Ged Carroll

Category: luxury | 奢華 | 사치 | 贅沢

Over the space of 20 years, luxury changed enormously. The Japanese had been a set of new consumers for luxury, but in terms of numbers they hadn’t eclipsed the US as the biggest market for luxury.

China’s ascent into the WTO (World Trade Organisation) made a lot of business people and politicians a lot richer. China challenged the US in terms of luxury market size. On their rise, Chinese consumers changed a lot in their sophistication as they educated themselves on luxury consumption.

These new consumers picked up new traits such as wine drinking. This also meant that luxury goods became new asset classes as Chinese money looked to acquire only the best. Chinese culture in turn impacted luxury design. Chinese new year became more important than Christmas.

Then there was the second generation money. Young rather than old consumers. Consumers who were looking for something less formal, either because they didn’t wear anything but streetwear or they worked in the creative classes rather than the traditional professions and high finance.

The industry had traditionally avoided rap artists and R&B singers, now Jay Z and Beyonce are the face of Tiffanys and Fendi had collaborated with Rihanna.

They no longer wanted to have to wear a jacket and tie to have afternoon tea at the Mandarin. They took an eclectic look more attuned to the Buffalo Collective than Vogue Italia.

You had hybridisation with the street to create a new category of luxe streetwear in a way that also owes a debt to football casual terrace wear and the pain.

Now you have Zegna badge engineering approach shoes from alpine brand La Sportiva and Prada has done a similar thing with adidas’ iconic Stan Smith tennis shoes. Balenciaga with their Speed Sock looks like a mix between Nike’s flyknit football boots and the Nike Footscape sole.

As I have written elsewhere on this blog:

Luxury has traditionally reflected status. Goods of a superior nature that the ‘wrong sort’ of people would never be able to afford. Luxury then became a symbol that you’d made it. In Asian markets, particularly China, luxury became a tool. People gifted luxury products to make relationships work better. It also signified that you are the kind of successful business person that partners could trust. You started to see factory managers with Gucci man bags and premium golfwear to signal their success. Then when the scions of these business people and figures in authority were adults, luxury has become about premium self expression.

  • Mr Switch & things that made last week

    The winning set by Mr Switch from the 2014 DMC mixing championship. What becomes apparent from the Mr Switch performance is how much digital changes turntablism as an art form and skill. Mr Switch uses a Churchill speech before cutting into hip hop standards. In the past there would be people each side to feed the records in. There is no stickered vinyl to mark cut and start points. Instead these seem to be preset on the laptop using Serato Scratch Live.

    There was much more of a focus on cutting rather than ‘musical scratches’ a la DJ Supreme.

    But a good number of skills remain, look at Mr Switch cutting from one to another record. This would be familiar to someone who had seen Chad Jackson, Cash Money or DJ Cheese win their crown. The behind the back cross fader flick is a flourish popular from when I started DJing.

    Tai Ping Advertising Co. Limited’s advert for Audi is as much an advertisement for the city of Hong Kong as much as it is for the car

    There is also a ‘making of’ film as well. The execution is right for Hong Kong, but isn’t necessarily on brand for Audi. Also the sound effects are very overdone for the pedestrian driving manoeuvres being undertaken. It makes a refreshing change from the usual Audi marketing, sponsoring society parties in showrooms

    Carli Davidson shake puppies video is just too awesome. The slow motion video captures the amount of force going on. Look at the torque steer as the front and rear paws slide in opposite direction with  each shake. Secondly the fluid nature of biology is obviously looking at the shakes themselves. You can see a similar effect when you see boxers hitting each other, but this is much cuter. 

    Ice Cube on Sesame Street. I can’t believe I just wrote that, but this is for real. It shows how hip hop has moved from underground culture that those in power tried to crush, to the mainstream. So what is it like? Ice Cube and Elmo is really, really good. 

    And finally for more serious content, a great article in Advertisng Age about Kraft getting real about online advertising, I am curious to know what took them so long and how this will impact online advertising around the world. Agencies have known about this for years, Unilever and Procter & Gamble have been trying to get change for a few years. Kraft is very behind the curve with this realisation. 

  • Beheadings + more things

    The Laborers Who Keep Dick Pics and Beheadings Out of Your Facebook Feed | WIRED – moderation might make up half the staffing numbers of social media sites. The materials is not only traumatic for the moderation staff, but often criminal evidence. Deleting beheadings might be disposing of war crimes evidence. As repulsive as beheadings are, they could be responsible for ensuring criminals get the justice that they deserve.

