Can the Birkin bag survive the resale market?
The IndependentFor free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Once upon a time, the Hermès Birkin could arguably have been called the rarest handbag in the world. Jonathan Rimer, a former floor director at the Hermès flagship in Beverly Hills, California, attributes the bag’s elusiveness to a simple problem of supply and demand, as did Robert Chavez, the Hermès president and chief executive for the Americas, who announced at last year’s Skift Global Forum that “demand for the Birkin bag continues to be much higher than the supply”. “In theory,” he says, the rise of resale “could potentially increase the product and brand ubiquity.” But, he says, “If you compare the Birkin to the Rolex Daytona,” referring to the Swiss watchmaker’s premiere offering, which has also found its way into the resale market, “you wouldn’t conclude that Rolex has been suffering for this.” According to Solca, the trick here is the watchmaker’s ability to “keep its most iconic creations alive by tweaking and improving them all of the time,” while also offering new products to keep consumers, particularly devoted fans of the brand, coming back. At Privé Porter, Berk says, “More and more collectors are opting to pay us $19,000 to get the exact same – never used – bag” that they cannot get from Hermès for $12,000. The individuals consigning these hard-to-get bags are often also the buyers, so the resale market is, Cereda says, “a happy loop of aficionados.” Then he adds, somewhat ominously, “for now.” © New York Times