Hermés – The Iconic Luxury Brand

Hermès of Paris or Hermes, is high end French luxury design brand. It

is world’s most valuable luxury brand which have the iconic status
due to its history and high-quality products. In the world of luxury,
Hermes have a superiority because of the craftsmanship, quality,
authencity, rich heritage that have been applied to the production
process.
Unlike the misconception, Hermes is not a conglomerate. It does not
have portfolio of brands. Hermes is family-owned business. Hermes
offers wide range of products for instance watches, fragrances, ready
to wear, saddlery and many more, but it is best known for its
industry leading leather goods.
Celebrities like Victoria Beckham, Jennifer Lopez, Heidi Klum is
obsessed with the luxury brand.

[Type here]
According to the law of luxury marketing, making the product scarce,
not pandering to the client demands and wishes leads to high selling
prices but many brands are not able to achieve success from it. Let’s
find out how Hermes can do it.

BACKGROUND
Hermés, founded by Thierry Hermes in 1837 who established it at a
harness workshop in Paris. His aim was to serve noblemen by
offering them high-quality harness and riding gear as at that time hat
horse was the medium of transport. In the early 20th century, the
shop was relocated to 24 Rue Du Faubourg Saint-Honore where it
remains till the date by Charles-Emile Hermes, Thierry Hermes’ son.
In 1800s, Charles Emile saddlery and started offering it goods in
retail. In 1900s, firm began selling Haute Courroies bags which was
designed for riders to carry their saddles.

The brand expanded over the years and now known to be the most
prominent luxury brand. Hermes introduced Leather gold jacket
which was Made for Prince of Wales. They offer leather bags in 1922
and introduced travel bags which was quite a hit. They added
watches, tableware to its portfolio.
Hermes has grown to be one of the most iconic brands with various
segment of the market consisting of 306 stores, turnover of 3.5
billion in terms of financial year 2019/20 and market cap of 100+
billion.

BUSINESS STRATEGY
[Type here]
 Hermes offers variety of products. The categories of the product are
leather goods, silks and textiles, ready to wear (Women’s and
Men’s), furniture, jewellery, saddlery, home accessories and
furnishing, tableware, accessories including footwear, belts, gloves
etc.
The Brand has many stores around the world and to ensure the
exclusivity of the products. They adopted following marketing
strategies to ensure the exclusivity of the brand.

CRAFTSMANSHIP
Making of the product is considered as work of art. One product is
started and finished only by one artisan using her/his tools. As a
result, it takes a long time to complete the product for instance it
takes 48 hours to create Bikin.
Hermes has established a network with best artisans. The workers
undergo house training over a year. The brand provide studio for
particular artisans to ensure to be specific. It allows the artisans to
work with the product from starting to end. Moreover, they apply
their stamp which have their own serial number. This provide the
benefit to the customer at the time if the goods are damaged, the
owner can send it to repair to the very artist who made it.

PATIENCE
Hermes consider ‘Patience’ as a very strong principle and added it to
the strategy to achieve the highest quality in the production. Hermes
promotes the queue system. Customers who wish to buy Birkin bags
need to place an order for it and then have to wait for few months

[Type here]
for the product to be ready. They can’t just walk to the store and get
the Birkin bag.
The brand does not follow the laws that have been provided by the
market but the queue for Hermes bags does create surplus of
demand which overflows into ither Hermes products like belts and
watches as a consolation as people can buy the quickly.
To safeguard the exclusivity and quality of the product, all the new
employees and artisans goes through three-day training session
called ‘Inside the orange box’ that outlines about the brand’s
founders, history of development over the centuries. The motto of
this training is to make every employee known to the heritage,
culture and philosophy.

AUTHENTICITY
As we all know that brands collaborate with celebrity to promote
their products but Hermes does not follow this strategy. To the point
where only A- list celebrities and people who are very wealthy can
afford the premium products is a representation of authentic
certification of the brand. It also does not follow the policy of region-
based products, they sell similar products all over the world. The
brand never offers discount and have the scheme of ‘limited edition’
strategy to show its dedication for providing authentic products.

INNOVATION
Hermes is always believed to be the brand that gives attention to
creativity, details to make their products unique. Since 1937, Silk
carrés was coloured on only one side, although the dye escaped to

[Type here]
the other side but former was brighter than the latter. To get the
print on the both side new approach needed to be discovered as
using two carrés together or using thicker fabric was not the
solution.
After years of testing Hermes was able to unravel the secret and
using adequate and complex technique, they introduced double
printed scarves in their spring/summer session of 2020.Giving second
life to discarded leather scraps can be considered as an innovation.
The most accurate example of innovation in terms of Hermes is Petit
h, it was creation of Pascale Mussard, THE great-great-great
granddaughter of Thierry Hermés. The product refers to reverse
creation, it is made by unused Hermès materials which are combines
together with the aim of making it valuable and enjoyable products.

COLLABORATION
The significant of the notion of collaboration is part of the brand
strategy. Hermes tends to invite artist to design their iconic products.
The artist is selected by senior Hermès directors. They participate in
collaboration with the artist for different products categories.
Collaboration that are done for the scarfs are under the brand name,
although they collab with brands outside the brands portfolio of the
company. For instance, Saint Louis glassware, Lobb shoes and boots.
They collab with Bugatti Veyron and created Bugatti Veyron Fbg par
Hermés sports car which was the most expensive car in the world.
They associated with Euro copter to design a helicopter with the
price of USD 8 million.

[Type here]
BRAND COMMUNICATION
Communication is very prominent element of Hermés marketing
strategies. It always been steady with the principle of Hermés
‘exclusivity’ and ‘heritage’. The concept of marketing campaigns are
very clear and attractive and shows their dedication towards culture,
history and uniqueness.
Brand does not want to sell directly. The company sponsors the
events that fits with their image. They also invest in different form of
channels to show their products like television, online and print
media.
Collaborate with artist and designer to promote their products.
Hermés brands at the beginning of its era was a saddlery
manufactures, that’s why to sync with the history, they sponsors a
lot of horse racing event. The company become the official sponsor
of US Jumping Team in 2014. They use the event to showcase their
iconic leather products and time- honoured association with horse.
During the pandemic, brand displayed their products online and
provide the benefit to buy them easily with consideration of all the
safety, which led to new platform for the brand to approach new
customers and open the eyes that digital business is not harmful for
the image of the brand.

CONCLUSION
Hermes is a no doubt a ultra-luxury design house
With the marketing strategy of limited edition, scarcity, exclusivity
and skilful artisans, Hermes has tremendous growth rates year on
year. They are considered to be innovative among other luxury
houses is the indication of brand’s commitment to launch iconic

[Type here]
products that are unique and have a mark of superiority. The notion
of keeping alive the heritage, craftmanship and rarity leads to setting
them apart from others.
The company’s future is no doubt safe under the hands of restrained
future generation, although it needs to evolve constantly with the
pace of the fashion and trends to maintain the brand’s rarity and
superiority in the market.

[Type here]