I like the hunting aspect of it. Being the competitive type, it seems that all my hobbies have a huge hunting component to them: Classic cars, furniture, being on 5 Alden shell "in production" preorders for this year, etc.
I also think you are dead on eluther. But I think, like most things in life, this is a predominately economic driven model (One of my key interests). In essence, apart from obviously loving the stuff, I am curious as to how do they make money? How much of all of this is simply clever marketing? I would love for Gary and Fycus to pitch in as they surely have deeper knowledge than my dilettante hypotheses after dinner and several glasses of wine.
- Unit margins - Assume they are ok, but not super high for them, given NYC production, the focus on quality/ construction, the fabrics, margin requirements of the stockists and, what is to me, a still very reasonable retail price point that EG sets
- Therefore, some volume is required to drive profitability - Hence EG needs to drive profitability by either keeping overhead down (I am sure they do that) or, more importantly, by driving some volume. Given that the stockiest list appears to grow and given that they have bigger distribution through Barney's, Steve Allan, etc., I assume that the volume might be higher than we think?
- Restricting demand and obscuring distribution is a clever marketing tool - Very similar to Visvim and like-brands. This not only keeps the mystique and "credibility' aspect up, it's just clever marketing and brand positioning to limit supply while the fan boys (e.g. us) are in love, discuss every detail to death and with that, give lots of free marketing right here, right now -Usually, you also then want to optimize your pricing with that to maximize profits but unsure how much of this is going on at EG (Intuitively, surely yes. With a clever economic/ marketing guy in the background? Perhaps?)
Lastly, if you want to deploy a model like that, you better be damn good at what you are doing. And EG/ Daiki Suzuki is a master designer and crafts man. How long are they around now? 1999? Keeping the fashion world interested and us hunting for so long, you know that what he does is first rate - full of innovation, strikes an emotional cord, quite unique and special. Even our continued complaining about sizing is part of it. That's why we write 80 pages of StyFo dribble every season and that's why even the Kunk wears EG and admires our philosophic-economic sidebar, right?
Now, can anybody get me that f*cking knit in L, please?
Have a good night,