Luxury Phone-maker Vertu Collapses (bbc.com) 66
A British-based company that made smartphones costing thousands of pounds will be liquidated after a plan to save it failed. From a report: Vertu was known for its high-end, jewel-encrusted handsets, but recently faced financial difficulties. The company's liquidation will result in the loss of nearly 200 jobs. One technology analyst said Vertu would have faced competition from companies offering to customise other smartphones with precious materials. Vertu phones carry hefty price tags -- its Signature range starts at 11,100 pound ($14,350) and one model featuring 18-carat red gold costs 39,100 pound ($50,600). When contacted by the BBC, an external spokesman for the firm said: "Well it's gone into liquidation and I'm not being paid by them any more."
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Even worse, by the time the company got done designing then implementing the gold-plating and vajazzling, the phones were already obsolete, and the final nail in the coffin was the ability to produce replacement backs and cases by the tens of thousands in whatever color or print or texture that the user wanted, purchasable for $10-$100 each.
The only people that would buy what this company made are buying for the express purpose of showing off. Even among the rich that number might be fairly small as you ha
Re:Lesson Learned (Score:4, Insightful)
No matter how much money you have; you'd have to be a real pretentious douche bag to buy one of these. And a real pretentious douche bag to sell one of these.
If I saw someone using one of these there would definitely be an urge in my gut to punch him in the face.
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So, their market was the extended Kardashian family? That's large enough that I don't see why they went out of business.
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Real rich people tend to keep an eye on what they're spending money on. This is how they usually got rich. More revenue than expenses.
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I wouldn't go for a punch in the face, but an "accident" whereby I knocked the phone to the ground.
Pretentiousness broken. My tears they fall.
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If I saw someone using one of these there would definitely be an urge in my gut to punch him in the face.
You have issues, tbh
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That's a lot of anger about someone else buying something. I think there's a word for that. Let's see...
Pretentious douchebag would be quite fitting to describe you.
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That's $920k in assets, all of which can be paid off at $100k a year in 10 years, leaving $150k a year or $500 a day or $400 after the wine. Even a $5000 mattress is only $1.3 per day over these 10 years
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The exceptions are the children of the uber-wealthy. The ones that didn't have to work for the money and generally seem to make occupations of spending for its own sake.
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Even then, a phone isn't exactly a conspicuous consumption device. From what I see, Louis Vuitton is making money hand over fit with their "Eye Trunk" case which goes for quad digits. A good iPhone case would have gotten more income than a phone. Especially if the case had a Bluetooth item with the concierge button or other niceties.
The problem is that Vertu wound up in a market that was "neither fish nor fowl". If they sold expensive, bespoke, phones designed from the ground up for the individual, simi
Slow dimes. (Score:2)
Lesson Learned: Gold plated commodity things are still just commodity things.
The other lesson learned: "Fast nickels are better than slow dimes." This was an extreme case of "slow dimes" for cellphones.
Grocery stores know that one. You can run on razor thin profit margins if, on the average, you turn over your entire stock every three days or so. 121 (a year's worth) cycles of compound interest at one percent will more than triple the money invested in the stock. (Multiplies it by almost exactly three
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$1.00 * 1.01 = $1.01 (first cycle) .. ..
$1.01 * 1.01 = $1.0201 (second cycle)
$1.0201 * 1.01 = $1.030301 (third cycle)
this can be simplified to 1.01^x where x is the number of times you run thru the cycle
$1.01^121 = $3.33 after 121 cycles
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HUH? This is a Conway alternative fact (aka Trumpian economics)
They're not compounding 1% per year daily. They're compounding one percent per three days every three days for 121 cycles.
One percent a year compounded annually for 121 years would also yield $3.33. But grocery stores don't have to wait that long.
If that's "Trumpian economics" it looks like Trump understands it somewhat better. Maybe that's how he turned a million or so he got from his dad into 3.5 billion - and then spent about the price of
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Do you know where that eggs been?
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slightly ashamed to know this, but those 'fabletics' brand leggings are doing pretty well, she'll likely make more from that venture than her acting career.
Yoga pants sold columbia house style; god bless the USA.
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Conversely, commodity things are no better with arab-approved bling-bling.
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Lesson Learned: Gold plated commodity things are still just commodity things.
Actual lesson learned: gold plated phones sell great until you switch over from Nokia to Android.
Hmmm... (Score:1, Insightful)
"HA! HA!"
- Nelson Muntz
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"HA! HA!"
- Nelson Muntz
It's amusing that that is the first thing that came to my mind too!
Not much sympathy from me.
It wasn't the plating or outside... (Score:5, Interesting)
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"lifetime concierge-on-demand service": So how is that "lifetime" service doing now that they have shut down?
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Anything that pretends to be "lifetime" should be looked at with circumscription. Garmin maps may be an exception, but I can't see how a one time purchase can pay for the salary of a concierge forever.
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I can't see how a one time purchase can pay for the salary of a concierge forever.
They don't intend to. They know that phone replacement is over 50% by year 3. By year 5 almost all phones are replaced.
They probably also know that they only need one concierge working per 200 phones sold. Overall, it's not that expensive compared to the overall cost of the phone.
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So how do you replace a diamond encrusted phone. Are there like nearly rich people who buy old phones that don't work well but look flashy or does it just end in a draw some where, so you can pull it out to feed you idiot ego a regular intervals. Sounds like the proper business is a concierge service for the spawn of the rich/greedy/egoistic/ugly and the poor/greedy/pretty/stupid, people to dumb and egoistic to do anything, and expert service on subscription for the useless but rich spawn.
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Your Siri-fu is weak, old man.
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I want to be rich enough to have a 'pussy coordinator'.
Apparently he pays the whores, so the rich fucker can pretend he's a player, not a john.
I don't want to employ a 'pussy coordinator', just be rich enough that I could.
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That day's probably never going to come, sadly. The N900's hardware is getting too outdated now, I've resigned myself to the fact that I'll have to use a rooted Droid 4 with a Linux chroot as my next phone. After that I'm hoping to put desktop Linux on an Ockel Sirius A with a sliding keyboard.
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How long a contract do I need to sign to get a free one from Verizon?
6 months... ... your liver... both kidney's and your corneas.
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Nothing Lost (Score:2)
n2ch
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Are you sure about that?
I've actually read it here many years ago. There is this thing about luxury items. They are relatively cheap to make, using relatively cheap materials (say diamonds, they basically don't have some special intristic value) and sold for high price.
The starting point is this: there must be some legal way to separate rich from their money the easy way. Luxury items (say vertu phones or diamond/whatever clad laptops) are great example of this. So the outrageous amounts of money these rich
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no no no no no...
Today's memesheet clearly lists "lazy millenials killing established businesses because the don't buy in to overconsumption" as the current paradigm.
Also. What the world needs now is more luxury products to pry open the 1%'s pocketbooks.
You can't have a consumer driven economy when consumers have no disposable income.
Target market is not rich people. (Score:3)
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Came here to say this. Even wasteful rich people think Vertu's phones are silly, it was that bad. The assistant service is redundant and there are jeweled phone cases out there for the latest high-end mainstream smartphones.
Bummer! (Score:2)
Even the pimps are getting replaced by the web.