Birkin Bag, every mention
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every year anyone Ben Gilbert 38David Rosenthal 33
Verbatim, from the transcripts: the passages where Birkin Bag comes up
Ferrari: What happens when you staple a luxury brand to a sports team? (Audio) · Acquired
- ▶ 3:14 Ben Gilbert There are 10 times more Birkin and Kelly bags made each year over at Hermes than there are Ferraris.
- ▶ 2:00:17 David Rosenthal Enzo didn't know a Birkin from a coach bag.
- ▶ 2:04:34 David Rosenthal Hermes doesn't have a couple hundred million teenage girls around the globe that have posters of Birkins on their walls that they have to please.
- ▶ 2:47:45 David Rosenthal Yes, these are the Birkins and the Kellys.
10 Years of Acquired (with Michael Lewis) · Acquired
- ▶ 16:33 Ben Gilbert Yeah, and at some point we kind of looked at each other and we were like, maybe if we just admit that we are heavily constrained, and then try to just lean into that constraint in the way that Hermes leans into every single Birkin bag must…
Epic Systems (MyChart) · Acquired
- ▶ 2:18:51 David Rosenthal It's like you're getting a stimulus to buy a handbag, and you could get the Target one, or you could get the Birkin bag, and they're all free.
Indian Premier League Cricket (Audio) · Acquired
- ▶ 2:26:20 Ben Gilbert The Birkin bag not heralded as anything special for like, 20 years.
Rolex (Audio) · Acquired
- ▶ 3:05 David Rosenthal Hermes doesn't sell a million Birkins every year.
- ▶ 3:07 Ben Gilbert There's probably 10 times more Rolexes sold than Birkins sold, or at least on that order.
- ▶ 3:12:38 David Rosenthal A Birkin is a Birkin, people.
- ▶ 3:29:05 David Rosenthal I think the Birkin bag is a really good comp for it, because price-wise, they're actually pretty similar.
- ▶ 3:29:09 David Rosenthal You know, you get a Birkin for, I don't know, 12,015 thousand dollars, like, I mean, it's an insane amount of money, but relative to what they could charge or what the secondary market prices are.
- ▶ 3:41:44 David Rosenthal So like, even though in any one category, they sell a lot less of a given skew, like far fewer Birkin bags than Rolex sells watches.
- ▶ 3:46:51 David Rosenthal You can't walk out of there with a Birkin, but you sure as hell can walk out of there with a scarf or a piece of furniture or, uh, you know, Apple watch strap, you know, et cetera, et cetera.
Mars Inc. - The Chocolate Story (Audio) · Acquired
- ▶ 25:58 Ben Gilbert It's in the same way that Hermes, the Birkin bag, was a bag for baby bottles.
Renaissance Technologies (Audio) · Acquired
- ▶ 3:05:00 Ben Gilbert We did knowingly spot some Birkin bags, though.
- ▶ 3:05:41 David Rosenthal My favorite is, we'll see if we can find it and link to it in the show notes, there's a video of one woman who's being interviewed who has a Minnie Kelly inside her Birkin.
Hermès (Audio) · Acquired
- ▶ 23:32 David Rosenthal Well, this bag looks exactly like the Birkins and the Kellys today, except a lot bigger.
- ▶ 24:25 David Rosenthal So this bag, this accessory that would become the Kelly and then the Bergen, they introduce it just at the right time.
- ▶ 44:39 Ben Gilbert I mean, the Birkin is the Birkin.
- ▶ 1:02:58 Ben Gilbert A Birken bag is a piece of art, but at least it also carries your stuff around.
- ▶ 1:08:14 David Rosenthal The Kelly and the Birkin are ends of ones, but these leather good products that transcend
- ▶ 1:12:13 David Rosenthal But the market isn't quite there yet in the way that it is today with the Birkins and the Kellys.
- ▶ 1:22:15 Ben Gilbert Shut down your shop where they still today make Birkin and Kelly bags by hand, one artisan at a time, in the most famous address in all of luxury and fashion.
- ▶ 1:27:45 Ben Gilbert Start to finish, a Kelly bag, and we'll talk about Birkin in a little bit, but similar story, is made by one craftsman.
- ▶ 1:28:43 David Rosenthal I don't think you're allowed to touch the Birkins and the Kellys when you start day one on the job.
- ▶ 1:28:49 David Rosenthal I believe you need at least another three years, if not more, before you're allowed to touch the Birkins and the Kellys.
- ▶ 1:46:15 Ben Gilbert Which is so funny because in interviews with her as the Birkin bag was
- ▶ 1:46:40 David Rosenthal But you definitely know the Birkin bag.
- ▶ 1:46:42 Ben Gilbert Or at least you know of the Birkin bag.
- ▶ 1:46:45 Ben Gilbert Seven out of 10, maybe eight out of 10 people listening to this couldn't spot it, but if you say a Birkin bag, you sort of know that it's like a unattainably expensive, high-status, hard-to-get handbag.
- ▶ 1:46:58 David Rosenthal Well, certainly if you follow the Hermes stock, you know what a Birkin bag is, even if you probably couldn't pick it out of a crowd.
- ▶ 1:48:59 Ben Gilbert By the way, how crazy is it that the Kelly bag was to hide a pregnancy, and the Birkin bag was designed to carry baby bottles and… Baby forward.
- ▶ 1:50:20 David Rosenthal The Birkin is born.
- ▶ 1:50:33 David Rosenthal You know, it's this sort of, it feels weird to say, more casual version of the Kelly, given that it's, you know, the Birkin bag, but it is.
- ▶ 1:50:42 Ben Gilbert And the Kelly has cleaner lines and this sort of beautiful, almost mid-century trapezoidal shape, whereas the Birkin, everything about it kind of screams function.
