This is a picture of the Coach Factory Outlet store at a busy outlet mall just northwest of Houston last Saturday.

The resolution isn't great so let me explain. That is a line wrapped around the building. The store is so busy that they are violating fire code if they let any more people in so they have to meter the flow of foot traffic. When 2 leave, 2 can come in.

Notice the windows are just clean glass? There are no sale signs because there are no sales going on.

And the prices inside the store? About 40% off retail for last season's purses that nobody wants. About 20% off for the latest purses.

So we're still talking over $150 for a purse that is made in China.

Walking on down the mall, I saw a lady with 3 Coach bags, each holding 2 full size Coach purses!

No other store in this HUGE and jam packed outlet mall had a line or required one.

There are a lot of lessons here and I'd love to dig deep.
What the hell is it that compels all these women to spend so much money on a purse... scratch that, purseS? My son's girlfriend has 8 of them and she makes $9 an hour!

Don't tell me quality because the truth is, the knockoffs are about as good and you could buy 15 for the price of 1 and they're certainly at least 1/15 as good.

I think this is purely about appearances, prestige and exclusivity. The same reason men want a Rolex and a Mercedes S class.

And the biggest question of all, how can we create a prestigious and exclusive information product?

Branding and the need for approval. Combine these 2 and you have gold. People see your purse. You want to have something other ladies will admire.

Now, I don't really care either way but ... you can't argue with $$$

Don't hate on the S-Class owners!

About this, I think Gary Benzivenga did a good job of this with his $2,000 DVD set. My favorite part of that whole letter was the "seminar reply" form. We're actually "swiping" that for an upcoming product. I loved his positioning in that.

We've actually been working on a product for 2 years that we've been trying our hardest on making prestigious and exclusive. I think good ways of doing that is actually letting people know it's NOT available in stores and can only be purchased thru your website.

You can make it to where you don't allow any affiliates or people to resell the product making your site the ONLY place to get it.

You can create a "Certificate of Authenticity" which we're doing. And a lot of the higher end names do this, Rolex being one. Simply create a 10 digit number and assign each product it's own number and create a very nice printout that goes out with each product with their very own number on it. You can even laminate it to make it look better.

You can create a huge 7 day product launch and as a bonus give personal e-mail access to yourself for 60 days. Then, on day 5 pull the product completely and your reason for that is that you need to support everybody who has bought (as long as this is really true). This will create insanity and you'll sell so much more on your "relaunch" in 60 days (because that's when you'll be set free from email coaching) that it's worth it to just keep pulling it from the market completely and let everyone go crazy about seeing "This Product Is Currently Not Available, It Has Sold Out. Sign Up For Product Release Notification". This is a way to create scarcity like you wouldn't believe AND exclusivity. It's also a great way to piss people off if that's your goal... ... but it DOES work. (Everyone here should steal this last paragraph, it'll make you a lot of green, and I ain't talking about the stuff MOFATT has in his glove compartment).

You can create high end organizations/teams/masterminds/clubs/etc around a product. Only product owners who purchased thru YOUR site and have a verified authenticity number can be a part of. Have someone from Elance create a script and a webpage to where it's private. And when they access it, they HAVE to type in the 10 digit authenticity to gain access. This could also be a place to store extra bonuses, etc.

Just some thoughts...

Product launches do a decent job of this, from a marketing perspective.

Scarcity + authority + celebrity + social proof etc.

On the product side Ricky's got some good ideas with limiting sales, masterminds and certificates. Numbering the sets is another good one, I think Yanik did this for one of his dvd sets.

Great post Ricky. Great ideas and Bencivenga is certainly a good example I hadn't thought of.

And, I ain't hatin', man. I'll soon be driving an AMG SL63. And that SLR McLaren is pretty sweet too.

But then they die. Coach is booming. I guess that's what's so cool. They create this demand WITHOUT scarcity.

Sugarman did this in Triggers and mentioned the exclusivity trigger too.

Appeal to influencers and price it accordingly.

You guys are missing one thing. There is no prestige in buying Frank Kern's Mass Control. Not that can be openly observed by other marketers like a Coach purse hanging off your shoulder.

That's what we need to figure out...

I didn't miss it. Just don't have the answer yet.

It would almost certainly have to include an astronomical price tag and a 100% success rate.

Not exactly true.

Many of the "Mass Control" buyers took what they learned from
Frank inside of the course, and then "Licensed" that knowledge
to other vendors and walked away with tens of thousands of
dollars.

So, actually there is a bit of prestige because those who have
access to the info, also have the ability to license out promos
they learned from Frank.

Also, as far as product launches dying, that's not the case with
the savvy marketers either. This is a very common misconception
and one that Walker covers to ensure the launcher parlays the
success into a long term business instead of a one hit wonder.

Anyone who studied his stuff in detail could tell you that.

You know, Yanik does a little of this with his Secret Society at the UG events. They get some special treats and dinners and stuff. I'm sure that brings in some nice coin for him.

But it doesn't last beyond the event...

PS: Kicking my self for using Mass Control as an example...