Culture Trap: Luxury

Showing posts with label Luxury. Show all posts

Friday, November 29, 2019

New World Of Shopping

This new 21st century is littered with opportunities to buy. And that was a literal statement. The internet has become a wasteland of merchants and they're selling everything from cheap replica fashion jewelry to one of a kind custom fenders for your Ferrari. Aside from the dark web, most of the normal internet is filled with scammers too. These scams range from drop-shipping companies to data collection marketing scams. All of which are technically legal, but still scam-like.

The internet has enabled companies to become scammers by using advanced economic theories on unsophisticated consumers. In finance you'd lose any of your series license for this under the penalty of being unethical. It's actually against FINRA and SIPC regulations to sell sophisticated investments to unsophisticated investors; or in other words, people who don't understand what you're selling them or how it works or who can't afford it. As far as the marketing goes, companies like StockX tells their customers that they're using a sort of stock exchange that matches orders for you. Then you try to sell something you get this funny response that says "Buyers have the option to Bid on your sneakers or buy them immediately" followed by "StockX is not an auction so sneakers are not automatically sold to the highest bidder; they're basically telling you they're front running your order.

Side Note: Front running is what big stock trading brokerage firms got in trouble for just 10 years ago. The firms discovered they could out trade people sitting at home by using super computers to watch their own customers' every move so they could jump in front of their stock purchases buying the shares at a lower price than their customers; then they'd sell the shares to their customers who were already attempting to buy because the firm knew the customers were coming to buy. All before you even knew it was happening it was already done; they called it High Frequency Trading (HFT).

In the past industries like Aviation have dealt with the internet of things by creating reservation systems that absolutely f*** their customers by using aggressive pricing and sales strategies called first degree, second and third degree price discrimination as well as misleading marketing and products that come with customer failure guarantees. Most people are used to being scammed in these ways and the scams seem so well thought out and hard to figure out that people simply accept them. For fear of not understanding e-commerce enough to stand-up for themselves the average consumer sees these scam-like pricing scenarios but they buy anyway because usually, these types of scams are reserved for rigged markets; Or markets that have participants who receive preferential treatment and prices compared to the public.

The aviation world there are airline consolidators, who act as wholesalers of airline tickets. They could be referred to as a broker and they usually sell tickets directly to the public alongside the airline. They don't have to buy the tickets because the seats are contracted out at a set rate. All the consolidator has to do is sell the tickets at a price profitable to their business. Now at this point you're asking yourself, "WTF does this have to do with the new world of shopping"?

The answer can be found at your local shopping mall. Nothing in the malls sells out. Hyped sneakers rarely make appearances at malls anymore and when they do they quantity is so low it doesn't even draw a major crowd (Nothing the mall cops can't handle). Nothing in the mall is rare and nothing in the mall is limited. You can assume that whatever is on sale right now will be on super sale tomorrow and then mega sale the day after that. We've all grown accustomed to the American sale cycles. With the emergence of e-commerce a new level of rarity is upon us.

Consumers no longer have the opportunity to decide if they really want those Off-White (If you don't know what Off-White is please keep reading this article is for you) bed-sheets. You have to buy them because you know you'll never get a chance to buy them off the shelf ever again. Yes, you heard that correctly, you will never be able to buy those bed sheets off the shelf ever again. They will be burned before they're ever sold again. The funny thing about these bed sheets is that they were sold at Ikea stores on 1 day for only 5 hours; not online and not in the Ikea catalog. It took 5 hours because store employees were moderating the lines and purchasing process. Without their hard work that time would be chopped down to 1 hour max. These sales dynamics so far from the internet are whats driving people to the internet. No one wants to stand in an Ikea line at 6:00AM in the freezing cold. But if you want the items and only want to pay their MSRP then you have to.

While this is going on, millions of people are buying cheap bed sheets from Walmart.com or Amazon most likely. Most people are addicted to cheap materials at this point (Now I understand what The Greats were talking about). Because of this now we have to fight for the quality. Manufacturers are now holding their best goods for the Internet's major wars; the drop date.