- ▶ 1:51:13 David Rosenthal He's like, any other company would have given up on this product, but it takes about five years before the Birkin bag becomes the Birkin bag.
- ▶ 1:53:08 Ben Gilbert and I had the most wonderful service and built a almost friendship with the associate who helped us through the whole process, spending as much time with me as they spent with someone coming in to pick up their Birkin bag.
- ▶ 1:54:41 Ben Gilbert But back to the Birkin bag, by 2001, it becomes so widely known that there is a waiting list, a sort of almost secret shrouded in mystery waiting list to get one of these things, that it is the
- ▶ 1:55:31 Ben Gilbert I actually haven't watched the episode, but this is a cultural touchstone for the Birkin going from something that is sort of, uh, whispered about in handbag circles and well-known by the wealthy elite to something that is now a very…
- ▶ 1:56:10 David Rosenthal A way of summing up what you're saying is, the hard thing about buying a Birkin is not coming up with the money.
- ▶ 1:56:23 David Rosenthal But also what you're talking about, you know, with echoes of our Nike episode here, the minute that you are in possession of a Birkin bag, you could immediately sell it for a lot more than what you paid for it.
- ▶ 1:56:58 David Rosenthal Yeah, that would be the last Birkin bag that you ever buy.
- ▶ 1:58:00 Ben Gilbert So today, everything we're talking about here, the Birkin bag, the Kelly bag, these 10 to 100,000 dollar retail handbags, depending on the type of exotic leather and everything, and the scarcity, are referred to as a category of Veblen…
- ▶ 1:58:50 Ben Gilbert Birkenbags sell below the market clearing price.
- ▶ 2:00:53 David Rosenthal In order to maintain the image of Hermes, and specifically the Birkins and the Kellys, as a brand and a product that is not accessible to everyone.
- ▶ 2:01:51 Ben Gilbert There was a study that found that the Birkin 30, which is one of the sizes in Togo Leather, didn't even equal the rate of inflation in the U.S.
- ▶ 2:02:14 Ben Gilbert They decided, you know what, Birkins are 20 now, not 12.
- ▶ 2:02:45 Ben Gilbert The Wall Street Journal estimated in 2020 that there's about a 120,000 of the combined Birkin and Kelly created each year.
- ▶ 2:03:18 Ben Gilbert I think the Birkin bag, the retail price was around 2000 dollars when it launched in 1984, so call it maybe 6000 dollars inflation-adjusted.
- ▶ 2:03:58 Ben Gilbert Ok, so, 1984, Birkin release, doesn't sell well for the first five years, then it becomes this cultural touchstone and gains steam every year after that.
- ▶ 2:04:49 Ben Gilbert Right away, because the product had so much of the brand in it, like you knew exactly what you were gonna get from going to the Taylor concert, because you're extremely familiar with the brand, but it's not necessarily well understood that…
- ▶ 2:05:54 David Rosenthal And the culmination of that is the Birkin bag and everything that that represents.
- ▶ 2:14:33 David Rosenthal I mean, for God's sakes, a Sex and the City episode was just dedicated to the Birkin.
- ▶ 2:23:33 David Rosenthal And building up the Birkin, the Kelly.
- ▶ 2:45:14 David Rosenthal 120,000 Birkins and Kellys produced every year?
- ▶ 2:53:38 Ben Gilbert Good luck getting a Birkin bag.
- ▶ 2:59:13 David Rosenthal Axel and Pierre-Alexei talk about this all the time when they're asked about, oh, XYZ flashy celebrity, you know, is carrying a Birkin bag, blah, blah, blah.
- ▶ 3:14:58 Ben Gilbert David, as I mentioned earlier, in 2020, the Wall Street Journal estimated that about a 120,000 Birkin and Kelly bags were made in that year.
- ▶ 3:15:27 Ben Gilbert I saw zero Birkin or Kelly bags, even on display.
- ▶ 3:15:40 Ben Gilbert I mean, if you just do some napkin math at 25 hours per bag, that's 1500 craftsmen just making Birkins and Kellys all day long.
- ▶ 3:17:57 Ben Gilbert If they were out there cranking the prices of Birkin bags, you might think less of them.
- ▶ 3:28:40 Ben Gilbert In terms of trying on the handbags, when you do get your moment in the sun, and you have your 90 minute appointment, and your glass of champagne, and you have the opportunity to buy one of the two or three Birkin bags that they have in…
- ▶ 3:35:33 David Rosenthal I don't think we want to go down this rabbit hole, but there is a whole TikTok and Instagram culture of Hermes sales associate appointments and Birkin appointments and reveals and all that, and like, you know, it's huge.
- ▶ 3:36:46 Ben Gilbert And they have the freedom to buy, quote unquote, buy, basically stock, and get allocations of whatever they want at their store, under the constraint that you can't ask for a 120,000 Birkin bags at your one store.
- ▶ 3:38:44 Ben Gilbert It's not like you can go online and buy a Birkin bag, but there's not even a product detail page with like a sold out button.
- ▶ 3:38:50 Ben Gilbert There's just this educational page about what Birkin bags are all about and how neat the designs are and what the category is.
- ▶ 3:48:41 Ben Gilbert Farmed crocodiles in mass quantities in order to create the Himalaya print Birkin bags.
- ▶ 3:51:09 Ben Gilbert I understand Hermes' position of not wanting these bags to get out there and have their brand on it, and, you know, people realize, like, oh, some Birkin bags look kind of crappy, but
- ▶ 4:05:37 David Rosenthal Like, especially in the early days when it's working or not working, like I'm thinking about, you know, launching the Birkin and all that.
Porsche (with Doug DeMuro) · Acquired
- ▶ 51:09 Ben Gilbert It's not a Birkin bag like brands like this are so valuable because it has both the breadth and the depth.