002. Secure the Bag: How to Buy a Birkin
Next time your partner gets mad at you for buying a bag, let him know a Birkin has a better rate of return than stocks or gold!
On today's episode, Amber will break down how to buy a Birkin bag from the quintessential Old Money brand, Hermès. Amber unravels the secrets and strategies behind obtaining this coveted designer item. It's no easy feat, but the annual gains make it worth the investment.
From tips on landing a leather appointment to building relationships with your SA, this is the guide to securing a bag that's not only stylish but is building generational wealth.
In today's episode, we cover the following:
The different styles and price points of a Birkin (1:54)
A lesson in supply and demand by Hermès (4:08)
Rules of buying a Birkin Bag: understanding the Holy Trinity of Hermès (6:22)
Securing the bag: building a relationship with an SA (7:30)
In Europe? Here's a special hack for snagging a leather appointment (11:50)
Tips for shopping in-store (13:44)
Alternatives to securing a Birkin bag at an affordable price (14:52)
Why you should avoid counterfeit at all costs (17:58)
TRANSCRIPT
Speaker 1 (00:02)
Welcome.
Speaker 2 (00:04)
To Old Money, a show dedicated to helping you build the trust fund you wish you were born with. Ladies who lunch, listen up. Life is not about looking rich. I want you to build a life and a legacy that feels rich in every sense of the word. If you're ready to stack cash, talk shop, and trade insider secrets, you're in the right place. These are the new rules to Old Money, so let's get after it.
Speaker 1 (00:30)
Hello, and welcome back to The Old Money Podcast. I'm your host, Amber, and I'm here for just a little quickie with you today. We're going to call these a little amuse-bouche. You might say, What the hell is an amuse-bouche? I'm here to tell you that when you go to an upscale restaurant, something a little fancier, the chef might send out a little something special, like a little small, savory item before your food gets served. It's just a little taste to whet your appetite. That's what I'm here to do today with this amuse-bouche. There's no birdie, no bogey, no stock tip. I'm just cutting right to the chase and we're going to get right to it. Today, I'm here to tell you what I know about how to secure the bag. There is only one bag that matters, we know this. It's the Hermés Birkin. It's always been the hardest bag to secure. We've seen the stories. We've seen Samantha Jones try to fake purchase one for Lucy Liu to keep on her own. I haven't watched it, but I heard that they did the same storyline again on the new Sex and the City. Just like that, I decided to never invest my time in watching it again because the first season was so painful and I just can't put myself through that.
Speaker 1 (01:43)
But instead, we're going to talk today about the game of getting the Birkin. They've always been playing this game of hide and seek and supply and demand, so let's break it down. First of all, the retail price of a Birkin, if you're going to buy one in the store, is going to start at between $10,000 and $13,000, depending on the size, the material, the color, all of that good stuff. From a Birkin 25 to a Birkin 30, 35, or 40, it's going to obviously range in price, and you would think that the larger ones would just be more expensive, but actually, the Birkin 25 has been in much higher demand recently, so this size is generally more expensive than the others. Of course, the material will affect the price. You could get anything from the calf box leather, which the original leather that they used on the first Birkin, but that one's really susceptible to scratches and things, or the togo leather, or the Clemence leather, cow hide leather. All of these different materials will influence the price, and probably the most obvious way to think about this is if you get one of these ostrich or crocodile or alligator bags, it's going to be ridiculously expensive, right?
Speaker 1 (02:52)
Then further influencing the price would be the color. There are some core colors like the black, this gold color, which is the brown one that you see, the Taupe, there's a gray slate color, and those are the core collection. But actually, really interestingly are that greens and pinks are the most desirable and actually have the highest resale value. They're more rare, and there's all these different rankings of what pinks are more desirable, what pinks and what leathers. It's an insane resale market, and we'll get into that in just a minute. You might be thinking this is a crazy price to pay for a bag, but the reality is this. The Birkin bag has historically outpaced the stock market and the price of gold in its gains. Typically, you're looking at an annual return on a Birkin of 14.2% compared to the average return of the S&P 500, which is eight and a half %, and gold is like negative 1.5%. Yeah, you might be investing 15 grand in a Birkin, but you're either going to use it every single day, pass it on to your kids, or you're going to resell it for quite a bit of money, in fact, more than you paid for it in-store.
