Blue chip Birkins
The secrets of managing a multi-million pound luxury handbag portfolio.
Welcome to readers from London Centric, where Jim has just published my story investigating what happens after your iPhone is snatched in London.
If you liked that, you might also like our stories about a loaded gun in Selfridges, how Louis Vuitton staff are being tricked by Chinese gangs, and the ridiculous and sublime world of mens’ fashion.
The woman who manages a multi-million pound portfolio of Chanel, Hermès and Louis Vuitton handbags
Every woman remembers the first time they saw a real Hermès Birkin in the flesh, but for Sabrina Sadiq, the moment changed the course of her life forever.
While studying to be a lawyer at the University of Westminster in the early 2000s, a friend of hers walked into a lecture while carrying one. Not only did she find it beautiful and beguiling, she also discovered it was an asset that could be re-sold for more than what it cost in the shop. She decided to learn how to authenticate second-hand bags and then built a database to help her distinguish the real from the fake, which she used to help start a school for authenticators.
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Before long she had founded Luxury Promise in 2017, a “pre-loved” handbag website which at the time of writing had £50 million worth of handbags in stock. Unlike other consignment and resale marketplaces like Vestiaire Collective, and smaller secondary market shops online and in London, Paris and New York, Luxury Promise owns 98 per cent of its products.
That ownership model makes it vitally important that the company doesn’t invest in underperforming models. Fortunately, Sadiq lives and breathes handbags. “If I had an extra £10,000 spare, I’d put my money in a Birkin or a Kelly, or two Chanel classic flap bags and just leave it there for two to three years”, she said.
We spoke to her at length about handbags as an asset class and got her tips about how to start a collection, how to choose a bag that might maintain or increase its value above inflation, and how luxury brands use nostalgia, scarcity and rarity to push up prices. As the price of leather handbags continues to climb, consumers are increasingly thinking about them as an asset. Here’s how to protect it.