At any given time during the work while everyone else is concerned about putting food on their tables, the biggest brands and smallest all decide to release to the public some of their most sought after designs. From Nike to Supreme, all brands seem to have adopted an approach that requires their customers to have free time during the day. If you want a an Adidas sweatshirt that no one has and possibly never have seen. then you might have to buy it at 2:00PM on a Tuesday using PayPal only from a website you've never heard of. And if you make it past the product page to the checkout window you'd be considered one of the lucky ones. The sad truth is that more often than not the item will sell out before you even

Typically customers are put in digital waiting lines called payment queues. This is a unique feature that allows e-commerce stores to put customers in virtual queues that essentially turn their internet browser into a submissive to the website. During this time you can't refresh your browser or even open too many other windows leading to the same page; why? Because the merchant might ban you.

So now let's imagine that we live in a world where the majority of the merchandise on the racks at the box stores are 10 or even 20 years old; and let's also imagine that the same brands don't send those same stores any of their up-to-date cataloged merchandise. And lastly let's imagine you live in world where you have less than 30 seconds to buy what you want. Sadly enough, that's the world you live in. A world where brands only want to sell us trash in-store and force us to play their games online just to get a decent product with some design elements included. Now the only question I have is, Why?

Friday, April 3, 2015

Baselworld 2015's Best Watches

Longines Pulsometer Chronograph

Longines packed an automatic monopusher chronograph into a streamlined 40 millimeter steel case and then added a 1920s-style dial with a bright red pulsometer scale (used by doctors to take a patient's pulse). Vintage-style chronograph at an affordable price.

Hermès Slim d'Hermès

These might be the best watches to come out of Baselworld 2015.There are both dual-time perpetual calendar and time-only versions of this watch.Both are powered by thin automatic movements (wound by a micro-rotor) that are made in-house by Hermès.

TAG Heuer Carrera Caliber 18

You could almost fool someone into thinking this is the original Carrera. The domed sapphire crystal, faded grey markers, and sharply angled lugs (not to mention that old-school Heuer logo, sans TAG) are all spot-on.The new Caliber 18 Carrera looks almost exactly like the original model from 1963.

Sarpaneva Korona Northern Lights

Whoa! Thats all there is to be said about this wrist-format time keeping instrument. This watch comes from a Finnish watch maker, Stepan Sarpaneva. Stepan Says you can leave it on your bedside when you go to sleep and it will still be visible in the morning.

H. Moser Funky Blue Perpetual Calendar

Perpetual calendars customarily involve a pile of windows and subdials pointing out four or five different measurements of time. Moser's perpetual calendar has a pared-down display, and this dial is astonishing. This is high-end watchmaking without the pretension.

Glashütte Original Senator Observatory

Classic German watchmaking with an aesthetic update.Germany earned its watchmaking stripes by making crazily accurate chronometers in the 19th century for merchant ships and scientific use.This watch takes that tradition and reinterprets it in a way that's thoroughly modern.

Patek Philippe Nautilus 5711R

This is the one Patek-lovers are probably waiting for. Sure, it's all gold, but this is as easy to wear as a watch gets. No one will mistake this for anything but what it is.

Chopard L.U.C Regulator

A regulator is the perfect platform for a dual-time watch. The L.U.C line can compete with the likes of Patek and Vacheron, though it has its own, slightly less-traditional vibe.The time for classifying Chopard as a "jewelry watch" brand is long over, and this watch is further proof.

Omega Dark Side of the Moon, Vintage Edition

Out of four new editions of this watch, here is one of the most unique. Following up on its popular Dark and Grey Side of the Moon watches, this week Omega released a series of four new variations. It's the big black watch for the guy who hates big black watches.

Laurent Ferrier Traveller Black

Forget bright colors. The black enamel version of this watch is incredible. Maps on dials can be a controversial subject. This new version of Laurent Ferrier's dual-time Traveller watch (that window at 9 o'clock shows the hours of your second time zone), has a two-tone map that's a silver dome covered in black enamel that's worn away to reveal the continents. Ferrier's micro-rotor movement could be the most beautiful automatic caliber ever made.