Day 34: Brands

Yesterday I went for a walk in an empty Paris with Fianna.  As I find it difficult to walk without an objective (probably food for a future blog) I suggested we go to the Muji store in the Marais.  Muji means no-brand in Japanese and that is exactly what I am looking for.  Although in my youth I did have a weakness for Levis and Lacoste, I can safely say that I now actively avoid branded products. The branded product has become the equivalent of the selfie (of which I have said enough).  It makes no sense to me, why would you pay extra for the privilege of becoming a billboard. Normally people get paid to advertise other people's products.  What would be interesting would be to have a with or without brand option.  So you could go into a Lacoste shop and you would have 2 options for your polo:

1. Polo with the crocodile will cost you 95€ (yes that's right I checked)
2. Same Polo without the crocodile will cost you 45€ ( I suspect the actual cost of  making the Polo is probably 5€)

I wonder which one would sell more (actually I'm pretty sure nobody would go for option 2). So what are people buying for that extra 50€?   A sense of exclusiveness? The idea that they are special?  The pleasure of having access to luxury goods and most importantly showing it ? In reality they are achieving the exact opposite.  Branded products are the opposite of unique or exclusive, the whole point of creating a brand is to sell your product (iPhone for example) to lots of people. Walk around Paris and you see herds of tourists carrying Louis Vuitton handbags, wearing Hermes scarves and taking selfies with their iPhones. 

Think about this: The world luxury goods market is estimated to be worth at least 1.2 Trillion € per year. If the money had been spent on non-branded products the world would have saved at least half of that which is 600 billion € that is at least 4 times more than the total development aid that is distributed annually.