    China’s Assault on Corruption Enters the C-Suite | WSJ – could also be encouraging management to move the business out of the state sector

    HP Eyes Chinese Partner For Router Division | Young’s China Business – not convinced about the upside for Huawei given that it has already built an enterprise business

    Programmatic buying no solution without data breakthrough | Campaign Asia – data sharing a key issue

    China Mobile’s ARPU Drops While Net Profit Sinks 9.7% – voice calls and SMS down presumably due to OTT messaging services

    Daring Fireball: Retailers Are Disabling NFC to Block Apple Pay – not convinced but it is an interesting move, they think that mobile wallets give them a chance to disintermediate merchant services (bank debit card services, credit card services, charge cards)

    LG unveils Nuclun, its very own smartphone chip | The Inquirer – interesting move by LG; a stratagem to cut costs and differentiate in a commoditised Android handset marketplace. Expect the chipset to move into other consumer electronics

    Want to dance? Cabinet approves revised law easing regulations on dance clubs | Asahi Shimbun – Japan eases laws that was killing its dance music scene, probably about the Olympics in 2020. The LDP will be kill joys on nightlife in the future again

    Facebook and Yahoo Find a New Way to Save the Web’s Lost Email Addresses | WIRED – Aol should be crying out be part of this as well surely?

    The Asian Luxury Market Is Stumbling – Business Insider – Thailand and Hong Kong apparently

    footnoted* — What’s $8m to Google? – interesting article about Nikesh Arora. Is this similar to his departure from T-Mobile?

    Procter & Gamble Sets Duracell on New, Independent Course – NYTimes.com – interesting move, how will it affect Duracell distribution?

    High-tech jewellery to help you unplug | Tech blog – interesting and smart (from a design perspective) lack of ambition for the devices, context is king

    William Gibson: The Future Will View Us “As a Joke” | Mother Jones – any interview with William Gibson is a good thing

    Peak Google | stratechery by Ben Thompson – interesting article

    Apple Strengthens Pull of Its Orbit With Each Device – NYTimes.com – interesting analysis – Google is going on a similar trajectory and Microsoft has already been there for a while (paywall)

    Luxury goods: The end of ostentation | Campaign Asia – APAC markets less interested in flash luxury (paywall)

    Tod’s ignites ecommerce sales with online only handbag promotion | Luxury Daily – limited edition bag rather than discounts

    Material Design Icons | Prosthetic Knowledge – Google have open sourced a pile of icons

    False and misleading? Advertising on social media in China and Hong Kong | Freshfields – great summary of the legal position (PDF)

    Quick Reply – PressRush – interesting idea for the media

    94% of Chinese shoppers research on mobile while in-store. | Resonance China – comparison numbers with other countries in Europe

    China collecting Apple iCloud data; attack coincides with launch of new iPhone | GreatFire.org – probably implemented to deal with the increased device security that the FBI is wringing their hands about

  • Dorothy & things that made last week

    Dorothy

    Dorothy by iStrategy Labs is a really interesting use of haptic for discrete navigation information. Glanceable interfaces are important for smartphone devices and wearables to work in the next world. Haptics allow this to be taken to the next level, encouraging glances only when needed, or not at all in some circumstances. Technology mediated behaviour would become much more fluid, indistinguishable from a human with no technology, but perfect contextual knowledge.

    A very simple example of this would be the Jæger-LeCoultre Memovox alarm watch from 1950, that relied on a mechanical self-winding (automatic) watch movement.

    Kovert Designs

    Kovert Designs seem to be taking a similar approach with their jewellery; as does Casio with their BlueTooth G-shocks. BlueTooth LE (low energy) dramatically changes how the technology can be used, making wearables to wireless tags a much more practical proposition.

    William Gibson

    I am really looking forward to William Gibson’s new book and this interview with American magazine Mother Jones shows that he has not lost his edge in telling truths from the future. The scope of his   William Gibson: The Future Will View Us “As a Joke” | Mother Jones

    Porter Tokyo collaboration with Isaora

    Porter’s collaboration with Isaora are always interesting, but I have really fallen for the Filo pack, with its digital smoke print. Porter Tokyo have built the bag out of Cordura to create the kind of burley design you’d expect from more tactical vendors. The digital smoke pattern is ideal for urban living including hiding the grime of everyday commutes. Unfortunately I can’t justify buying it because I have a perfectly good Mystery Ranch bag.

    Physical interface design

    I really like this physical interface designed for use on iPads. The pictures under glass interface has its limitations which this design draws attention to.

