Millennials are demanding exclusive bespoke services, and luxury brands like Fendi and Ettinger are listening
People associate luxury with exclusivity, but also now with individualism – and companies are cashing in on the demand for customised luxury goods
With the market for high-end goods getting more crowded, it is tough for brands to stand out. There are the usual limited editions and celebrity endorsements, but a bespoke service is a claim to quality. While luxury brands have been offering tailor-made services for a long time, there have been some new entrants lately.
Take Ettinger. The British leather goods company has a long and esteemed history – it was established in 1934. For the first time in its 85-year history, it has launched its first bespoke service. Starting with the product choice, customers can then select leather, colour, stitching details, lining and type of monogramming. Since the result is a bag or wallet designed for the individual, and in part by the individual, Ettinger has – unusually for luxury brands – offered the option to forego the application of its own logo.
“We felt this was the right time to do this,” says Robert Ettinger, managing director of Ettinger. “It’s not easy to launch bespoke – you need the skills, of course, but also the right training for those selling it. It’s time-consuming, too. But we looked around and saw [an increasing number of] brands turning to bespoke products.
“The fact is so many luxury brands are visible and widely available that it raises the question of what luxury is if everyone seems to have what they make. People associate luxury with exclusivity, yes, but also now with individualism.”
Polls back this up. Research by Deloitte in 2017 found that 40.6 per cent of Chinese millennial consumers were ready to pay a premium to get a product in some way personalised to them, with 71.4 per cent of US millennial consumers saying the same – suggesting that bespoke still has plenty of room for growth regionally.
A bespoke service is one way brands can also take on other pressures facing the ready-made luxury goods market – the issue of authentication, the increased demand for transparency, and even the trend of renting rather than owning luxury goods.
A bespoke service also provides valuable customer insight – just what is it that customers want – that can offer feedback for a brand’s more “standard” products. Brands like Dior, for example, have long offered bespoke services.
Ettinger is not the only brand to have launched bespoke recently. Italian menswear company Brioni has extended its bespoke option to include denim – its jeans are now available personally tailored, with a choice of fabric, stitching, hardware and monogramming.
If getting a name for yourself as a specialist maker of swimming trunks is a challenge, Havelock Bay has given itself a boost with the launch of its bespoke service, while tailoring-oriented designer Joshua Kane shows his diversity by extending his bespoke service to include a leather biker jacket made to your specifications.