Fewer, better products—shaped by heritage and built with precision—aren’t about holding back growth. They’re about dialling up meaning. When something’s made with care and kept intentionally scarce, it stops being just a product. And it starts becoming a statement.
Here, we explore Audemars Piguet’s rigid production cap, Ferrari’s secret resale rules, and Cartier’s exclusive event strategy as backdrops to a creative growth strategy we are calling the ‘Net and Narrow’.
These brands exemplify how scarcity builds defensible longevity in a fickle global market. How? They cast their net wide with flashy brand campaigns, partnerships and ambassadorships whilst ruthlessly narrowing the availability of their products either via price or controlled supply. Repeat.
Scarcity as Strategic Advantage
Fashion is facing its first sustained contraction since 2009. Gucci saw a 25% revenue drop in Q1 2025, and Burberry reported adjusted operating profits down over 30%. For CEOs, this poses an existential dilemma: how to deliver shareholder value without eroding the authenticity and exclusivity that defines the longstanding reputation of the brand.
Enter the Net & Narrow approach—casting a wide net through campaigns, collaborations, and cultural moments, while narrowing product access through elevated pricing or controlled supply. The Net captures the hearts and minds of the aspirational, maintaining a queue of potential new customers. Whilst the Narrow ensures that only a select few gain access to the brand's product.
The Net & Narrow approach transforms scarcity into strategic advantage by shifting power back to brands, enabling consistent pricing free from markdown pressures and protecting long-term brand equity through controlled exclusivity. By turning transactional demand into emotional aspiration, scarcity creates deeper customer loyalty and lifelong brand advocates. This strategic discipline builds a defensible market position that’s not easily replicated, leveraging broad digital influence through campaigns and collaborations while maintaining strict physical exclusivity—ensuring enduring relevance without dilution.
But the Net & Narrow model isn’t exclusive to traditional luxury. Any brand that has managed to generate demand in excess of supply should pay close attention. Streetwear brands have long mastered the art of strategic scarcity, using limited drops and tightly managed releases to spark online frenzies and real-world queues—proving that constraint, when done right, creates desire.
Luxury’s Pressure to Grow
Its widely accepted that the foundations of lasting brands are built upon scarcity, exclusivity, and cultural allure—assets typically cultivated over decades, sometimes centuries. Yet publicly-traded luxury conglomerates now face unprecedented shareholder pressure to deliver continuous growth.
Tony Wang of the Office of Applied Strategy notes, “2024 is the first year the fashion industry contracted since 2009.” Kering have reported a 12% revenue drop, driven by Gucci’s struggles in China and LVMH saw a 2% revenue fall, with net profits down 17%.
Economic headwinds—global inflation, declining luxury spending in China, shifting youth consumption—compound these pressures.
The conventional response to such market conditions typically involves two levers: aggressive cost reduction and market expansion—broadening accessibility to capture aspirational consumers who might eventually convert into major spenders. However, for true luxury houses, this approach carries existential risk: the potential loss of brand control and irreparable damage to the exclusivity that justifies premium pricing.
In times of economic uncertainty, fashion needs to maintain perspective and take a longer term view of the brand rather than implement short term panic strategies to plug a temporary hole in demand.
A Cautionary Tale: 2000s Burberry
Burberry's early 2000s crisis remains the industry's definitive cautionary tale. Through excessive licensing and uncontrolled distribution, the brand's signature check pattern—once a symbol of British luxury—became ubiquitous across mass-market accessories and counterfeits. This overexposure triggered a catastrophic erosion of it's premium positioning.
The rehabilitation required nearly a decade under Christopher Bailey and Angela Ahrendts, involving painful buybacks of licenses, closure of diffusion lines, and a complete strategic reset that cost hundreds of millions. The lesson? Expanding access without clear boundaries is not growth; it’s dilution.
In fact, those that are successful in the long term reveal a counterintuitive truth: long-term growth isn’t about expanded accessibility. It’s about discipline—balancing demand carefully with supply. The best brands know reputation takes time.
The Current Playbook
The brand expansion playbook sees brands expanding culturally—films, art foundations, residences—to extend influence without compromising core offerings. Saint Laurent’s film division, Fondazione Prada’s cultural prestige, and Versace Residences illustrate this strategy. These ventures weren't about immediate profit; they were strategic investments in cultural capital, enhancing brand authority and resonance beyond commerce.
Complementing these initiatives were product pyramids: entry-level products like accessible beauty lines, fragrances, and logo-driven accessories served as commercial drivers, gradually converting aspirational buyers into high-value clients over time.
But it's 2025. Every luxury brand has adopted these strategies. Art patronage, filmmaking, hospitality, and diffusion lines are now industry standards rather than differentiators. Even entry-level luxury goods have seen price hikes, diminishing their accessibility. This ubiquity signals the need for a decisive split between brand visibility and product access. True luxury brands must now redefine growth by embracing strategic restraint—and perhaps accepting occasional periods of slower growth in favour of long term brand stability.
Introducing the ‘Net & Narrow’
The Net & Narrow deliberately separates brand awareness and product access. Samuel Ross speaks about the need for price clarity in a recent interview with the FT:
"You have to have balance...and carving out, deteriorating the middle is how you do that. It's either social, accessible, or it's craft and luxury. You have to be decisive."
Leading luxury houses extend this principle further—not merely eroding the middle market but minimising it in their business model.
At the apex of luxury, the middle-market consumer is irrelevant. The strategic focus therefore shifts decisively to cultivating multigenerational client relationships, preserving heritage craft, and ensuring the distribution of signature products exclusively to clients whose ownership enhances rather than diminishes brand equity.
