Wealth of Information

Wealth of Information

Even retailers selling to the wealthiest of the wealthy need help dealing with the current economy. Free rum, anyone?

The hard times circulating in the Gulf Coast retail industry are going to have to make room for one more player: The luxury market.

While the term luxury market itself is hard to define, its challenges are easy to identify. People are spending less money on goods these days, even the people that have lots of money.

"The impact of the September-October financial meltdown [on the luxury retail market] is yet to be determined," says Chris Ramey, president of the Luxury Marketing Council Florida. "But there is a real fear as to what could happen."

Ramey's group, which has chapters in Sarasota, Tampa, Miami and Fort Lauderdale, and another one pending in Naples, aims to assuage those fears through collaboration. The council is a unit of the larger Luxury Marketing Council, a New York-based organization made up of 1,500-plus chief executives and senior marketing professionals in luxury sales-oriented companies worldwide.

The council's meetings cover everything from research to networking to the occasional 'think tank' where a chapter might take on one member's challenges, such as a name change or a brand improvement.

The Tampa chapter, for instance, recently helped the owner of SpaTampa in Tampa change the name of the business. The spa is now known as the Anti-Aging & Aesthetic Institute, a name its owner says better reflects what the company does for patients.

Ramey, based in Coral Gables, is seeking new members to join the Florida chapters of the Luxury Marketing Council as he crisscrosses the state for monthly meetings and one-on-one sessions. He's hopeful that access to data, in addition to assistance from peers, will be a strong sell in a market where nearly every business is seeking ways to cut costs.

While networking does happen at council meetings, Ramey stresses that the meetings are not mere hob-nobs for people selling to the wealthy. "It's about revenues," Ramey says. "It's about making more money."

In that vein, one mantra that Ramey and other luxury-marketing experts have been sticking to during the economic slump is to be careful about selling down just to hold on to market share. It might not be worth the potential long-term damage to the brand.

Then again, selling down might be a fact of the market, as even high-net worth folks are seeking ways to spend less. Indeed, at a recent meeting of the Sarasota chapter, Ramey lamented that luxury, in some ways, isn't what it used to be. "The three most popular stores in the luxury marketplace are Target, Costco and Home Depot," says Ramey. "That speaks to how much the luxury crowd is looking for value."

While that trio isn't exactly a who's who of high-end retailers, the membership roster of the Luxury Marketing Council reads like something out of Wealthy 'R Us. Internationally, names like Gucci, Porsche and Bentley Motors dot the list. On the Gulf Coast, members include Naples-based SeaFair Expoships, which sells high-end art and jewelry out of traveling yachts; the Ritz-Carlton, Sarasota; and the Salvador Dali Museum in St. Petersburg.

And if the standard perks of membership aren't enough, there's this: When Miami-based rum company Bacardi USA recently joined the council, it sent a bottle of rum to every member of the local chapter. Then it set up a party to meet the company president for every chapter member that wrote a thank you note.

- Mark Gordon

Luxury Leanings

Membership in the Luxury Marketing Council Florida runs between $2,500 to $7,000 a year, depending on the size and type of company. Florida members have access to members in other chapters worldwide. For more information contact Chris Ramey at (561) 876-8077 or [email protected].