Flagship stores

You know that scene in Pretty Woman when Julia Roberts is in the boutique? The other day I was in Taipei's new 101 building looking for a shirt in the many "mass luxury" flagship stores. I saw a Polo shirt that I thought was quite nice, so I checked the label. It read: "NT$ 17,000," which is around 500 bucks or two hundred and fifty quid. I asked the aloof-looking assistant (got to match the brand with the staff folks!)if this was correct to which she replied, "Yes." Yeah right! Oot the door I went. Looks like Polo is attempting to reestablish itself as a real luxury brand here in Taiwan and the rest of Asia after years of drifting into the middle area of being neither cheap nor luxurious.

There is a lot of talk these days that branding is all about selling dreams (some people frame this notion as selling lies that we want to believe). Brands appeal to the hedonistic part of our personality rather than the rational side -- and we don't like being told that we are "being silly" for paying extra for these brands as this spoils our dreams. (Nobody wants to hear that a Seiko keeps just as good time as a Rolex)

I meet people here who will at once refuse to wear a branded T-shirt and brag about the fact that they "prefer Macs." All this really means is that they may not be particularly brand conscious for clothes, but for so-called high-tech products, they sure are.

So there's another dimension of a product that can be innovated. The dream dimension.

innovation