Hermès CEO Axel Dumas desires to make one factor clear: There’s just one Birkin bag and one place to get it.
The posh model boss expressed his frustration with the resale market that has emerged for the collectible purse, telling traders throughout a second-quarter earnings name on Wednesday patrons buying the arm sweet simply to hike up its value for a secondhand sale are diluting Hermès’ true shopper base.
“Typically we’ve got false prospects come to our shops to purchase them, to resell them, they usually stop us from serving our actual prospects, and that may be a actual trigger for concern for us,” Dumas stated.
“So, I’m by no means pleased to see this growth of recent baggage which might be offered within the secondhand market,” he added. “I pull a face, and I’m not pleased, and it doesn’t make me really feel in temper.”
The Birkin bag, which might run patrons no less than $12,000 and as much as six figures, has been worn by a litany of celebrities like Cardi B and Victoria Beckham, with its exclusivity making the accent a standing image. In Q2 2025, Hermès reported a 9% gross sales bump, largely as a result of continued recognition of its Birkin, Kelly, and Constance baggage, which have helped it climate the luxurious slowdown.
Whereas the bag’s coveted standing has buoyed Hermès’ gross sales, it’s additionally inspired an lively secondhand marketplace for the bag. Due to the bag’s restricted manufacturing and Hermès’ elusive standards to even be allowed to buy the merchandise, resellers have jumped on the alternative to public sale off the baggage. The Birkin’s resale value can exponentially recognize past its sticker value, comfortably doubling in value and, by some measures, outpacing the S&P 500 and the worth of gold.
The unique Birkin bag, as soon as owned by late British actress and singer Jane Birkin, offered earlier this month at Sotheby’s Paris for a cool $10 million.
Hermès didn’t instantly reply to Fortune’s request for remark.
Imitation is the sincerest type of flattery
The conduct of shopping for to promote could also be seen by Dumas as taking “opportunistic benefit” of the model, in response to Marie Driscoll, an fairness analyst targeted on luxurious retail.
“He seems on the product and the model as one thing greater than a commodity,” Driscoll instructed Fortune. “Intrinsically, he thinks these are inventive items which might be a product of somebody’s creativeness and somebody’s arduous work and labor and among the greatest that Hermès can do. I feel a few of it has taken on a lifetime of its personal.”
Dumas has lengthy been an advocate for the sustained exclusivity of the Birkin. Final 12 months, Walmart launched a lookalike—or “dupe” of the bag for $78, which shortly emptied off the low cost retailer’s cabinets. The Hermès CEO instructed traders in February he was “irritated” by the copy-cat’s recognition, although he stated he understood customers weren’t shopping for the “Wirkin” believing it was the actual deal.
“Making a duplicate like that is fairly detestable—it’s stealing the artistic concepts of others,” Dumas stated.
Nonetheless, the posh model’s exclusivity has drawn the ire of some customers, together with two California prospects who sued Hermès in 2024, claiming the corporate engaged in “anti-competitive” practices by requiring potential Birkin patrons to determine themselves as “worthy” prospects by buying ancillary Hermès merchandise.
Whereas some luxurious manufacturers like Gucci and Balenciaga have engaged extra with the licensed resale market to draw new prospects, Hermès doubtless received’t, Driscoll stated. There’s nonetheless sustained demand for the bag and, due to this fact, little cause for Hermès to disturb the mystique it has labored so arduous to create.
“You’re going to must have an extended engagement, which is form of, in a really romantic sense, like being engaged to somebody earlier than the end result of the marriage night time,” she stated. “You’re simply going to must postpone gratification.”
