Oren Meets World: building luxury brands: 7 pillars of success

In this video, we're gonna explain the seven pillars of luxury. So, when I hear someone say they wanna start a luxury brand, what I often hear in the back of my head is they just wanna charge a lot of money for something. And when you see someone present, you know, I do luxury street wear, I have luxury X or Y, really, I often feel there's an inherent lack of understanding around what makes something luxury. Now, I've broken this down into seven pillars. As many of you know, I have a product development studio. It's a luxury product development studio is how I position it. I help people develop products for their brand, I help them develop merchandise, so a brand doesn't put out promotional t-shirts, they'll put out really nice bags, something like that. I do a lot of work like that and obviously put out my own products. And I choose the word luxury for a reason because I'm appealing to people who wanna do much nicer things, things with more of a story, things with more brand, more quality than what they would normally do. So, I've thought a lot about these seven pillars of luxury, how any brand can build into them, what that really means and what luxury really feels like and the time that it takes. I'm gonna break all that down here. So, we're gonna go through quality of products, we're gonna go through design, we're gonna go through desirability, the concept of time and luxury brand building. We're gonna go through resale value, which is actually a key important thing people don't think about a lot. We're gonna talk about experience and we're gonna talk about brand and brand world. Let's lock in. So, the first and number one thing that defines luxury and I'll end up in these conversations where I know I rub some people the wrong way or I'll be like, hey, your hoodie brand is not luxury, right? And that's because a lot of luxury comes down to quality. If you have an extremely nice over-the-top hoodie, like maybe you can get there, but 90% of the people that claim that don't even understand what quality is. And luxury at its basis comes from true quality of product and craft. And you'll notice this goes back to legacy and history, right, like Hermes making saddles for French princes or whatever it looks like. All these brands that have all this history as leather makers and cobblers and people that outfitted things for kings and that's why you notice there's so much European luxury and less the United States is because there's that history and that time to draw from. It is simply an older area and an older country that had this level of privilege and quality that lasted significantly longer than more recently developed parts of the world. And so I wanna first call out this concept of bespoke, right? There are people that create extremely quality goods that don't inherently become luxury brands, but create quality things, what we call bespoke custom items that will make you an amazing suit or tell you you're a specific belt. They have luxury quality. They're able to say, I create something with an immense sense of craft, but they have not done these other tenants that I'm about to walk into. And I'll say, if you are starting a brand, the foundation has to be you are making the best and most interesting thing. So for instance, I have this luxury product studio, right? I did bags recently for the collaboration with Fermat. I have a video on this, but we had bags like the finest total leather with this crazy lining and all the details were amazing made on the same line as they make on Givenchy. And that is me going to quality as the thing that's gonna help separate the service that I offer. And when anyone is making products at this level, whether you're making a supplement or a drink or a beverage or have an experience or have a studio or a coffee shop, if you want it to really be luxury, it has to have that quality and never be given up in any circumstance. I want to highlight that as that first tenant that is omnipresent. Some of these other ones can kind of ebb and flow or come and go, but that is one that always is there and is the tenant of anything you might want to create in luxury. And this goes into design. And I want to separate here between designer brands and luxury brands and talk about the concept of design. Is that design is inherently appealing and exciting and functional. And it actually is a product that really does its job well is another thing that is table stakes. And much like we have bespoke products that may not become fully luxury, there's designer products that may not have crossed over, right? There are things that look amazing or functional, et cetera, but haven't crossed over into luxury because they haven't hit some of these other tenants. If you are creating something in that space, it needs to have aspiration and execution to design that is truly special, that is truly resonant, that product is there. And it's another one why I call out why it's so hard to create that luxury feel inside of clothing is because the expertise required to do that is something that you can't start with a few years of experience. You have to be in significantly deep and have a team that is in deep to be able to design things with that level of intention. And you can have a designer brand. Designer brands are wonderful. And brands transition from designer to luxury. I'll use Off-White as a good example of that. And they've transitioned back down all the way, but basically had gone from elevated street wear all the way to becoming a luxury brand and being in scents and retail locations and hitting the price points and doing the quality of their products. And then that just disappeared over time, which we'll talk about in the time factor, but designer is the second aspect. You basically have this concept of quality, this concept of design. All right, so a product that I appreciate very much as a designer and as a content creator are these Taurus iPhone cases. They've even won some industrial design awards, and there's a reason why. The one that first caught my eye was this one that does a full 360 rotation. But the most useful one, the one I use now, is the Ostan 360 Spin that you see here, where it actually has the ability to spin in all directions and push in all directions to get a perfect angle no matter what you are trying to film. So some of the standout design items that I like is that the details are extremely thoughtful. It's got a shatterproof back panel. The edges are raised for lens and screen protection, so it's not like those flush cases where you can actually still break when you drop it. All the angles that you can use with this stand are great if you're capturing odd angles for your footage especially. And as someone who's either filming content, filming for myself, you're filming videos cooking or putting something together or wanna get an interesting angle