Speaker 1 (04:03)
Getting one in-store, though, that's a whole other ball game because we need to take a quick pause for a lesson on supply and demand. This is the Old Money podcast and Old Money Women understand and appreciate economics, especially when it affects our closets. Am I right? What's happening here with Hermes is they create this real and artificial scarcity. Obviously, there's a real amount of scarcity because they only produce so many bags a year. And the production of the Birkin and the Kellys are completely dependent on the number of craftsmen that they have working for them at any given time. So obviously there's a supply constraint there. But companies like Hermes create artificial scarcity as well by not allowing people to walk into their store and buy one-off the shelf or order it online. No, you cannot buy a Birkin online. You can online shop for one at home. And there's actually a lot of companies that do this. And I have a really hot piece of gossip that is unconfirmed. I'm going to say, for my lawyer's sake, that this is all alleged. But you know the company, De Beers, right? The diamond company, they were the ones that first got diamonds to be desirable because of the most incredible marketing ploy back in the early 1900s.
Speaker 1 (05:20)
Diamonds are not actually very rare. They're just perceived to be rare because of the storytelling around it. And allegedly, this is the rumor, allegedly, the beers to control the supply, meaning they want to limit the supply, they have been dumping diamonds into the ocean in order to have there be less diamonds on the market. That is insane. That's alleged. I have no idea if that's true or not. I'm just repeating a rumor, which is as bad as saying it, I understand. But companies have been doing this for years. There's been rumors that Louis Vuitton, after they don't sell out of a season, they will burn their bags because they don't want to have an excess of supply of their product on the market because as we know, economic 101, when you have high supply, your price goes down, and the more supply there is, the less demand there is. Let's say you want to play the game. Let's say you're like, I understand, there's no bags available, but I'm going to buy one. There's two ways to go about this, and it depends where you're located. If you're in the US, it's a totally different strategy than if you're in Europe.
Speaker 1 (06:25)
Before you get all excited and save your dollars to go buy a Berken, there's some rules of the game that you need to understand. The first is understanding the Hermes Holy Trinity. Yes, there is a Holy Trinity. It is different than the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. It is the Birkin, Kelly, and the Constance bags. But it's basically the same thing, am I right? These are the holy trinity of bags because these are the bags that Hermes controls the quota of, meaning they're only going to allow you to buy so many of these bags in a certain period of time. Think about this with the Taylor Swift tickets. It's like there's resellers out there that come in with bots. They scrape all these tickets and they sell them again. That's what she was trying to guard against. Hermes does that by controlling how many bags you can buy per year and only giving them out to qualified buyers so they don't flood the resale market with a whole bunch of people coming in, buying bags and then turning around and flipping them. With these three bags, obviously, Birkin and Kellys being the most desirable, if you are interested in getting what's called a quota bag, one of the bags that there is a quota for of how many you can buy in a certain period of time, you need to first build a relationship with an SA.
Speaker 1 (07:36)
An SA is a sales associate, and these people are next to God in the Hermes world. For a girl who grew up in high school working retail and selling T-shirts and picking up people's messes from the dressing room, the fact that we are tasked with charming these sales associates so that we could have the potential chance to buy what we want from them is absolutely mind-blowing to me, but get it, SA is like, I'm here for it. And the way that this works is when you visit a location, you want to visit a location that you can shop at regularly. And what you're supposed to do is build a relationship with one of these people that you connect with. And you're supposed to be able to do that by hearing how they talk to other customers in the store and connecting with them over things that are maybe not Hermes related and asking them how you can get in touch with them over time. But the most important thing is that you're buying from them because at the end of the day, all of these sales associates work on commission, and they want you to buy things from them so that they can benefit and then turn around and benefit you by offering you the thing that you really want.
Speaker 1 (08:43)
This is a great reminder in life and in business. I think about this all the time. It's like, what's the motivation of the other person that I need something from? And how can we make this a win-win? When you find your SA, you build a relationship with them, you're going to need to come and visit them pretty regularly. This is not to browse, this is to visit them to shop. It's suggested that you are shopping with your sales associate at least monthly to stay top of mind with them, and you're spending at least $1,000 to $1,500 a month to just have the opportunity to build a relationship with them and maybe be offered a quota bag. Now, it's recommended that you dip your toes in all the different categories of Hermés. You should be buying from home goods. You should be buying from small leather goods. You should be buying from jewelry, ready-to-wear clothes. You should be spanning the entire store. And this is to show your brand loyalty and your true devotion to Hermes and your appreciation of how grateful you will be once you are offered that quota bag. This is essentially the equivalent of going to a coffee shop and buying nine latte and getting your 10th as a Birkin.
