exploited and addressed by companies in the new extended segments of
luxury goods and services such as hotels and spas. A noteworthy example is
the customized package offered by two London hotels, The Metropolitan and
The Halkin, which provides guests with in-house appointments to order
bespoke goods from a host of luxury brands, including Mulberry and Philip
Treacy. Also luxury brand Ermenegildo Zegna is reputed to be obsessed with
tracking customer preferences through CRM technology and providing prod-
ucts and services to suit their needs. This has led to a reinforced emphasis on
customized and bespoke services to a broad consumer base as a part of the
brand’s core offering. Also, new luxury brand André Ross was launched on
the core concept of bringing bespoke quality goods to a broad consumer base.
Ralph Lauren and Tommy Hilfiger also provide all consumers with tools to
customize a range of their products through their websites. The features
include the inscription of customer-chosen monograms on the polo shirts for
men, women, children and babies.
There are different ways that luxury products can be customized by luxury
brands. As previously mentioned, several luxury brands currently provide
bespoke products and services of varying scales to a select clientele. These
services, however, come at very high time and monetary costs, which are
often out of reach or unavailable to all the luxury consumers that desire them.
Luxury brands can make product customization accessible to a broader client
base through adapting the product development, manufacturing, marketing
and delivery systems. A few recommended methods of customization are
provided in the following sections.
Method 1 customizing standardized products
The product portfolio of luxury brands features goods found in the permanent
or seasonal collections. These products, although differing in colour, style and
design, form a part of the standardized goods that luxury brands provide to
their mass consumers. They are purchased off the counter and the choices that
consumers have regarding these products are restricted to colour, size and
sometimes cost.
Customizing standardized products could be exploited in two ways. The
first approach is to develop products that can be easily customized. In this
case, products are manufactured with the intention of making component
adjustments or modifications possible in a short time space. The second tech-
nique is to provide customization for already existing products. As an illus-
tration, we will use the Louis Vuitton ‘Passy’ ladies bag (Figure 8.2). As at
the time of writing, the bag existed in one leather type (the Epi), two size
choices (large and small), two colour choices (red and black) and two price
points (€800 and €950). This provides the consumer with three choice options
of the bag (size, colour and price). The choice variety could however be made
chapter 8 255customize me!