury is big business: the luxury segment is growing and according to most projections it will continue to grow for the next ten to fifteen years. Yet the answer to that question 'what is luxury' - remains elusive. There is something intangible about luxury, and something mysterious about the success of the great brands. Luxury brands work with this paradox that they sell something indefinable yet if they lose touch with that indefinable something, success may slip away.

And in a world where sales are growing at an unprecedented rate, some luxury companies feel that there may be too much growth - that the luxury business could be undermined by its very success, and by blurring the lines of 'luxury brands' in the consciousness of consumers. The luxury product makes a claim to be something beyond the merely good What is it that elevates a product into the category? Every brand owner will give a different account of why they succeed where others have failed.

A real luxury brand has got to have total integrity It has to be the buyer that says "this is luxury;” Luxury is something that everyone wants and nobody needs. It's an area of huge comfort.

Managing Luxury Brand Growth

Luxury is about history. A luxury brand is a lifestyle concept, and to be sustainable it has to have history, including a history of quality merchandise and of real luxury customers. It is not in the price, it is in the pleasure you give to the customer It is to do with creativity, a harmonious aesthetic with attention to details. Luxury is about history, authenticity, depth, and being a partner Buying a luxury product is like a love affair. Luxury is about intangibles like integrity, or provenance, or timelessness, believes Guy Salter of the Walpole Group. But as you grow you absolutely have to understand what that thing is in your brand that you tamper with at your peril. Because there is so much competition and there is such rapid market change, it is very easy to lose your crown - particularly in new markets.

If markets never changed and consumers were static, luxury brand owners might not have to worry too much about the mysterious mechanisms of their brands.

But markets are changing, and rapidly The need to invest in brand renewal in a growing and more competitive market, the need to satisfy shareholders, and the need to position brands in geographical markets that barely existed a decade ago, all demand that luxury brand businesses expand their historical product and geographical ...