Hey, guys, when was the last time you wore a $500 dress shirt? Can you also remember where you bought it? Where it was you wore it to? What the occasion was? Better yet, can you remember why you paid $500 for a shirt – yes, just one – in the first place?
Asking $500 for just one shirt takes gall, lots of gall. Being able to get that $500 asking price is a stroke of marketing genius. What kind of story must one tell to convince a grown man to part with $500 for a single shirt. But consider this: To afford such luxury, that buyer has got to be earning a king’s ransom, at least the mid-six figures a year. At least. And dummies don’t earn that kind of money, right? Or do they?
Why would anyone – except for perhaps the less intellectually endowed – pay $500 for a single shirt? Apparently, for a lot of guys, the answer – at least until recently – has been, “Because I can afford it.”
Most guys I know, if they had $500 they could afford to part with, would not spend it on a shirt. Certainly not on just one shirt. Uno. The most elementary of numbers. A single, solitary, individual shirt. For 500 smackers?
But, obviously, there are lots of guys who, ’til recently, shelled out that kind of money for a single shirt. Hard times being what they’ve become, however, it appears the number of such guys has decreased drastically…much to the dismay of a 125-year old Texas-based custom shirt-maker that charges that price – and gets it.
Imagine charging prices that outrageous for 125 years. I want to meet the marketing guru who dreamed up that scheme. Or scam? No, you know what it is, what explains it all? It’s Texas. It’s got to be, because in Texas they do everything in a very big way.
While most guys I know would end up with two dozen shirts for 500 bananas – if they had it to spend on shirts – I’d like to get into the minds of the guys who actually part with 500 fine for just one shirt.
I want to know what they were told is so special about their shirts. Could it be the label – the one that says “Custom Tailored For Another Rich Chump.” It’s probably sewn someplace on the outside of their shirt, right? High priced things always come with labels on the outside.
Gee, now I feel really bad for the guys I know who wear their J. C. Penney or Sears labels actually touching their skin. Ugh! How gross that must feel.
Someday I want to meet this shirt-maker, the guy whose company makes and sells those $500 shirts. I want to pick his brain, learn his marketing secrets. I want to discover what it is he tells his customers to make them willingly part with 500 shekels for a single shirt. Now that’s marketing, baby!