Looking for a niche market to address? Consider luxury items - seems there’s a lot affluent, brand conscious people out there with money to burn, big money, yet few places to spend it online.

A few months back I reported on an online company selling very exclusive items with big price tags. It appears they might be on the right track according to this article on CNN Money.

99 percent of rich consumers are online and are quite happy to part with their cash; spending thousands of dollars on single items - fashion accessories, watches, you know; all the stuff you and I spend far less on :).

The big mistake that the very elite brands have made in the past is thinking that by creating online stores and allowing the affluent to shop directly from their sites, it “cheapens” the brand.

A couple of top shelf retailers are now waking up to the fact this isn’t the case - maybe we’ll see “Hot Offer!” popups on the Gucci site in the near future? ;). Actually, I just took a trip out to Gucci out of curiosity and see they are offering many of their items for purchase online. I was half expecting alarms to go off and a screen stating “Poor white trash detected!” when I landed on the site. They’ve got an interesting storefront/cart setup, check it out.

I wonder if there’s a market for exclusive Michael Bloch autographed cigarette butts? I could make a killing. Seriously though, if these folks are being underserviced, why not take a crack at addressing the luxury item niche? From the crazy profits you make, you could do something really nice like sponsor a child in Africa or sponsor the planting of trees to help battle global warming! Oops, wrong blog :).

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Creating a sense of scarcity