Resale Searches, Demand for Chanel Products is Up on the Heels of Lagerfeld’s Death

Image: Chanel

Resale Searches, Demand for Chanel Products is Up on the Heels of Lagerfeld’s Death

Die-hard Chanel fans are not wasting time getting their hands on Karl Lagerfeld era Chanel products. The market’s luxury resale sites are seeing a spike in searches and demand for Chanel products in the immediate wake of the news that Lagerfeld, the longtime Chanel ...

February 21, 2019 - By TFL

Resale Searches, Demand for Chanel Products is Up on the Heels of Lagerfeld’s Death

Image : Chanel

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Resale Searches, Demand for Chanel Products is Up on the Heels of Lagerfeld’s Death

Die-hard Chanel fans are not wasting time getting their hands on Karl Lagerfeld era Chanel products. The market’s luxury resale sites are seeing a spike in searches and demand for Chanel products in the immediate wake of the news that Lagerfeld, the longtime Chanel creative director and Fendi womenswear head, died at age 85 on Tuesday. WWD has revealed that the death of the German fashion industry legend and pop culture icon has “resulted in an influx of interest in Chanel.”

The fashion publication cited a rep for popular luxury consignment site, The RealReal as saying the company has, in fact, “seen increased demand for Chanel this week, particularly in clothing and handbags,” a notion that was echoed by a rep for eBay, which is also seeing a spike in Fendi wares, as well. StockX, which is busy building out its handbag offerings acter initially launching as a pure-play sneaker site, “experienced a 25 percent increase in the number of bids on Chanel products on the platform on Tuesday, compared to the same period last week.”

Still yet, according to WWD, “Depop searches for Karl Lagerfeld increased 1,351 percent following the designer’s death.”

Such brand or designer-specific events have proven to highly impact activity on the resale sites. Demand similarly went through the roof for many sites after news broke that Phoebe Philo would leave Paris-based design house Celine. But more than merely, impacting demand, in some cases, these events trigger fluctuations in price.

Basing prices on event-driven consumer-search data and the resulting demand for – versus actual supply of – specific brands and products is not a far cry from how shifts in the financial markets are impacted by an array of factors, including, of course, events and anticipated events. In much the same way, supply and demand on The RealReal and at least a few other sites is not immune to – and in many cases, is actually dependent upon – external industry events.

“We’re pulling data all the time,” Rati Levesque, The RealReal’s chief merchant, told Quartz last year. This approach sees The RealReal collecting data – in real time – about what items and brands are “trending up and trending down” amongst searching-consumers and ultimately, buyers. It uses this data to stock its heavily-trafficked website (which has sold more than 8 million items to date to some 9 million active users) and its brick-and-mortar spaces. It also takes these numbers into account when it “adjusts prices [for the products on its site], based on the supply and demand.”

Considering that the entire model of Stock X – which has been likened to a NASDAQ for sneakers – is inherently based on the leveraging of real-time data of supply and demand to set prices, Chanel products are likely going to surge there, as well.

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