Gallé create two new websites for luxury hotels and resorts group Lebua. Visit Lebua Bangkok and Lebua New Zealand.
Wednesday, 20 May 2009
Friday, 15 May 2009
Luxury Briefing: eBay vs LVMH
eBay vs. LVMH, by Alexander Gallé, is a column published originally in Luxury Briefing's June 2009 edition.
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This column may not be the most popular one I've ever written. Still, the court case between eBay and LVMH needs to be addressed by anyone who cares about the future of luxury as well as of the internet.
My argument, as a web designer for luxury brands, but also as an economist, is that the current legal route taken by LVMH is one of unsustainable laziness which will eventually lead to its own destruction.
The legal approach is very lazy indeed. First of all, the message it sends to the public is this: "The alternatives to buying LVMH's authentic products are so good that we now have to resort to legal ways to stop them from existing. There is no economic reason why someone would buy our products when the alternatives are just as good at a lower price".
Secondly, it seems LVMH is simply barking at the wrong tree because it's easier to pursue eBay than the counterfeiters. Getting eBay into trouble will not discourage the counterfeiters any more than closing your town's market square. The market, both buyers and sellers, will just move as far under the radar as it has to. Unfortunately for lawyers, the laws of the market are closer to the laws of nature than they are to anything they could draft up.
Finally, eBay is a platform for a free market. In fact, it represents a form of free market which the Western world has all but forgotten, to its detriment. When we argue against free markets, we argue against prosperity. Can you imagine the prosperity the world would experience if, say, farmers in Bolivia could trade their products directly on eBay, offering their products directly to the highest bidders worldwide? Such a system would create infinitely more wealth around the world than anything Fairtrade or CaféDirect could imagine in their wildest dreams...
More importantly for the luxury sector, these conditions eBay creates are the very same conditions that enabled luxury brands to start in the first place. The liberalism it stands for is the very same liberalism Europe saw in the 18th and 19th century, when many of our leading luxury brands started out. Free market liberalism is the very environment that enabled 19th century luxury brands to start out on the simple promise of unrivalled quality. Unrestricted worldwide trade is the very condition that enabled merchants and businessmen to offer great new products from around the world at prices reasonable enough to sustain a steady public.
eBay's liberal market model has enabled countless craftsmen, industrialists and artisans to find a niche in the world market for the products they create. Finding a sustainable niche is a conditio sine qua non for a sector driven by market-reducing values rather than lowest price. Values such as craftsmanship and excellence, for example, the very core of what the luxury industry is about. If we care about these values, we must ensure the free market continues to enable future generations of Louis Vuittons to say "I can do better than everyone of you and beat you on the price, too, and I'll prove it".
Only by addressing the economic methods that make counterfeiters so successful (i.e. they provide very good products at lower prices) will we ensure a healthy evolution of the industry's products, to produce even better products than we do today. That is why anyone who cares about luxury should support eBay.
www.luxury-briefing.com
www.galle.com
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This column may not be the most popular one I've ever written. Still, the court case between eBay and LVMH needs to be addressed by anyone who cares about the future of luxury as well as of the internet.
My argument, as a web designer for luxury brands, but also as an economist, is that the current legal route taken by LVMH is one of unsustainable laziness which will eventually lead to its own destruction.
The legal approach is very lazy indeed. First of all, the message it sends to the public is this: "The alternatives to buying LVMH's authentic products are so good that we now have to resort to legal ways to stop them from existing. There is no economic reason why someone would buy our products when the alternatives are just as good at a lower price".
Secondly, it seems LVMH is simply barking at the wrong tree because it's easier to pursue eBay than the counterfeiters. Getting eBay into trouble will not discourage the counterfeiters any more than closing your town's market square. The market, both buyers and sellers, will just move as far under the radar as it has to. Unfortunately for lawyers, the laws of the market are closer to the laws of nature than they are to anything they could draft up.
Finally, eBay is a platform for a free market. In fact, it represents a form of free market which the Western world has all but forgotten, to its detriment. When we argue against free markets, we argue against prosperity. Can you imagine the prosperity the world would experience if, say, farmers in Bolivia could trade their products directly on eBay, offering their products directly to the highest bidders worldwide? Such a system would create infinitely more wealth around the world than anything Fairtrade or CaféDirect could imagine in their wildest dreams...
More importantly for the luxury sector, these conditions eBay creates are the very same conditions that enabled luxury brands to start in the first place. The liberalism it stands for is the very same liberalism Europe saw in the 18th and 19th century, when many of our leading luxury brands started out. Free market liberalism is the very environment that enabled 19th century luxury brands to start out on the simple promise of unrivalled quality. Unrestricted worldwide trade is the very condition that enabled merchants and businessmen to offer great new products from around the world at prices reasonable enough to sustain a steady public.
eBay's liberal market model has enabled countless craftsmen, industrialists and artisans to find a niche in the world market for the products they create. Finding a sustainable niche is a conditio sine qua non for a sector driven by market-reducing values rather than lowest price. Values such as craftsmanship and excellence, for example, the very core of what the luxury industry is about. If we care about these values, we must ensure the free market continues to enable future generations of Louis Vuittons to say "I can do better than everyone of you and beat you on the price, too, and I'll prove it".
Only by addressing the economic methods that make counterfeiters so successful (i.e. they provide very good products at lower prices) will we ensure a healthy evolution of the industry's products, to produce even better products than we do today. That is why anyone who cares about luxury should support eBay.
www.luxury-briefing.com
www.galle.com
Monday, 10 November 2008
Thursday, 23 October 2008
Gallé redesigns brand identity and website for Purple Truffle
Gallé redesign brand identity and website for Purple Truffle, the bespoke travel company.
www.purpletruffle.com
www.galle.com
Sunday, 19 October 2008
Humans, Online
"Humans, Online" - by Alexander Gallé - first published in Luxury Briefing's October 2008 issue.
