Why this new shopping hub turned away luxury’s biggest brands

If you know anything about Harry and Meghan, you are likely aware that the formerly royal couple lives in Montecito, California, a land of milk and honey where Oprah also lives. Ariana Grande spent the pandemic in Montecito, which is so privileged with its Mediterranean-esque climate and sprawling estates that it has become a mecca for the billionaire class and their brethren. Retail developer David Fishbein calls Montecito “the holy grail of the made life”. The town’s staggering median household income of $212,154 — nearly sixfold the US median of $37,585 in 2022 — also makes it the holy grail of luxury labels. Yet luxury retail is the one thing that sleepy Montecito has lacked. Rodeo Drive is an hour and a half drive away, without traffic. Montecito’s downtown proliferates with ‘mom-n-pop’ shops. When Fishbein and his business partner Joey Miller noticed their friends moving to Montecito during the pandemic, they began sniffing around for developable property in the area. They found an old medical office complex — six buildings on three acres with 25 tenants including a dentist, an acupuncturist and a pilates studio situated across from a bird sanctuary. They’ve developed that complex into The Post Montecito, which I’ll call a shopping centre for lack of a better term. It’s due to open in mid-December. With two full-service restaurants, several smaller eateries, a hair salon, and a plethora of apparel and fashion shops in buildings that look out on a nature path that leads to the beach, the Post has the “made” local population in its sights — but not in the way you might think. You will not find Gucci there, nor Louis Vuitton nor Cartier. You won’t find Loewe there, but not for lack of interest. In fact, Fishbein and Miller say they nearly signed leases with Loewe and other brands owned by LVMH, Kering and Richemont. But the duo ultimately turned the brands down, choosing instead to work with smaller, more local brands, and to open a couple of their own multi-brand stores. Did turning away long-term leases with big luxury conglomerates cause these developers any angst? “A lot!” Fishbein replies. “I’ve been doing this for 16 years and my dream has always been to do business with these luxury brands. I was so excited.” “We were like, ‘Oh my god, huge!’” Miller says of the first offer that came from LVMH. One of their reasons for walking away from the luxury giants was the control conglomerates demanded, including restrictions requiring that The Post be 100 per cent luxury brands or one-star Michelin restaurants, Miller says. “I don’t want to come to this thing with my wife and it’s only like Rodeo Drive,” Fishbein says. They sought to offer discovery and quirky experiences, instead. “We built our company on curation,” Miller says. “An airport full of duty-free luxury brands is not cool.” So instead of Dior or Gucci, there will be The Great, Maygel Coronel, Janessa Leone and Save Khaki. If you don’t know these labels, that’s the whole point. Discover them. “It’s the mix that’s interesting to us,” Miller says. Miller and Fishbein’s think-different reasons for turning away big luxury in favour of small and local is illustrative of the emerging culture of shopping and leisure for the moneyed classes. With everything at their fingertips or available online, these shoppers are looking for what they don’t already have or know about. This raises questions about whether retail is becoming oversaturated with big, heavily advertised brands that open stores in every luxury mall. Though they once maintained flagship stores in gateway city centres, luxury brands have spent much of the past five years opening smaller stores in wealthy enclaves where they sit nearer to the places their clients live. Angelinos can shop among five Saint Laurent stores in Beverly Hills, West Hollywood, Pacific Palisades, Glendale and Topanga. Louis Vuitton has seven stores in the Los Angeles environs, not counting the additional three in adjacent Orange County. All these store openings have helped fuel luxury’s growth for several years. But that growth has slowed markedly for Kering, LVMH and Richemont, leading to falling revenues and widespread fears of a luxury recession even while the rest of the economy is strong and employment is at record highs. One wonders whether shoppers have had enough of all those same stores. Miller and Fishbein are betting they have. A spokesman for LVMH declined to comment, saying the company doesn’t comment on real estate decisions. A Kering representative declined to comment on The Post, but noted that in general, balancing established luxury offerings with unique local experiences touches on an important and evolving dynamic in the industry. When I last checked in on Miller and Fishbein, they were navigating the pandemic with Platform LA, another shopping centre of sorts in Culver City, West LA. There, the idea was similar: an eclectic mix of brands and restaurants that offer discovery and flexibility. They opened women’s and men’s multi-brand stores — Teller and The Optimist, respectively — that will also open at The Post Montecito, with purchasing and merchandising handled in-house by their company, Runyon Group. “We decided to triple down and lease our own space for our stores,” says Miller. They’ll carry Anna October, Paris Georgia and Tove Studio, among other names, and will use the data they clean from transactions to further build the business. In that way, they’re learning what the big brands realised long ago: owning stores provides intelligence. “We can see the customers, we can see their zip codes,” Miller says. “It’s a feeder system for us.” Miller and Fishbein aren’t stopping at Montecito — though Fishbein says he would like to move to the town. They’re looking for land across the country as millennials migrate out of cities, working from home and shopping nearby, for the next idyllic spots where the “made life” happens. They’re scouting Franklin, Tennessee; Summit, New Jersey; and San Diego. “We’re looking everywhere,” Miller says. Comments, questions or feedback? Email us at feedback@voguebusiness.com.

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