Recently I was chatting with a few people about how much money there is to be had with the 1 percent - or even more to the point, the upper half of the one percent. Various research by the likes of Citi Private Bank value the total net worth of the world's Ultra High Net Worth (UHNW) consumers at over $40 trillion. As a comparison, the much talked about U.S. debt is $16 trillion.
Now marketers may ask, are there enough of these UHNW consumers to impact my business? According to Singapore and New York-based researcher Wealth-X, there are over 185,000 UHNW families worldwide based on a threshold of at least at $30 million net worth, excluding primary residence. At Elite Traveler we call them our readers, as the numbers closely dovetail with the core users of private jets.
So. back to the King of Diamonds, Laurence Graff. Last year his eponymous company started to prepare for an IPO, providing a first-time look behind one of the luxury industry's most amazing rags to riches stories.
In 2011, Graff generated total sales of $756 million, with one single customer contributing $100 million - yes $100 million from one customer.
More interesting, Graff's top 20 customers contributed about 50 percent of sales.
Take away Customer Number One and the Next 19 customers bought about $275 million in jewelry and watches from Graff in a single year. That works out to about $14 million per customer for Number 2 to 20. To put this in perspective, a Prince & Associates research study of Elite Traveler readers shows a spend per household of nearly $250,000 per year on jewelry and $150,000 on timepieces - which, when compared to the Graff data, underscores how UHNW consumers can really move the needle for a luxury company.
Doug Gollan
Elite Traveller
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