Gilt (without the “Guilt”) Groupe
As stealth luxury becomes more and more vogue, i.e., brown (or black) bag shopping at high-end stores to mask purchases; so, too, will there be more online buying. Discrete shopping with north of 50% discounting. Gilt Groupe with $5M in funding from Matrix Partners, a new CEO in Susan Lyne from Martha Stewart Omnimedia, and a partnership with the Council of Fashion Designers of America, looks poised to weather the retail storm with its online, invitation-only sample sales.
More info: Gilt Groupe is the leading provider of exclusive merchandise at sample sale prices with a rapidly growing membership of consumers nationwide. A daily habit for hundreds of thousands of consumers, Gilt Groupe’s innovations have earned the Company numerous industry citations, from Forbes and InStyle Magazine to ABC-TV’s The View.
Interesting to see where luxury goes in the coming year. Does it become super-affordable and thus lose its exclusive value, i.e., get your Prada at Walmart; go higher-end and completely disappear from any mass consumer radar; or, does it hibernate for a year?