What can we learn from the foremost house of luxury?

This is a good one to highlight coming into year end. 60 Minutes just completed a profile on Hermes and specifically on its famed Birkin bag. 

You can view the segment here on YouTube.

In his interview, artistic director (and family member/owner) Pierre-Alexis Dumas shared a few profound comments that are counter-cultural and worth pondering in the quiet of the next couple of weeks.

• “Hermes is very costly, not expensive. Cost is the actual price of making an object properly with required level of attention so you have a level of quality. Expensive is a product which is not delivering what it is supposed to deliver, but you have paid quite a large amount of money for it and it betrays you.”
  • See also this NY Times article from last week – “Obscene Prices, Declining Quality: Luxury Is in a Death Spiral”
    • “Overpriced goods, like the $2,816 Christian Dior bags that were discovered to have been made in an Italian sweatshop for around $57.
• Discussing the Birkin bag and how to acquire…”you have to walk into an Hermes store and you have to be patient…”
• For those who want a bag and want a bag now? “Yes, I have children too and I have desires too.”
• On growth… “How can you grow so fast without changing what makes you strong? By training people…for a life’s profession”
• “We are about craft, we are not machines. We are not compromising on the quality of the way we make the bags…”
• “Speed is the structuring value of the 20th century. We went from horse carriages to the Internet. Are we going to be so obsessed with speed and immediate satisfaction? Maybe there is another form of relation to the world that is linked to patience to taking the time to make things right.”

If you are interested in learning more about the company, the Acquired podcast episode is also fantastic.