    This design takes the best of software and physical design and melds them together. Of course, how this can be commercialised is another matter of finding the killer application.

  • Turnaround plan at Yahoo! + more

    Yahoo CEO Set to Refresh Turnaround Plan – WSJ – the turnaround plan sounds like desperate cost cutting. Yahoo! leadership have burned through a lot of runway and not made the best use of the company’s media assets. Mayer’s turnaround plan looked very much like Ross Levinsohn’s turnaround plan. The Levinsohn turnaround plan was in turn similar to pilot projects done when Terry Semel was CEO of Yahoo!

    Qatar to buy stake in HK department store operator | RTHK – interesting move getting them to buy a chunk of Sogo, probably because Macau is likely to pick up much of the growth in luxury sales

    LVMH: It May be Time for a Smartwatch – WSJ – not so sure that this is a good move, unless it is a fashion watch rather than a luxury item it could damage brands rather like the quartz lines did to luxury watches

    ISPs told to block fake luxury goods sales – FT.com – sounds like an inefficient game of whack-a-mole; they should go after the payments providers instead. That’s where the weak spot is

    App enables Chinese women to take selfies with sanitary pads – Mumbrella Asia  – uses the packs to activate an AR app allowing photos with the company mascot, but still WTF

    MediaTek, Acer working on smart surveillance solutions | WantChinaTimes – story about internet of things but the headline is telling…

    Sony’s plans to pull out of Chinese market an ‘open secret’ | WantChinaTimes – the big issue is that China is likely to be a good market for Sony’s high end consumer electronics products

    Uber fired a driver for tweeting mean stuff about them – douced

    Behold the awesome power of the spreadsheet, destroyer of worlds | Quartz – rather reminds me of the introduction to ‘Accidental Empires’ by Bob Cringely

    Old Technopanic in New iBottles | Cato @ Liberty – or why the government arguments for weak crypto are as much use as a chocolate teapot

  • Wearable devices

    The Apple Watch launch gave me a chance to go back and revisit the development of wearable computing and my experience with wearable devices.

    Wearable computing had it’s genesis in academic research; some of it government funded. For instance DARPA had a hand in the US Army Land Warrior programme. France has it’s FÉLIN programme and Germany IdZ. All the programmes sought to provide soldiers with location data  and in communication with their colleagues.  Unsurprising  key issues for the soldiers involved included:

    • Weight
    • How cumbersome the equipment was
    • Battery life
    • Reliability / robust product design
    • Value of information provided

    It is worth bearing in mind these criteria when thinking about wearables in a consumer context.  SonyEricsson’s LiveView remote control for Android handsets launched the current spurt in ‘smart’ watches. Sony made a deliberate decision to position the LiveView as an augmentation to the smartphone. Think of it as a thin client for your wrist.

    Samsung and Apple in some of their communications have looked to muddy the water in the way that they presented their devices, despite the fact that both of them rely on the smartphone  in a slightly more sophisticated way than LiveView.

    Much of the early drive in wearables has been around health and fitness where the likes of Nike and Jawbone reinvented the kind of service provided to dedicated fitness enthusiasts by the likes of Polar and Suunto. These devices are primarily about simplification of design to democratise the technology.

    By contrast Samsung and Apple have a greater ambition for their devices in terms of the what they can do. I don’t know what the killer app is for a general purpose device and I suspect neither do Apple or Samsung.

    Wearables are not particularly robust by design. I have had three Nike Fuelbands fail in 12 months or so. Compare this to the Casio G-Shock and IWC watches that I generally wear. I don’t have to think about wearing my watch; I didn’t worry about washing my hands or stepping in the shower or the swimming pool with it on. You couldn’t do that with a Samsung Gear.

    A second unknown factor is how often consumers would be willing to upgrade a smart watch? When one thinks about the expected price point of Apple’s premium watches, it is similar to the products coming out of Switzerland. The cases and straps are well made, but the price of buying an Omega watch is also about buying into a service centre that will keep the watch going for decades to come. Apple’s iPod Classic barely lasted 13 years. The electronic innards of an iWatch would be built from components that would become obsolete, even if Apple wanted to service them.

    Would Apple compromise with a modular design that could make it easy to swap out smart watch innards in a case as an analogy to having a watch serviced? I don’t think so, if one looks at Apple’s design move over the past decade towards sealed computing appliances: the iPod, the iPhone, the MacBook Air and the Retina MacBook.

    More information
    FÉLIN | Army Technology
    SonyEricsson LiveView remote and the changing face of mobile computing | renaissance chambara