HUMANS, ONLINE
by Alexander Gallé
One year has passed since our launch of Artipolis, the arts network. Much has happened since 11 October 2007: the world of social networks has definitely flourished since then, and some trends have started to form. Our little experiment provides some food for thought for the luxury industry...
The main lesson to learn, in my view, is that social networks can be much more personal and authentic than people seem to be prepared to admit. The story I hear more often than anything is that social networks are less "real", that real human interaction doesn't happen there, hindered by the medium itself. To some extent, happily, this may be true. To some extent, social networks are just more of the "secondary experience", as George Steiner would put it. There's nothing quite like "being there".
However, it is perfectly feasible for a social network to build up a high level of trust and integrity between its members e.g. insisting on real personal details rather than pseudonyms; invitations being passed through friends, creating an expanding circle of trust, rather than a pool of people with a common interest from around the planet, etc. Do that, and you'll be pleasantly surprised to see just how many members will happily do business with other members, give each other the benefit of the doubt, and how many will actually develop friendships and partnerships in the real world. Some of our members have actually said that they now see the network as a more personal form of communication. Because it's all in the words, from brain to brain as it were, without the distractions of other information channels you get in the real world.
In other words, the idiosyncracies of the medium are providing an opportunity for a new form of communication, one no less real and authentic than real life interaction.
What this means for the luxury industry - an industry that is built around the values of personal attention to customers - is that network technology can become the channel of a more personal impression. Rather than reduce the personal touch, it can increase the personal touch, and for more people, too.
I was very recently asked by a jewellery brand renowned for their personal care how I thought they should manage the increasing influx of website enquiries. I replied without hesitation that they should transfer their best shop assistant (the one with the real "human touch") to the website. This answer comes directly from my experience of online human-to-human interaction on Artipolis and other social networks. There is no reason to treat a website enquiry any different to a customer in your store asking a question. The response should be immediate, and it should be personal. The technology exists to provide a live chat facility, so put a real name and a real face to the website, and give customers an answer within 15 seconds, not through email but through the website itself. You could even make a feature of the online shop assistant "approaching" the user, to see if they need any help, instead of waiting to be asked a question. Unlike the real store equivalent, a good online store assistant would be able to handle more than one customer at any given time and, with immediate access to an ocean of information, should be able to give much better informed and more considered advice. If any industry should try augmenting the ecommerce experience with this kind of interaction, the luxury industry is it.
Saturday, 20 September 2008
Blogging your way out of the recession
Blogging your way out of the recession, by Alexander Gallé, first published in Luxury Briefing September 2008 issue.
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In my last column, I wrote that the recession might just prove to be an opportunity to rethink how luxury brands communicate with their audiences, and I received a couple of emails from readers asking how, specifically, this could be achieved. So, here it goes...
This time last year, someone on ASmallWorld started a forum about how bad Silverjet was. Silverjet was an airline offering first-class only seats from their own dedicated terminal at Luton to Newark. I was very impressed with the service and had actually bought some shares in the company as a result. So, I clicked on the subject and read about this person's misadventures when trying to change a flight, which was followed by a whole lot of replies from other members giving out misinformed opinions about the company and what it was trying to do. I started replying to the forum: how no other airline had their own terminal at Luton, how I had personally boarded the plane in less than 20 minutes from arrival, how it was the only airline with a Michelin-starred chef on board, how there just wasn't anything like it on the market except for chartering your own private jet, etc.
As it turned out, ASmallWorld were about to start hosting an ad campaign for Silverjet, so it occurred to someone to contact a friend at Silverjet and sort out the original poster's problem, which concluded the forum's exchange.
But I remember thinking later that this was a missed opportunity. Silverjet ended up spending a lot of money on a really, really silly online banner campaign that didn't actually inform the user about any of the service's unique selling points and, until the company's bankruptcy a few months later, nobody really 'got it'.
Somehow, there are still many companies, especially in the luxury sector, for whom blogging and social networks are still alien concepts. It just doesn't occur to anyone to simply start a blog representing the company's voice, or put forward its point of view on a forum. Or if it does, it's always a half-hearted idea to stick something on the back of the brand's own website, "where it's safe and we can delete negative comments", like a 21st-century version of Pravda. This territorial attitude simply won't do. It won't, because, whether you like it or not, your customers will talk about you, and they won't do it on your own website if they don't want to.
They'll do it on their own blogs, on industry-specific forums, on social networks, on their own website if they really feel strongly about it. Before you know it, someone hits a note, gets a following, the forum in question picks up momentum and shows up on Google's top-10 search results alongside your 'official' website. The next thing you know, a mainstream journalist asks you, the CEO, about it during an interview. You decide to call your PR company and tell them to do something about it, when the truth is you're the one who should personally be doing something about it, starting by listening online to what people have to say when they're not being asked the wrong questions in your expensive focus groups. These are people who, for the most part, cared enough about your brand or product to buy it and then voice their disappointment. Their conversation is happening, are you going to join in and rediscover your relevance to your customers?
Here is the opportunity: recessions, as a game of last man standing, are the perfect moment to rethink your advertising budget, and whether you're really getting a bang for your buck. This recession in particular is the first one that truly allows you to hear what your customers are telling you, and to say what you want them to hear. What are you waiting for? Start blogging your way out!
www.luxury-briefing.com | www.galle.com
Thursday, 10 July 2008
Gallé launch website for MCM
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