Luxury for Less: How Online Retail and the Sustainability Movement Helped Drive Down the Price of Craftsmanship

High-end independent retailing is back.

In May 2018, Bloomberg was already reporting the scaling back of big box retailers like Walmart as consumers looked elsewhere for consumer goods. Meanwhile, as Forbes quite rightly followed up in July 2019, independent retail has grown to the point that it’s bigger now than in years.

Is it that the culture has simply become jaded by big brands after decades of consumer capitalism? Has there been some kind of mass awakening in terms of the value of Arts & Crafts? Do people suddenly have more disposable income? What has caused people to just stop filling their lives and homes with cheap consumer goods in favour of their luxurious, high-end alternatives?

Well, the shift among everyday people, away from what we might call ‘fast fashion’ and back toward quality and luxury products in increasing numbers points to two key cultural drivers of habits:

1. The simplicity and cost-saving of online retailing
2. The sustainability movement and its demand for natural materials

The online shopping revolution

The great thing about online shopping, as we all know, is that, if it’s legal, you’re pretty much guaranteed to be able to buy it there – and without leaving your home.

Amazon has, of course, come to dominate this market. As a brand, it has almost transcended the status of retailer. It is viewed – much in the same way Google is viewed – as little more than a portal. More of an infinitely vast virtual shopping mall than a similarly proportioned supermarket.

Because independent sellers are able to retail directly to customers online – including via the likes of Amazon, Google Shopping and Chinese ecommerce giant Alibaba – many of them have chosen to cease physical operations, dramatically cutting their overheads and giving them significant competitive advantage in the market.

All over the Internet, companies are able to sell better stuff for less money. All of which helps consumers to reduce their reliance on the cheaply made, low-priced goods that came to define consumer culture in the 1990s and 2000s.

Now, more than ever, people are finding that they are able to buy well-made products online at reasonable prices.

Yet it’s not just the low overheads of virtual retailing that have driven shoppers across the economic spectrum back toward high-end goods.

Sustainable shopping

One of the main issues with the some of the bigger online shopping portals is highlighted when we look at the other key driver in the move back toward high quality consumer goods: sustainability.

A December 2019 Drapers article reports that, “Almost two-thirds of shoppers believe that retailers and brands have the greatest responsibility for ensuring sustainable practices,” and as far back as 2008, an Ipsos MORI research document on Sustainability Issues in the Retail Sector highlighted the fact that 51% of shoppers questioned claimed to have changed the way they shop to take into account social and environmental issues.

You would think that, in light of the fact that the world’s biggest online retailer reported contributing the equivalent of 44.4 million metric tons of carbon dioxide into the environment in 2019, it would be the last place anyone considering themselves to be a true environmentalist would shop. Yet, with a whopping 40% share of the online retail market in the US alone, the penny appears not to have dropped with environmentally conscious shoppers.

This must, surely, come as a result of online retailers appearing not to be physical entities so much as quasi-ethereal shopping spaces. In truth, of course, they are very much physical (a single logistics centre owned by Chinese online retail giant Alibaba in Belgium, for instance, occupies over 30 football pitches of land – and this is just one piece of a vast real estate portfolio).

When you buy ‘environmentally friendly’ products online, it may well feel like you’re buying sustainably. But have you ever considered that the business sending you the products might be the kind that is willing to sell pretty much any and every kind of product (not just the environmentally friendly ones) from one of many giant warehouses? The internet isn’t always what it seems.

Sustainable luxury products

The most effective way for independent retailers to ensure that consumers are given access to high quality consumer goods at reasonable prices, instead, borrows the best of both models: online retailing and sustainable retailing.

By offering carefully selected luxury products online and without physical retail environments, independent companies like ours are able to reduce reliance on costly outlets that drive up the retail prices of products. Yet, also, to operate within certain ethical, environmental boundaries.

We, for instance, operate across mainland Europe, as well as in the UK and USA, however our real estate footprint is comparatively miniscule – limited as it is to a handful of partners and a single, central Head Office in Valencia, Spain with a small number of roles fulfilled by remote operatives working for us from their homes, even.

We are also highly selective about the types of luxury bathrooms we retail. We choose durable, recyclable materials like marble, quartzite and wood for our products. And, of those of that aren’t 100% made of natural materials, the rest are compounds of natural materials that only use manmade elements simply to extend their lifespan so that they do not need to be replaced or renewed for many years. Materials such as Corian and Silestone, for instance.

Of course, it is up to consumers to determine what’s important to them in terms of their own shopping habits, but what we are seeing right now – not least from our own customer base – is that there are three major questions people ask prior to making the decision to buy:

• Is it beautiful, functional and durable?
• What is its environmental impact?
• How much does it cost?

When you see them in print like that, they are, of course, the most obvious questions anyone would ask about a product. Yet, if a company isn’t retailing equally to those standards, then they’re simply not doing what their customers demand of them. Which is why customers will – and do, as we pointed out at the beginning of this piece – look elsewhere to those companies who constantly review their products, practices and prices and ensure they’re delivering on all three counts.