Ch. 7 - Business Marketing

Senor Christian Louboutin has lead his brand through another exponential growth spurt in the past 6 months when the designer launched the hashtag revolution #LouboutinWorld for his brand, ecouraging consumers to hashtag the brand to their Louboutins inviting them to "their world". Needless to say, the stickiness of the hashtag has been huge, they are gathering over 100,000 picture feeds from consumers on a daily basis. "It's huge" said Christian Louboutin during an interview, he's allocated the social media idea it's own "department"where media from there is then hand selcted by the designer and a marketed on their website. 

Neiman Marcus Display

They blame it all on the social media growth, but it's no coincidence that they're partnership with Neiman Marcus and Bergdorf Goodman has strengthened this past year as well, making the brand more accessible to the general public, despite their increase in sales on their regular line. During an interview with New York Times, Louboutin stated the following about their price spike "Euro's strength against the dollar and growing competition for materials from Asian factories, all of which make it more expensive to produce shoes in Europe. Some luxury companies are even buying their own tanneries to cut out the middleman, but there's really no way to get around it: shoes are just crazy expensive". Louboutin says his own production costs have actually doubled over the past five years which may be why a pair of black boots now cost up to $2,645. 

Some brands, of course, would rather eat the rising material and production costs to keep their prices level (Manolo Blahnik has done this for the past three seasons, for example). But when customers seem willing to spend whatever it takes, it's hard to imagine why any shoemaker would refrain from jacking up their prices, especially the "King of the Red Sole".