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Ferrari’s new boutique is a brand extension too far
Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
The writer is the City editor at FT Alphaville
One of Tommy Cooper’s more famous jokes is about finding a Stradivarius and a Rembrandt in the attic. It has a three-laugh punchline, where each beat gives even the slowest in the room a chance to catch up: “Unfortunately, Stradivarius was a terrible painter, and Rembrandt made rotten violins.”
What’s the current equivalent to that joke? Is there one? Is any brand extension too ludicrous to contemplate? Ferrari is willing to take a punt.
The best-known failures — like Colgate ready meals and Harley-Davidson wine coolers — are from at least 30 years ago. What followed was the rise of power brands whose identity is bigger than one product category (Virgin, Apple, Disney), or whose social cachet is multipurpose (Armani, Ralph Lauren, Supreme). The market can now support Louis Vuitton pinball machines, Heinz ketchup suitcases and Dolce & Gabbana kettles.
The counterpoint to all this product polyamory is Ferrari. Few trademarks are as internationally recognisable as a symbol of quality. Few companies have as compelling a heritage and as resonant an identity. But sticking the prancing horse on things other than cars never seems to click. For about an hour on a weekday morning in August, at Ferrari’s flagship London boutique on Old Bond Street, I’m the only person browsing.
Occupying three floors of a corner building formerly home to a De Beers jewellery store, the showroom has been turned into a light-filled gallery whose fit and finish are equal to any on London’s bougiest street. All the luxury cues are present, from the burly doorman and a surfeit of white-gloved floor assistants to the mirrored display racks where items are displayed singly, without price tags.
Upstairs, in womenswear, frocks debuted at Milan Fashion Week circle an “atelier table” for picking decals that customise its signature car-shaped clutch bag. Downstairs is a ready-to-wear collection whose branding prominence is inversely proportional to the item’s cost.
Many readers will know already how we arrived here, since it’s a finance story as much as a retail one. Starting in the early 1990s, Ferrari rebuilt brand equity by moving upmarket. About three-quarters of Ferrari car sales are to repeat purchasers, so it made sense to test the limits of what the enthusiasts were prepared to pay.
The community outreach programme began in 2019, with merchandise rights wrested back from licensees and creative functions taken in-house. Product tie-ins, though insignificant to group earnings, became a halo strategy for a brand that is nothing if it is not aspirational.
But changing public perception hasn’t been easy. Maybe it’s the abundance of Ferrari-labelled tat that stacked up over decades, both official and knock-off. Maybe it’s some icky associations from earlier times, such as the glamour posters aimed at teenage sensibilities and key fobs intended to be dropped in a bowl. Maybe it’s that wearing things that say “Ferrari” is commonly seen as a tell that the wearer can’t afford to own one. The dictum of founder Enzo Ferrari, to always deliver one less car than the market demands, is much harder to apply to sweatshirts and baseball caps.
Ferrari’s solution once again was to move upmarket. Shopping here feels much like in any high-end boutique. The quality of goods is noticeably better than the price-point average of its neighbours, with service that’s relentlessly high-touch.
No one will mistake this for a souvenir shop. Logo T-shirts cost between £170 and £450. Outerwear and leather goods accelerate with appropriate speed into multiples of a thousand. Motorsport memorabilia is consigned to a basement side room, but even here, everything on show is for sale. A crankshaft and a disc brake are displayed like art alongside replica racing helmets and scale-model cars in glass cases. Overalls once worn by Michael Schumacher could be yours for £42,250.
The bigger difference with the neighbours is the feeling that you’re participating in an experiment. Even at these prices, Ferrari is certain to be burning money on retail. The opening of a New York branch later this year is less like an expansion and more like a strategic double-down. The goal is brand elevation, not turning a profit. Ferrari wants to be luxury in everything; getting the buying public on board with the concept will be its measure of success.
What the experiment lacked on my visit was customers. What’s not obvious is the target market.
Is it the Ferrari owners’ club and their wannabes? The petrolheads who memorise Formula 1 standings? The VIP society of F1 paddock groupies? The idle rich who drive rented cars in circles around nearby Knightsbridge? No one seems sure. For now, the whole set-up is geared towards Mayfair’s recreational fashionistas, but they’re going to need more reasons to browse. Everyone knows what the prancing horse means on a car; what does it mean on a handbag?
Ferrari’s pivot to luxury apparel is impressive in scale and meticulous in application. It’s extravagant, ambitious and wholly unnecessary. This is brand extension for its own sake. Something else needs to happen to convince us that a Ferrari ball gown isn’t the modern equivalent of the Stradivarius oil painting and the Rembrandt violin, because even the slowest among us don’t want to be seen wearing a punchline.