Flying a dog first-class to an exotic island so it can be shown
off at an exclusive wedding. Planning an elite Manhattan soiree.
Chartering the Concorde to fly to Antigua. Welcome to the world of
very, very high-end luxury services. It's a world that Victoria
Pericon, 30, lives in every day as founder of lifestyle-management
firm Victoria Pericon Inc. in New York City.
Her "Club VP" is an invitation-only club that charges
clients a $120,000 annual retainer fee, plus expenses, to take care
of anything they need, from the glamorous (planning glitzy
Mediterranean parties) to the mundane (waiting on hold with
customer service to ask a software question). Pericon has three
employees and hires outside consultants to work with the
company's clients, who tend to be celebrities, socialites and
CEOs. "We don't allow people to just call up," says
Pericon, who has run the company for four years with her husband,
Roman, 30.
Maybe you've wanted to start your own luxury business ever
since you watched Joan Collins and Linda Evans duke it out on
Dynasty. But maybe you're thinking now may not be the
time to make your move. Retailers just had their worst holiday
season in 30 years. Unemployment is at an eight-year high. Consumer
confidence seems to be sputtering, too: The Consumer Confidence
Index, a monthly survey of 5,000 U.S. households, fell 14 points in
February, and consumers' feelings about the economy were at
their lowest since 1993.
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Although the average consumer is spending conservatively,
there's still a lot of money out there. The number of
"almost rich" (households earning between $100,000 and
$150,000 per year) has doubled. Last year, 15.1 million U.S.
households earned more than $100,000 per year, according to the
U.S. Census Bureau. The very rich, meanwhile, are getting richer:
Between 1991 and 2001, the incomes of the top 5 percent of U.S.
households increased from 18.1 percent to 22.4 percent of the total
of all personal income earned in the United States.
The reality is that there are several categories of wealth
today, says Arnold Brown, chairman of Weiner, Edrich,
Brown Inc., a trend analysis firm in New York City. There are
the ultra-rich (those worth at least $100 million), the rich (those
earning at least $250,000 per year and having assets of at least $3
million, not including their homes) and the upper middle class
(those earning $100,000, with assets of least $500,000, not
including their homes).
The creation of wealth in the past decade is giving
entrepreneurs more opportunities to sell luxury products, says Paul
Nunes, senior research fellow at the Accenture Institute for
Strategic Change in Cambridge, Massachusetts: "We're
seeing companies coming into [the luxury] space as they recognize
there's this segment now that has a whole lot more
money."
Pericon won't dish names or sales figures--"Discretion
is important," she says--but her business continues to grow.
In June, the Pericons are launching their own magazine,
Manhattan Syndicate, devoted to the affluent Manhattan
lifestyle.
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