Speaker 1 (09:48)
The whole idea here is to build up a relationship and build up the bank account of your sales associate via commissions so that over time, what will hopefully happen for you is that this sales associate will say, Amber, wow, I've seen you in here so many times. You've bought so much. Have you ever thought about what you might like as a leather bag? And then I have to play the game and go, Gee, SA. I've never really thought about it, but I'm thinking a Birkin 25 in a tape leather and gold hardware. Thank you so much. What you're supposed to do in this whole little dance is have it in the back of your mind. You need to be knowledgeable and be able to speak about the product and speak about the different and know what you want, but be flexible when the time does come, because what will happen, hopefully for you over time, is that when you've purchased regularly, you've built this relationship with the brand and the sales associate, you will get called to come in for a leather appointment. That leather appointment will be with your sales associate, and they take you into the back room and they will offer you a quota bag.
Speaker 1 (10:54)
Now, depending on the motivations of the sales associate, they might offer you exactly what you said you want, or maybe they don't have that thing and they'll offer you something else instead. You are supposed to be, quote-unquote, flexible, meaning that if it's not exactly what you want, maybe it's close enough and you can live with it, but you're just so excited to have been offered a quota bag that you're expected to buy it anyway. Or you can continue to play the game with your sales associate and continue to spend more money in the store to be offered the opportunity to purchase the quota bag. So yes, your Hermes bag might cost you $10,000 to $13,000. Again, as we discussed, for a 25 to a Birkin 35 and a multitude of basic leathers. But on top of that, you will be expected to spend tens of thousands of dollars in other departments for the opportunity to even buy the bag. Here's what's crazy about this. We're going to shift gears now to our Euro friends. If you're in Europe, the point-of-sales machines and sales histories between the US and Europe are not connected. There's a whole different system happening in Europe, and they do track your sales history in Europe if you're a European buyer.
Speaker 1 (12:05)
But the true hack, if you're interested, is to make Paris a regular vacation spot because there are three stores in Paris where you can do a lottery for a leather appointment. What happens is that every single day they open up a lottery system on their website where you can go in and register to try to secure a leather appointment. It doesn't mean that you're a guaranteed one, it's a lottery. So you put your name in for a lottery, and I have heard of people who have applied for this lottery 25 times and never gotten an appointment. So it's truly a lottery. So if you win this lottery and you get a leather appointment, you go into the store of choice that you've won your appointment at, and you will be offered essentially what's in their inventory. Now, Hermes is a French company. They have their manufacturing there, so they actually have more inventory on hand, typically than the American stores do, because the American stores only order what they need. So when you go to Paris, you'll have more to choose from. But essentially, you go to your leather appointment and you will be able to tell your sales associate there what it is that you're looking for and be able to purchase what they have on hand without establishing a purchase history there.
Speaker 1 (13:16)
So it's a different ball game and it's a lottery by chance. But over time, when you become a collector, when you become somebody that's regularly investing in Birkin and starting a collection and you have a bigger and bigger wish list, you're going to get the calls from your sales associates to come in and buy them, whether you're in Paris or in the US at your regular store with your regular SA because they know you're good for it. You're good for the purchase and you're good for the commission. Just a couple other tips to keep in mind and things that I've read online, which I think are absolutely true, but funny, but they do say that you really should be interested in the brand. Again, remember my comments about the second-hand market. They want to give you a Birkin bag so that you can wear it with pride, but they also are controlling their brand image. If you show up to Hermes looking like an absolute scrub with unwasheded hair and you've never purchased anything from the brand before, why would a brand that so fiercely protects its standards just give a bag out to anyone?
Speaker 1 (14:16)
They do mention that they do, I hate to say this, judge appearances, and they want you to be dressed nice and polished and kind and a good representation of the brand because when you're carrying the Birkin, now you are guilty by association with that brand and they expect you to uphold their standards. Again, they remind you to be flexible in the options that you get presented and hopefully take something, even if it's not your absolute dream, but also to be persistent in continuing to go back and looking for exactly what you want. There's a whole other ball game to this, too, and I want to say it's a second-hand market. This, for me, is huge. I love buying bags second-hand. I think this is such an old money hack because you can get really high-quality bags for a substantial discount. Just because they're pre-loved doesn't mean they're worn out. In fact, a store-fresh bag or a bag that hasn't even been carried, it's still in the original box and plastic, all the hardware is covered. Obviously, it's going to be more expensive than a pre-loved worn bag, but it's usually 30 % less expensive than a bag with no signs of wear.
Speaker 1 (15:20)
I don't mean that with Hermes, obviously, because the supply control, but I mean anything else. So couple of places where you can shop online for them. Number one, fashion-real. They have an incredible verification process, and this is a super hot tip for anybody who's in San Diego. They actually have a showroom in Carlsbad, so you can pick out some bags that you're interested in through the online service and then go in and make an appointment to go to the warehouse and try on the bags that they have in their inventory. I think that's absolutely amazing. There's also the real-real. I love The Real Real. I got one of my favorite all-time purses there, the Givenchy Pandora bag, black with silver hardware. I'm obsessed with it and I love it. I use it all the time. When I got it, it had one little nick on the corner and it's like, big deal. I think that makes me feel more relaxed because then I'm not so precious with it and worrying about ruining it. I love the real, real. It's an amazing resource as well. There's also Rebag, another online reseller. I've not personally used this service, but I hear good things.
