Archive | April, 2017

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Two Worlds Collide at Ralph Lauren – Mass & ‘Class’

The Ralph Lauren brand needs to be rescued from itself.  This once iconic American luxury brand has fallen on hard times, taken down by a failed strategy to extend itself down from high-end into the mass-market.  These two worlds collide and have done in the brand. With ‘authentic’ Ralph Lauren polo shirts offered in its […]

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How Unilever’s Mass-Market Suave Brand Proves Luxury Is a Mindset

Recently Fast Company reported that Suave, Unilever’s mass-market shampoo brand, “fooled a bunch of beauty influencers into thinking it was luxury haircare.” It changed its name to Evaus (Suave spelled backwards), redesigned the package, gave it a premium price and presented it to a group of beauty bloggers and influencers to test.  The result:  The influencers […]

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Not Yet a ‘Retail Apocalyse,’ but It’s Coming: Some Have a Survival Plan, survey results

It seems like every week’s news cycle brings bad news followed by more bad news for the world of retail.  Last week the U.S. Census Bureau announced that retail sales fell in March 2017, the second consecutive month of decline. Since the beginning of the year, ten national retailers, most recently Payless ShoeSource, have filed […]

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lipstick effect

Lipstick Effect Is in Effect Today

LVMH just released its 2016 annual report and it reveals important trends that will impact luxury brands for the years ahead.  While LVMH posted a healthy 5.4% increase from 2015 to 2016, its rate of growth was less than one-third of that from 2014 to 2015 when revenues rose a remarkable 16.4%. This may signal […]

instant gratification

Why Instant Gratification Isn’t the Answer for Luxury Brands

A recent Luxury Daily article entitled “Is fashion’s love affair with see-now, buy-now over?,” questioned whether this emerging trend in the luxury market may well have hit a wall.  Tom Ford has announced that after one year of testing the concept, it was abandoning the effort.  Thakoon has done the same. ‘See-now, buy-now’ is intended […]

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