on a factory floor, whatever it is, they are giving you all of those options with this case. And it's not just MagSafe, but it has magnetic charging and it's perfect for adapting to places to shoot with the magnet. And all the little things like the tactile feedback and like smooth retraction and the way it sounds is just from a company that you can tell puts the time into industrial design. Even the finish on the case is that perfect matte. So if you're looking for some standout protection for your phone, we recommend checking out Taurus and the 360 Spin. And the third tenet, one of the most important is desirability. People have to actually want this product and want has to be backed up by dollars, right? And so if you are starting a brand where you meet the quality standards and design standards but no one wants it, it doesn't really look at it in the same way as a luxury brand because people are buying luxury for how it makes them feel and how it makes them feel is both a product of the experience and a product of what it says about them and the perception of it, how they feel as an owner of it. And that desirability factor is not there for some brands. And you can be desirable on your own. Supreme is a desirable brand or was a desirable brand that is not a luxury brand, right? And it doesn't have that same, like the quality is not a luxury level. The design isn't really a luxury level, right? And so, but they would have the desirability of it. It just goes to show how each of these things can kind of operate outside of this and still be successful, but kind of operate together and begin to build a picture of luxury. And that desirability ties really well into resale. People look at a lot of luxury goods as investments, right? When someone goes and buys a Louis Vuitton bag, they know, hey, I can go sell this back to the real real at X price. Or this is something I can, you always have the ability to move it or pawn it or get some level of value back on and put it on grailed, whatever it is. That is a key aspect of this as well. Cause there are luxuries that are, you know, not permanent, don't have this aspect. So this is one where I would say this is not the most important, but it is a huge winning aspect when it is added to these others. And that's the ability for it to hold value over time. For a customer to look at what they're purchasing as an investment, instead of looking at it as merely something that's gonna be in their wardrobe or in their home. And that's a really important thing that can separate any brand from the rest inside this category, that's that extra sauce that anyone can have is that resale value. And I think it's worth plotting when you start your brand, right? And potentially controlling that experience. I look at Arc'teryx, it's not necessarily a luxury brand, but they are certainly a designer brand and they have an amazing performance, their products, and they control their secondhand market. You buy secondhand Arc'teryx through Arc'teryx. There's other brands think about that as well. And that begins to show people the desirability of the factory. They know, oh, I can go sell this back to them. If you're able to potentially control that experience, say you launched a brand where you say, hey, we will buy back any product that we release at any point in time at X percent of its value. Then you begin to say, we're putting our money where our mouth is. You can look at this as an asset. There's a lot of interesting psychology that comes in resale and requires you to play into some of these mainstream things. Like what is your presence on eBay? Is there desire for it? Are you sold on the real real? Or like there's some of these cultural tenants that resale begins to interact with. Is there a community around it on Grailed? Is Grailed written about it? What do you begin to look at and perceive? How does the world perceive it? Is these interesting connotations of resale value as a pillar of luxury? Desirability and resale then tie into time. This is one of the hardest ones to hear. And most people, again, they want to start a brand where they can charge a premium. You can charge more money than everyone else. You want to be able to sell your t-shirts at what Rude sells them for. Of course, like we all do. That sounds wonderful. But really there needs to be a lot of things to actually execute that. One of the biggest things is time, right? There's all these videos going around. We use Rude as an example. And Rude being a quasi-luxury brand has had some periods of that or perceived as that by a certain community where he was not selling a lot. And then Kendrick Lamar bought something or wore something on stage, whatever it was, and then kind of blew up overnight and then was able to continue the story building and telling to do that. But the continuation part is important, right? Like that brand has had a rough time for the last few years, right? There's still some people that go into it. It's not perceived the same way it was. If it had executed its level of perception over a long enough period of time, it could have potentially gone on to develop like a luxury standard. Whereas now it's kind of, it's middling and still has plenty of good going for it. But there's, yeah, it does not have the potential it once did. As you can tell, I'm not the hugest fan of the brand. But this aspect of time is really important because if you are setting out to start something luxury, it's often generational. Look at all these true luxury houses and brands with very few exceptions. They have lasted over the course of, literally like through families. They're passing down through generations. And this is how I would think about it if you are building it. This is not a thing you build to sell. It's a thing you build to be profitable and pass on to your children. And it's something that is taken as a family approach, right? There are no luxury designers whose families are not extremely deep inside. It is a operation that pulls everyone in because of its magnetism. That is something that is important to think about as you create this and to set your goals. Because if your goals aren't that, then you're creating in the wrong category. And you'll look at some recent exceptions to this. I'm fascinated with brands that shortcut their way to luxury. So Jacquemus is one, right, where they were able to come into the luxury playing field. They operate on a level of a luxury brand in the luxury houses. They have the feel of that, whereas being a new brand. Now their product quality leaves something to be desired, as a lot of people kind of note on the internet. I don't think they fully cemented themselves in there, but they've been able to shortcut it through intention of design, through desirability, through the attention and experience, through the resale value and the things that we've kind of mentioned here. They have been able to shortcut