Premium and luxury: how to build a brand at the high end

Where the system comes from

The system came out of thinking about my company's business model, when in 2009 I bought out the shares with a partner and traditional distribution, shops, agents, catalogues, was collapsing. A good number of our competitors back then, companies turning over 10, 12, 15 million and selling only through distribution, no longer exist. We grew by moving to the high end. The system is what we did, put in order. Seven steps. To illustrate them in the classroom I use Schumacher's Ferrari, the one that always won.

1. Why: why sell at high prices

Italy has some of the highest business costs in Europe: the second most expensive electricity in the Union, a tax system among the least competitive in the OECD, a tax burden of 43%. Selling at high prices is a necessity: if you offer the best value for money, you can't stay open. That's what the 294 furniture companies in the Veneto that no longer exist were doing. Selling at high prices builds a wall of cash that protects the company from crises, and since 2020 we have had three. The work starts inside: fixed costs, strategic and secondary suppliers, productive and unproductive staff.

2. Brand: the brand as a tree

The roots are what makes you unique: why the company exists, what it brought to the market, the year, the place, what it is a master of. The trunk is the code: name, logo, payoff, website, store. The branches are the products, and the price sits in the branches, calculated with the internal multiplier and by external comparison, at least 40% above the mass market. A high-end brand comes from the answers to these questions and from an art direction. It's the difference, which nobody explains, between an SME that makes an excellent product and one that has become a brand.

3. Marketing: latent demand

Marketing and advertising are two different things, and anyone who says they do online marketing is actually doing online advertising. In luxury, demand is latent and has to be stimulated, by building the brand in the customer's mind. And marketing also speaks to people who will never be able to buy, because the envy of the masses is what positions the product for those who do buy. Your own content, photos, videos, testimonials, a first-person blog, email: media you own.

4. Distribution: where the profit takes off

It's the step no course used to cover, and today it's the key. The internet has cut out the middleman: anyone who only sits in the middle, without a product of their own, is caught between the frying pan and the fire. The model: the first showroom you own, to test your marketing and get the customer data; the online store with one price list worldwide; shop-in-shops and portals, later. With your own distribution, the multiple the market uses to value the company goes from 4 to 12.

5. Publicity: public relations

Publicity is what the papers say about you without you paying. The myth of Italian fashion was born from a Time cover with Armani. Until you can afford a press office, you tell stories to journalists and make use of your customers' press. And press coverage doesn't age: in the parcel sent to a foreign customer, an article from two years ago is worth as much as one from yesterday.

6. Advertising: paid advertising, with its own budget

Three separate budgets: video is marketing, space bought on Facebook is advertising, the press office is publicity. In luxury you leave aside ads on explicit search, where anyone searching for “kitchens” finds Amazon at €586, and you build a pyramid: brand awareness, engagement, contact with just an email address, appointment. In every language you sell in.

7. Sales: selling, last of all

You only sell at the end, once the customer has already entered the brand's world. Either you go to the customer, and in business-to-business live events and referrals work, or the customer comes to you: three appointments, questions asked in a tone of innocent curiosity, the project built on the budget, 50% with the order and 50% before delivery. And the sums along the chain: with a dealer, the manufacturer keeps 38%; selling direct I can give the customer a 30% discount and the margin stays with me, for advertising the brand.

What the system can't teach

The willingness to work 10–12 hours a day, which is the number one thing. There is no such thing as a company that runs itself. But if you put in the hours, putting them in the wrong direction is the most expensive thing there is. The system is there to put the hours in the right order.

From my book Direct from Milano and my classroom courses. Figures and examples updated September 2026.