If one has a $3,000 handbag, she shouldn’t let just anyone get their grubby hands on it. That’s the message this morning from Prada (1913:HK), which has been limiting the amount of fancy clothes and accessories it sells through wholesale channels.
Instead, the Italian design house has been opening its own stores, adding 79 in the past 12 months to bring the tally to 540.
The theory, perhaps best refined by Apple (AAPL), is that a company with a particularly strong brand can benefit by controlling as much as possible about where and how its products get sold—and to whom. Selling via a staff that it trains, in a store it designs, insulates such companies and their customers from increasingly mall-like department stores and potentially surly salesmen.
Read complete article: Prada Gets Even More Elitist and It Pays Off – Businessweek.
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