👏 IF YOU NEED A RING LIGHT TO PRODUCE CONTENT, EMILY MARIKO DOES NOT WANT YOUR BROKE SELF CARRYING HER BAG.👏
Here's why the Emily Mariko tote bag was $120
(Originally posted here.)
Lots of people called the cost of the bag unreasonable, out of touch, called her greedy. Can't deny that it's expensive merch. Our perceptions of affordability are indelibly tied to our reliance on garment worker exploitation.
Given that the Farmers Market Tote was made in California, it likely cost somewhere between $30-50 to make. That covers overhead and opex like site hosting, shipping/storage, materials, design, and labor. She's not doing the procurement and logistics herself, so her management or employees also take a cut.
All in all, there's no way she's sold over 2000 units, and she took home let's say...$50 profit? If she made $100,000, that's not a lot compared to her primary streams of income. Consider how much money she probably got from Poppi, Williams Sonoma, the investment Dior and Ralph Lauren put in for her to make fashion show appearances.
⭐ The tote bag wasn't easy money. It was a brand equity play. ⭐
Popular influencers have lots of exposure, inevitably also to people at different income levels. The salmon rice bowl brought Emily Mariko into the mainstream because everyone eats leftovers. But most of Emily Mariko's lifestyle is inaccessible and unaffordable—housing in the Bay area, local heirloom tomatoes, a closet of Lululemon matching sets. She makes simple yet nourishing foods in luxurious but not lavish settings.
There is a class of people who pay good money to be seen as tasteful. The aspirational class is defined by the cultural capital primarily, income only secondarily. If you can't recognize them by sight, you might narrow them down by recognizing that inconspicuous consumption is when people own the more expensive version of the stuff that a lot of other people already have. The Staub cast iron, the Melissa and Doug wooden blocks, and now—possibly—the Emily Mariko tote bag. It will never usurp the yuppie classic LL Bean Boat Tote, but still the Emily Mariko tote is catnip to the influencer world's aspirational class. While the influencer class in general is considered vulgar new money compared to "legacy" celebrity, the influencer niche targeted here is more "respectable," "tasteful" in their buying habits, and highly replicable.
Over the next few weeks and months, you will see plenty of athleisure-clad Goldendoodle owning content creators unboxing their Emily Mariko orders, or showing off their Erewhon hauls with the Eucalyptus or Strawberry Milk Emily Mariko tote bag prominently featured. They use her name to draw in eyeballs. She uses these second, third degree followers to drive her absolute impressions and engagement, establishing herself increasingly as the apex predator in the lifestyle influencer space. She retires at age 40 from the fortune she makes on a sage green George Foreman grill sold exclusively at Target.