⚠ The Resale MarketModerate threat

The deliberate scarcity that supports luxury pricing is being quietly undercut by the explosive growth of the resale market. When LVMH withholds supply to keep a product exclusive, a thriving second-hand ecosystem — online platforms, consignment, peer-to-peer — steps in to supply it anyway, at prices the brand does not set and cannot fully control. That makes scarce items available to anyone with money, blunting the exclusivity; it creates a visible secondary price that can sit awkwardly against retail; and it opens a channel through which wear, fakes, and grey-market goods circulate under the brand's name. It also, more subtly, teaches younger buyers to treat luxury as a tradeable asset rather than an untouchable dream.

LVMH's control of its own primary distribution remains firm, and a healthy resale market can even reinforce a brand by proving its value holds over time. But it is a large and growing force outside the company's control that chips at the manufactured scarcity the moat depends on — scarcity engineered by houses as old as 1854¹. A moderate, structural erosion at the edges.