that. Flamingo Estate's another one that I like to call out. And so they sell a lot of bath products, et cetera. I put them on a level to a very similar, like a California version of Aesop, who is a kind of quintessential luxury brand of mine. And they did something, a couple of things were very interesting. It was one, they started as a service, high-end service. They provided like farm-to-table vegetables to the discerning and elite of Los Angeles, right? That was the start of that business. And then they added on to it, like a number of consumer goods operating at kind of a very high level. But they purchased their time, is kind of a decent way to put it. They have a, a brand is based around the Flamingo Estate, a 70s, like incredible, like physical structure and location that the brand is named after. The content is based around, there's a huge part of its lore. It's absolutely gorgeous. And again, it has a magnetism to it you are inherently interested in. As a newer brand, by applying this real estate component into the storytelling of it that has history, they were able to kind of generate some of that time element, which is a really interesting concept to me. And then now we're going to talk about experience. I mentioned ESOP before, and they're a good example of this because experience goes across a couple of things. It goes across the service level that you receive from the brand. Like you can walk into a Louis Vuitton store and buy something, but most people have a rep. They have someone they actually talk to or a salesperson at the company who can access things and get them there. That is the way luxury is purchased at a Louis Vuitton. Then there's expectation. What am I going to see when I get this? What am I, every time I get the product is, what is the unboxing like, the packaging like, the every time I talk to a person on the phone and interact with the website, is this overall brand experience. Walk into a store, the scent, the thought, everything needs to be considered. Every aspect up to standard. This is why I think ESOP is so important, right? Because they have this branding and this packaging that's unique. They have this quality of product that's amazing. You become a brand that I think is worthy and have packaging that is worthy when people use it like they'll take their ESOP bottles and fill it with some other cheaper soap to still have the connotation of that brand out there. But you look at their experience level, right? You can book a consult on the ESOP website right now to have someone talk to you about what products you want to buy or skincare or whatever it is. And they will like have a person Zoom you, right? That's a level of service that you're not getting from a lot of soap brands. Second, their locations when you physically go into them are museums of their own right. They are immaculately designed. They have a presence that is unlike any other that's presented with absolute, incredible luxury look and feel. But then not only that, they tell the story of that. In their taxonomy of design website, they have every single location archived with every material in it. The copper in their Japan location, the wood floors of the one near me in Newport Beach, everything that they've chosen in there from a materials perspective with diagrams and breakdowns is in this master materials archive they just keep on a website because they care that much. That is an example of a luxury brand experience. And so I would encourage you to think about that, right? Like I look at little things like Mr. Porter as a luxury reseller, always referring to their guests as Mr. The way that their customer service signatures are that come with a kind of a more of an upscale feel. That's something I'm very much looking at as I get into a product studio is, what does my service look like? What is the engagement? What does my team members look like? How do we present ourselves? How was that look and feel like? For a services business especially, that luxury experience and that customer service, that expectation is huge. And again, that goes into unboxing, into packaging, into anything. What it really goes down to is every single decision needs to be made with intention around brand and live up to the brand standard or it is not done. That ties into the last part we have here, the seven pillars of luxury, which is brand overall and the brand world and the brand experience. So every luxury brand has a brand world. Oftentimes it can involve the founder, it can involve the story, it can involve the faces of its models or its designer or its lead, but there are personalities, there are locations, there are things that are happening and events that are happening and there are crossovers into different parts of the world. Louis Vuitton opening cafes, a new creative director entering a brand. These things are all events that work around each other and not every brand has all these things. We need to establish what are the people involved and the people up to the luxury standard and when the people come and go, is it an event and how is it considered? And there's the presentation, when we release a thing or a collection, like how is that done? This goes beyond simply like what can happen on social media, right? There is an inherent feeling around that in the world when these things are adopted. There's the campaigns that go with it and there's the story that happens over time of that history, how it's archived and how people can find it because the best luxury brands have archivists to do this for them, accounts that hunt down their best things and post them, people that are obsessed with its history and collection. If you're creating something new, you need to be thinking about how that becomes, how what you are doing becomes so important and is generated and curated by others. So you tie all those together, quality, design, desirability, resale, time, experience and in the brand world, you have the seven pillars of luxury and how to think about these brands and building these brands and interacting with them and you have a formula for creating something really special but it is a long journey. Like I mentioned, it is a journey that passes down from family to family but I do think when you're looking to create a brand in a world of so many ephemeral brands, I'm doing this quick thing or I'm creating this or I wanna make my own money or whatever it is, creating something with this idea and this passion that is built to last takes a certain type of person and a certain investment and I believe that for people that are truly passionate about it or really wanna create something that is a fitting legacy for them, that it's the path to choose. So thank you so much for watching and if you have any questions about this or disagree with any of those views, I'd love to hear it below and I will create more videos about the luxury topic in the future, thanks.