This bifurcated approach enables houses to transform exclusivity from a defensive posture into a strategic asset—incorporating millions of aspirational followers into their digital ecosystem while simultaneously deepening relationships with VICs through increasingly rarefied offerings.
In its simplest form, the Net & Narrow strategy operates through two distinct channels:
The Net: Cultural visibility initiatives designed to land in the feeds and consciousness of aspirational customers who may never purchase core products, but whose attention helps validate the brand’s cultural relevance e.g. Audemars Piguet x Kaws collaboration
The Narrow: Physical products and experiences deliberately restricted to the ultra-wealthy, with access mechanisms that cannot be circumvented merely through financial means e.g. The Audemars Royal Oak.
Some examples to follow...
1. Audemars Piguet
The Net: In November 24’, AP announced a watch in collaboration with KAWS with a supporting global campaign appearing across all owned channels, featured on every major media platform across design and style plus major OOH placements and stunts in key cities.
The Narrow: For decades, Audemars Piguet (AP) has been known for its rigid production limits—historically capping annual production at around 50,000 watches with waitlists as long as 10 years. Often the only way to obtain an AP is to be invited.
2. Ferrari
The Net: Ferrari Style, a luxury clothing line designed to elevate its brand into a fully realized luxury universe with a growing store network and campaign strategy. The Ferrari F1 team is another Net strategy. The recent signing of Lewis Hamilton to Ferrari’s F1 team further amplifies its relevance, ensuring the brand remains aspirational across new demographics.
The Narrow: Ferrari's rumoured approach to vehicle allocation represents perhaps the industry's most sophisticated access control system. The company famously restricts its most exclusive models (like the LaFerrari and limited-production Icona series) exclusively to established collectors regardless of financial capacity. An elaborate relationship-based allocation system evaluates customer loyalty, collection quality, and brand ambassadorship rather than merely financial resources.
3. Cartier
The Net: The 2024 V&A exhibition, “Cartier: The Exhibition,” was a blockbuster, reportedly selling over 200,000 tickets. Additionally, Cartier continues to deepen its appeal through carefully orchestrated global collaborations and high-profile ambassadors, ensuring that while ownership remains selective, aspiration is widespread.
The Narrow: The brand’s A list invite-only poker night, thrown at the Chateau Marmont in LA in February to celebrate actor Timothée Chalamet’s Oscar nomination for Best Actor in a Leading Role for his role as Bob Dylan in ‘A Complete Unknown.’
How Brands Can Deploy the Net & Narrow Approach:
1. Two-Speed Product Strategy
Create limited-production “hero” products (Narrow) to reinforce brand heritage and aspirational status. Simultaneously launch mass-awareness initiatives such as collaborations, pop-ups, digital experiences, and capsule collections (Net) to amplify global visibility.
2. Access as Currency
Introduce non-monetary qualification criteria (brand history, referrals, cultural contribution) to access exclusive products and events. Deploy invite-only events or private showings, positioning access itself as a desirable commodity.
3. Tiered Digital Ecosystems
Offer wide-reaching digital content (social media, editorial, cultural projects) to maintain relevance with broad audiences. Implement tightly controlled digital purchasing channels or VIP apps that gate access to exclusive products, nurturing privileged customer communities.
4. Strategic Waitlists and Allocation
Curate customer access through carefully managed waitlists, creating anticipation and excitement around releases. Allocate ultra-limited products based on customer loyalty, brand alignment, and influence rather than purely financial capability.
5. Cultural Capital Investments
Invest in cultural ventures—films, arts foundations, exhibitions—not purely for immediate ROI, but to bolster long-term brand positioning. Leverage cultural capital to indirectly reinforce exclusivity and increase aspirational power without product overextension.
6. Precise Partnerships
Select partnerships based on strategic cultural alignment rather than commercial scale alone. Use these collaborations to boost cultural relevance broadly (Net), while releasing very limited product runs or even non-purchasable collector’s items (Narrow).
Strategic Implications
What makes the Net & Narrow approach particularly powerful is that it shifts the balance of control from consumers to brands. By mastering controlled scarcity, these brands make discounting irrelevant. When demand consistently outstrips supply, there’s no need for markdowns—prices remain firm, and desirability compounds over time.
This is where artificial scarcity becomes a competitive advantage. Take Hermès: the Birkin and Kelly bags aren’t just expensive, they are perpetually unattainable. Simply having the money isn’t enough—you need a purchase history, the right relationship with the brand, and, in some cases, even the right lifestyle. This strategy ensures that Hermès doesn’t compete for customers; customers compete for Hermès. The result? Decades of unshakable brand mystique and a resale market where secondhand Birkins can trade for more than new ones.
The same principles apply across luxury. Extensive waitlists don’t just create anticipation—they act as a filtering mechanism, allowing brands to curate who owns their most coveted pieces. Even aspirational followers who never convert into buyers still play a role; their engagement fuels desirability, feeding the perception that ownership is a privilege, not a transaction.
This isn’t just about exclusivity—it’s about ensuring that scale doesn’t dilute power. When luxury brands engineer access rather than simply selling product, they move from being retailers to being gatekeepers. And in a landscape where overexposure has become the fastest route to irrelevance, that’s the ultimate advantage.
The Future: Scale vs Scarcity
Luxury’s future reveals a counterintuitive truth: sustainable growth might not need expanded accessibility but disciplined pacing. The Net & Narrow isn't universal. It’s for brands generating irrational desire.
Looking ahead to 2026 and beyond, luxury brands must choose: disciplined exclusivity or pressured discounting. Investors, analysts, and luxury executives must recognise that strategic discipline—the ability to say "no"—is the new luxury currency.
Brands mastering the Net & Narrow approach will define the future. Everyone else risks slipping from luxury into premium—competing on price, not prestige.