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To save a few euros on a $10,000 watch, Bulgari stopped polishing the underside of the band to a fine gleam. It's using cheaper boxes and bottles for its no-doubt obscenely overpriced perfume. And it's trying to find a way to pay less for its jewels.
Which is stupid. To save .05 percent of the price of the watch, and giving an interview to the Times about it (dumb!), the company is just going to piss off some of the few remaining suckers otherwise happy to pay five figures just so they can tell time.
This sounds like sort of thing Vogue editor Anna Wintour railed against at an even last week:
In response to a question from Auletta about whether the economic downturn poses temporary or fundamental problems for magazine publishing, Wintour cautioned first against "over-reacting."
"I see a lot of people in my industry who are over-reacting. Stores that are over-discounting, designers who are creating collections for the price and what sells rather than to reflect who they are." Straitened times, she said, should not mean the end of luxury.
If slashing prices is a dumb move, cutting quality while keeping prices the same is reckless. Not that we shed a tear for the unpolished band on a rich man's new watch, but we'd hate to see Nicola Bulgari have to sell his "collection of vintage American automobiles" just so he can become a case study on how to run a luxury goods retailer into the ground."I see a lot of people in my industry who are over-reacting. Stores that are over-discounting, designers who are creating collections for the price and what sells rather than to reflect who they are." Straitened times, she said, should not mean the end of luxury.
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