人手一个的奢侈品手袋还能算奢侈品吗？

Coach, the maker of luxury handbags and other sundry accessories, has been having a rough year. Poor sales prompted a leadership shuffle in July, and after a particularly bad earnings report Tuesday, the stock took its biggest dive in years. Which is odd, because the luxury market has been doing really well overall, fed by a global elite with assets that seem to have fully recovered from the recessionary dumps. So what's the problem?

Part of it is certainly hard-charging competition from newer brands, like Kate Spade and Michael Kors, that appeal to a younger audience. For them, Coach is their rich auntie's label, more 5th Avenue than Mission District.

But the bigger problem may have been growing too fast in the first place. Coach, under pressure from investors to boost revenue, added line after line of merchandise and dozens of factory outlet stores over the past few years, fueling a dramatic run-up in earnings -- to the point where Coach isn't really Coach anymore.

"If you're a luxury brand with outlet stores, maybe you're not a luxury brand," mused Tim Hanson of Motley Fool Funds on a podcast Tuesday. "They took a growth-at-any-costs attitude that has done brand damage that they are paying for, but at the time that they were doing [it], it fielded stock price gains because it allowed them to put up very heady revenue numbers."

It's a problem all luxury brands face, especially public ones: How can you both sell enough on a quarterly basis to make Wall Street happy while at the same time maintaining the aura of exclusivity that got you where you were in the first place?

Mark Cohen, a professor of retail at the Columbia University Business School, ticks off the companies that have fallen into the ubiquity trap. Bill Blass "never met a licensee he didn't do a deal with," he says. Neiman Marcus "has opened stores in the last seven, eight years that they wish they could take back." Saks Fifth Avenue "took developer deals 25 years ago that gave them the immediate appearance of growth, which was false." Martha Stewart, Ralph Lauren, and Barney's haven't done themselves any favors either by going mass market either.

"It's the designer toilet seat problem," Cohen says. "The luxury business is entirely contingent on limited availability, limited supply, and limited exposure."

In recent years, big luxury retailers have found a way around the problem by pivoting to Asia, leveraging their iconic status in places like Japan and China to achieve huge sales without tarnishing their image at home. Coach hasn't had as much success there, perhaps because it doesn't have the same kind of world-wide super-appeal of a Prada or Gucci. Hermes and Tiffany's are typically seen as the gold standard in maintaining brand purity -- compensating for small sales volume with really, really high margins. Privately-held Godiva has managed to operate on two tracks, selling pricey chocolates both in convenience stores and its own, super-luxe retail spaces.

Coach is also at a disadvantage because it's not part of a large umbrella corporation that can compensate for slow growth in one of its portfolio companies with fast growth in another. A lot of the luxury marketplace falls into a few big spheres of influence: LVMH owns Hennessy, Louis Vuitton, Veuve Clicquot, Dom Perignon, Givenchy, Marc Jacobs, Fendi, Christian Dior, Belvedere, Thomas Pink, Donna Karan, Sephora, and many more. Richemont owns Montblanc, Cartier, Piaget, and Van Cleef & Arpels. Kering owns Gucci, Balenciaga, Alexander McQueen, Stella McCartney, etc. Because they're diversified, they can invest in new designers, much like a big record label can -- or could, in better days -- take chances on minor artists on the off chance they take off.

"Between the moment they invest in them and the moment they will get their return will be five to seven years," says Ketty Maisonrouge, a luxury branding consultant. "If you look at most brands, what's successful today, they all try to understand what it is to make sure you don't grow too fast."

If Coach is to recover, Wall Street is going to need to let it ease off the gas pedal, make like Burberry, and realize that a sterling brand and massive sales are a contradiction in terms.

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蔻驰

攻势猛烈的新兴品牌自然是挑战之一，如凯特·思蓓

但更大的问题可能来自于产品初期的过速发展。投资者急于追求利润的增长，蔻驰因此不得不在过去的几年间不断扩大生产规模并增开几十家工厂直销店，这样做的确使其利润有了飞跃，但这时蔻驰已不再是原来的蔻驰。

蒂姆·汉森是美国著名投资论坛“彩衣傻瓜”

不仅是蔻驰，全球所有奢侈品牌，尤其是公众品牌，都在面临这样一个问题：如何在保持一个令华尔街满意的季度销量的同时维持产品独有的格调而不违背其品牌初衷。

哥伦比亚大学商学院零售学教授马克·科恩列举了几个陷入“普遍性陷阱”的公司实例。比如比尔·布拉斯

科恩说：“这关乎设计上的供求问题，奢侈品需要做到供不应求，要知道这个行业完全是依靠限量生产、限量供应和限量发行来运作的。”

近年来，一些奢侈品零售巨头找到了两全其美的办法，即以亚洲为销售重心，利用自身“品牌效应”在中国、日本等国取得巨额销量，而丝毫不影响在国内的形象。但是蔻驰没有像普拉达

蔻驰的另一个劣势在于它不隶属于任何一个大公司，因此也不存在销售业绩较好与较差的投资组合公司之间的互补。许多奢侈品公司旗下都有多个颇具影响力的品牌，如法国酩悦·轩尼诗－路易·威登集团

奢侈品顾问凯蒂·梅森卢兹称：“投资者从投入资金到收回成本大概需要5到7年的时间。你看那些现在很成功的品牌，他们中大部分都试图找到规律，来确保自身发展速度不过快。”

蔻驰要想重振旗鼓，华尔街就应该适当放手，效仿巴宝莉