Louis Vuitton(LV) is a well-known brand which is popular for making luxury fashion items such as shoes, watches, jewellery, accessories, sunglasses. The company sells its products in 50 countries with more than 460 stores worldwide. We all know how expensive the products of LV are but did you know that this fashion brand burns all its unsold bags at the end of every year.
Yes, you read that right, instead of modifying or donating the unsold products, LV puts all the remaining items into the fire and the reason for doing this is very strange. The company does this to not sell its products at low prices, in order to maintain the exclusivity that LV is known for.
Another major reason for doing this act is a US law that is called as ‘duty drawback’. According to this law, if something imported in the US after paying a duty on it is destroyed with customs’ notification, the duty is paid back to the company. As Louis Vuitton’s bags have very high duty rates that are around 15-25 percent on an average, so the company makes up for their losses by getting the duty back.
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Although no one from LV has said about this, many industry insiders believe that the luxury brand even organizes a sale for its employees before destroying them.
sephyweffy on July 28th, 2020 at 14:09 UTC »
This isn't even exclusive to luxury brands. I sew clothes as a hobby and I found out that craft stores often just throw away and/or burn patterns that don't sell. These patterns sell for between $10 and $20, unless they are having some sale where they sell them for $1-$2.
In fact, it's not unheard of for crafters to dumpster dive their dumpsters to get huge trash bags filled with unsold patterns.
CeeArthur on July 28th, 2020 at 13:55 UTC »
The head of Louis Vuitton is one of those lesser known 'richest men in the world', I guess depending on what part of the world you live in, Bernard Arnault. He is usually hovering in the top 3.
IDKHow2UseThisApp on July 28th, 2020 at 13:45 UTC »
This is pretty common. Burberry announced a couple of years ago that it would stop burning merch after they destroyed nearly $40 million in 1 year.