These Prices Don’t Say ‘luxury’ So Much As ‘outrageous’
Monday, September 17, 2007
By Marshall Loeb
NEW YORK — This story begins with one of the fancy females in my family leaving a hair salon on Third Avenue in New York, when she rather impulsively decided to buy a lipstick-sized tube of undereye concealer. “Charge it,” she told the sales clerk, who was only too willing to oblige.
Not until she arrived home, and looked seriously at the bill for the first time, did the buyer discover that a mistake must have been made. The posted charge for the tiny cosmetic was an incredible $75. So you can imagine her chagrin when she phoned the salon and was told: “That’s no mistake.” The magical makeup did indeed cost $75.
All of which led us to consider how many prices in the marketplace these days are simply outrageous.
No, we’re not talking about luxury goods, where prices are nosebleed high by any measure, but where you commonly get goods that wear well, look nice and last almost forever. For example, you can lay out $3,000 for a made-to-measure men’s suit from Barney’s or $1,500 for a men’s Burberry raincoat that one of your grandkids may well be wearing — and staying toasty in — a couple of generations from now.
Nor are we talking about those $150 neckties from Hermes Paris or Stefano Ricci that make you look like a million dollars — well, almost.
Long live the luxury market, where there’s a linkage between the prices you pay and the performance of the product over time. Indeed, the luxury market in retail is standing up very well during the current economic travail. People who patronize luxury stores are usually smart shoppers who tend to go out and spend come rain, come shine.
No, when we talk now about outrageous prices, we’re referring to those of goods and services that without rhyme, reason or straight-faced excuse are marked up to infinity: take, for example, the black alligator women’s handbag featured in a current Neiman Marcus ad for $26,500.
Some markup mavens are getting a bit embarrassed by such excess. They no longer cite the real retail prices of such goods in magazine layouts, but they say that you can get price quotes “on request.” And how do you spell chutzpah?
The only justification is that the ultimate buyer can boast that he or she is paying the highest prices of any kid on the block. My bill is bigger than your bill, as they say.
That’s not pocket change for most.
But there is no shortage of people who are prepared to pay those outrageous prices for certain trendy goods and services. The newsletter Pocket Change has identified a number of them in New York and Los Angeles.
In the highest end of the New York rental-car market, for instance, you can lease a Lamborghini Murcielago for a mere $2,250 a day at Gotham Dream Cars, which is a candy store for the James Bond set. If their Lamborghinis are all checked out for the weekend, the rental firm will sub a Bentley for $1,750 a day or a Rolls Royce Phantom for $325 an hour.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,297062,00.html
Gotham runs a first class operation, and though it seems expensive, when you look at the cost to rent occasionaly, vs the cost to own, its really a bargain, hence the market.