Lessons In Luxury And The Price Of Perfection

Make no mistake: Crafting luxury eats into time, money and emotional well-being. There are no shortcuts, no missing corners, no concessions and no compromises. Luxury costs.

I know because I've just built a luxury whiskey brand, and I'm still sporting the bruises. It has been an incredible voyage of discovery, and the lessons I've learned may prove useful to others who are contemplating the same commitment.

Pivoting On The Product

In business, you must be true to what you create. My aim was to establish a top-shelf whiskey brand — retailing at the €500-€600 mark (about $600-$725) — but I encountered a problem. It is an endemic in my countrymen that they want to keep the best Irish whiskeys for themselves.

Undaunted, I kept searching and, almost literally, stumbled over something completely different. A triple-distilled single malt, unique and virtually priceless. This wasn't what I'd been looking for, so I was faced with the question of what to do.

I pivoted on the product. The quality of what we'd found meant that we'd need to establish more than a new brand; we would have to take Irish whiskey in a whole new direction and build a totally new category. In poker terms, I "checked" on the top-shelf whiskey strategy and went "all in" on a completely new ultra-luxury marque. With hindsight, had I known how high those stakes were, I might have paused before making the bet.

Respect Where Respect Is Due

Luxury isn't "top shelf" with a bit of added bling; it's a completely different game. When you're dealing with something extraordinary, everything associated with it must be, too.

We had already invested time, energy and money into our original top-shelf offering, from plans to enhance the whiskey to bottle design to packaging. As you would imagine, these were very high quality to reflect the very high-quality whiskey we had intended to craft. With our unexpected discovery, however, we kept coming back to this question: Was what we had already created luxury?

When faced with this problem, a business can do one of two things. The first and possibly most sensible thing is to take what is already there and build on it. The second and least sensible thing is to respect the quality of the product.

We chose option two, which meant scrapping everything we had developed and starting again from scratch. Believe me, this wasn't an easy choice, but the product dictated that it was the only choice. The scale of the task was daunting. We had thought that the work to create the top-shelf designs was tough, but luxury is a different league.

Perfection In Every Detail

Our original aim was to take an excellent product and make it great. Now we were faced with taking an extraordinary product and making it perfect. Perfection, as any business will discover, is a journey without an end.

I'll start with the product. Ours was near perfect, but in luxury, "near" is nowhere. Flavor is everything, and in whiskey, it flows from casks that have previously held spirits such as bourbon and port. We embarked on an odyssey to find the finest examples. With the luck of the Irish, we discovered them in the U.S., Portugal and Hungary, but like everything else in luxury, they cost.

If the product is an odyssey, the presentation is a saga. We discovered, for example, the world of difference between handcrafted and handmade. Some suppliers could create a stunning one-off bottle sample but couldn't maintain consistency, even at very low volumes. Others could provide the volume but not the artistry. A precious few could do both but couldn't meet our environmental and social standards. On and on you go until you're left with a shortlist of one.

The deeper you delve, the further down the rabbit hole you go. We spent months, for example, looking into the people — the ultra-high net worth individuals — who would buy a product in a brand new ultra-luxury category. A business needs to pore over every detail to make sure that it is perfect. I don't mean good, excellent or even outstanding. I mean perfect.

Perfection demands trial, error and dozens of prototypes. It's given me a real respect for companies such as Apple. While not a luxury brand, it is premium and creates consistently beautiful and high-quality products at volume. Their R&D budget (and patience) must be limitless.

Deep Pockets

Which brings me to financing a luxury brand. My advice is to create a budget with a lavish contingency for emergencies, and then tear it up, wager every last cent of your capital and kiss goodbye to peace of mind.

Be prepared to embrace the fact that luxury turns standard business practice on its head. Everything is eye-wateringly expensive. What you are creating is unique, so there is no negotiation. Your supplier will demand a price, you will feel like passing out and then you'll pay what they ask. You have no choice.

When a customer looks you in the eye, however, and asks if the product is worth its five-figure price tag, you can look straight back and say, "Yes, and far, far more."

The Price Of Perfection

Has the journey been worth it? You bet it has. When you appraise the final creation and know that it is the best it can be, that it has no equal and that you have crafted the finest example of its kind, that's a very special moment indeed. It's also a source of pride when others recognize your efforts and your creation.

I must warn anyone about to make this journey that there is another, far more costly price to pay: It can become an addiction. I have created what I believe to be perfection, but the rabbit hole is beckoning — and I want to do it all over again.