Scraggy shoppers in boutiques might be worth a billion bucks

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Scraggy shoppers in boutiques might be worth a billion bucks

As the so-called luxury market becomes mass luxury, not every customer walking into a boutique shop has the look of someone who has money.
I have seen middle-school kids wearing Gucci sunglasses and carrying Prada handbags in boutique shops.
It could be the parents credit card doing the work, but that s not the point.
Even if they have a mountain of debt, customers nowadays in almost any kind of income bracket except for the very poor go to luxury brand stores. Not long ago that was the privilege of the truly rich.
There is still a segment at the top reserved for the mega rich who own their own jets and yachts.

But, other than that, the days of instantly recognizing wealth by appearance are over. Scruffy-looking millionaires wearing tank tops and flip-flops are not an uncommon sight.
But there are other dimensions to the equation. Economies of scale are at work here with the luxury segment growing every year and new brands springing up like mushrooms on a forest floor.
Luxury brands differentiate their products by targeting different purse sizes. But some sales staff sometimes seem to forget that even a one-time customer adds to total sales.
I have seen dismissive sales people write off potential customers because they are too short-sighted to see a sale when it s in front of them.
Sometimes these people seem to think they are the gatekeepers of their respective brands, and do their best to sell only to well-dressed customers.
Take the following as an example. The other day at Lotte Department Store s luxury brand wing, the Avenuel Store, I was strolling around the first floor to get a pulse for the latest trends.
There I witnessed how Louis Vuitton sales staff whether intentional or not turned away a couple clearly looking to buy something.
The moment the couple entered the store, sales staff treated them with disrespect. They looked the man and woman up and down, made a mental note and then turned their attention to other customers hovering nearby.
Realizing no one was taking them seriously, the couple wandered off. Granted, they looked like they were having a bad hair day and their overall attire wasn t exactly screaming money.

But half an hour later I saw them leave the department store loaded with shopping bags, naturally not from Louis Vuitton.
While there are still people who fail to grasp how the demography of the luxury market has changed, some are prepared for the new challenges.
How one looks has very little to do with purchasing power, says one salesperson at Dolce and Gabbana. In recent years, it has been drilled into our heads that no matter how shabby a customer might look, that person is a customer.
Lee Jeong-eun, a manager at Paul Smith, told me: When someone walks into our shop, they are not only buying a product, they are buying an experience. We want to make the whole shopping experience as pleasurable as possible.
Incidentally, the company s research suggests that 3 percent of customers feel that sales staff have ignored them, but customers rarely, if ever, make official complaints.
Anyway, I probed further. Even if they don t buy anything at all? Even if they don t fit the image of your customers?
Absolutely, came the answer. Who knows who that person might be?
Exactly. You just never know.


By Brian Lee Staff Reporter [africanu@joongang.co.kr]
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