Speaker 1 (16:25)
If you do buy something like a Chanel or an Hermes bag, even if you buy it through a verified reseller like Fashion File or Reel Reel, it is recommended that you send it in for official authentication. There are so many sources online. If you Google or you go on any of the subredits, you can find a lot of these private people that do it, and they are legends in the market. But one more thing. If a bag is not in your budget right now, there's two things that I want to say. First of all, you can still secure the bag, but not keep it. I am manifesting this company as a sponsor for the show because the company is called Viverelle. I might be butchering it and they're going to be like, We'll never advertise with you because you said our name wrong. However, I'm obsessed with the concept. It's like Run the runway for bags. There is a subscription fee where you can do between $40 or up to $300 per month, and you can rent legitimate Chanel bags, Hermes bags, Givenchy, Louis Vuitton, Prada, Gucci, Balenciaga, if you're into that, they have everything.
Speaker 1 (17:30)
And quite frankly, especially if you're traveling or maybe you're getting married and you want some special photos or you have special events, I think it's a really good way to play with luxury. And it's also a really good way to test drive a bag, so to speak, so that you can see, are you wearing it? Is it functional for you? Does it work with your existing wardrobe? It's a really good option. Then the other thing that I want to say and I really want to discourage you from is buying counterfeit. There are so many resources out there. We've all seen the TikToks about DHGate. We've seen the rise of super fakes. The New Yorker wrote an article about this. All of these women on the Upper East Side are all carrying these fake burgans, and they're getting them through Reddit, basically, or through the black market. There's a subredit called Rep Ladies, which stands for Replica Ladies, where there's like a full-on black market trade of fake burcans. The thing with buying counterfeit is that it is A, a crime. I've heard a story of a girl who walked into a Goyard store in Paris.
Speaker 1 (18:31)
In Europe, brands are allowed to confiscate anything they see that violates their IP, which is their intellectual property. A girl got her bag confiscated in the store in front of everybody. I saw a video of it. It was so tragic and I would die from the shame. But not only that this goes dark really fast, but counterfeit bags fuel organized crime. Organized crime fuels terrorism. It fuels things like poor labor conditions, child trafficking, all types of bad stuff. So it just carries bad juju with it. If we're trying to live a very high, elevated life, we need to carry things that we earned that we purchased legitimately. Secondhand is still a legitimate purchase, PS, but let's just not go there. Let's do something different. With that being said, that's the T, that's the process, that's everything you need to know. I'm on my way to building my purchase history with One by one, little by little, pray for me because one day I will carry the Birkin, and I hope you do too. Let me know what you thought about this episode, send me DMs, send me whatever purses you bought recently. I'm in the market right now, so inspire me.
Speaker 1 (19:43)
Send me a message on Instagram @oldmoney podcast, and I will talk to you on the next episode. Bye.
Speaker 2 (19:51)
Feeling rich? I hope so. Thank you for joining me on this episode of Old Money. If you have questions you want answered, email me @oldmoneypodcast@gmail. Com or hit us up on social. We are @oldmoneypodcast and I am at your service. If this episode spoke to you, inspired you, helped you, if you took a single note, it would mean the world to me. If you could please just take a minute to rate and review the podcast. And if you're not doing so already, subscribe. And if you have friends who like getting rich, please share this episode with them, even if it's just on your Instagram story. And I'd love you more than Jeff Bezos loves Amazon Pride. Thank you so much, and I will talk to you on the next episode. Remember, I'm not your lawyer, I'm not your tax professional, and I'm not your financial advisor. The content presented in this podcast is intended to entertain, educate, inspire, and support listeners and their personal and professional development and does not constitute business, financial, or legal advice. In addition to that, this episode may contain paid endorsements and advertisements for products and services.
Resources
Purchase secondhand bags from Fashionphile
Buy and sell designer clothes and bags from The RealReal
Borrow designer handbags and jewelry from Vivrelle
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© Old Money 2023.
The content presented in this podcast is intended to entertain, educate, inspire and support listeners in their personal and professional development and does not constitute business, financial, or legal advice. Please note that this episode may contain paid endorsements and advertisements for products and services for which individuals on the show may have a direct or indirect financial interest in products or services related to the episode.
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