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WHAT'S NEW IN THE WORLD OF EXPERIENCE
A collection of posts from our founder on all things experiential
UHNW
Why We Built Our UHNW Archetype Model
I was in Wyoming yesterday for an event and found myself in the bar afterwards having drinks with three billionaires. We were discussing experiences, how expectations change over a lifetime, and how little companies really understand about the diversity of wealth and what it means to truly connect with someone whose net worth is ten figures. These are three men who made their fortunes in three completely different ways. Good friends. And yet largely indistinguishable to almos
The AHA Group
Oct 62 min read
“I am literally numb from the boredom and disappointment."
But I’m putting on a fake smile to get through the appointment.” I do this all the time in luxury. So do many HNW and UHNW customers. I spend much of my life inside ultra-luxury boutiques, hotels, residences and showrooms, as both buyer and adviser. The lapses in judgment, design, and execution at six- and seven-figure price points are something more serious: they expose how little of a brand’s celebrated discernment makes it to the guest. Here is my dirty [baker’s] dozen of
The AHA Group
Oct 62 min read
The Homogenization of Luxury Retail
At dinner last night, a VVIP client reduced billions of dollars of luxury retail investment to eight words: “The Salon is rare. The experience is anywhere.” Touché. I wanted to high-five him. If your luxury brand has private appointment spaces, this applies to you. Every luxury retailer we begin working with delivers some version of very nice, very ordinary luxury they have convinced themselves is special. The brands convinced they are even more exceptional are not exem
The AHA Group
Oct 62 min read
I evaluated billions of dollars of luxury spend targeted at the UHNW
Last week, I spent hours evaluating billions of dollars of luxury spend targeted at attracting the UHNW. If I’m honest, I was bored, really bored. Imagine the buyer. I was judging a major international branded residences competition, with brands including Armani, Karl Lagerfeld, Six Senses, St. Regis, etc. I went in expecting to see the future. Instead, after listening to some architects wax lyrically for 20 or 30 minutes about a groundbreaking new way of living, I found myse
The AHA Group
Oct 62 min read
Luxury Brands & UHNW in China
One of the most dangerous assumptions Western luxury brands can make in China is that the status they’ve earned over decades will continue to belong to them. It won’t. Across our work with luxury brands and UHNW clients in China, we are seeing the most sophisticated consumers quietly change the basis on which a brand earns its place in their purchasing hierarchy. Quiet luxury is one visible expression of it. But the more consequential shift is this: The burden of proof has mo
The AHA Group
Oct 62 min read
Bespoke Automobiles
“Why didn’t they do that?” is what owners of bespoke automobiles asked me over dinner in Monterey last week, as we compared Rolls-Royce Private Office, Bugatti Sur Mesure and Porsche Sonderwunsch commissioning experiences. As they described what each experience had been like, I shared a few ideas of my own. Not on the car. On the experience of commissioning it. That’s when I heard: “Why didn’t they do that?” More than once. Which is interesting given how much these programs a
The AHA Group
Oct 62 min read
The Challenge for Wealth Management
There is an industry that still believes deeply in the strength of its HNW client relationships. Yet only 17% of its wealthy clients say they are actually receiving a quality, personalized experience. And the data only gets worse for everyone in Wealth Management. In 2019, 39% of HNW clients relied on a single wealth management firm. Today, just 19% do, and 81% now maintain multiple relationships. That is a sizeable shift, but many firms will still tell you, “We’re exceptiona
The AHA Group
Oct 62 min read
Changing the Game in Luxury Hospitality
Our team just finished building a new hotel concept and brand for a client in the Middle East. And we built it in a way that fundamentally challenges how luxury hospitality has been developed for decades. We didn’t start with a location and ask what belonged there. And we didn’t build a beautiful asset and then ask a brand, service model and experience to make it distinctive. We reversed the entire logic. This developer and their investors understood that in a saturated ultra
The AHA Group
Aug 182 min read
HNW and UHNW customers aren’t fooled by your segmentation.
“I know exactly what they track, and I find it mildly offensive because it’s obvious and archaic. It has absolutely no value to me as a client.” said a tech millionaire. A few weeks ago I was at a dinner with UHNW customers of one of our clients, and we got onto the topic of how luxury brands segment “the wealthy.” UHNW individuals know they are being profiled this way. And the feedback was scathing. “I know that they use my net worth and purchasing patterns to put me into th
The AHA Group
Aug 182 min read
The evolution of buying behaviors and decision-making in HNW and UHNW markets.
Last week, the CFO of a multi-billion-dollar luxury brand dropped by a session I was teaching. He liked it so much, he cancelled all of his afternoon meetings to stay to the end. The topic? The evolution of buying behaviors and decision-making in HNW and UHNW markets. Over six weeks of almost continuous work travel, I have delivered versions of this briefing to sales organizations across luxury retail, private aviation, wealth management and luxury automotive. And I keep comi
The AHA Group
Aug 182 min read
"Most people don't realize how quickly they're revealing what they don't know."
"Most people don't realize how quickly they're revealing what they don't know." I hear some version of this constantly from HNW and UHNW luxury buyers. "My team, my family office, and I get sold to every day. Usually by people who know everything about the product they're selling and almost nothing about the life I'm actually living.” They are right. Whether it's private aviation, luxury retail, hospitality, wealth management, or another affluent-facing business, there is an
The AHA Group
Aug 182 min read
Something every luxury brand needs to hear.
Last night, over dinner in Portofino, an UHNW guest of our client netted out something every luxury brand needs to hear. I asked him what keeps him returning so consistently to this brand every quarter, year after year. He replied, "Aside from the quality, they have helped me develop my life over the years in ways I didn't expect, and they treat me with such care that feels like family - only more loyal, with more wisdom, and better taste." He spends millions annually with th
The AHA Group
Aug 182 min read
I knew exactly what had gone wrong with this luxury brand.
Somewhere in a conference room months earlier, someone had written, "We need to create more memorable moments." I could see the evidence everywhere. Here's the problem: affluent and ultra-high-net-worth clients have already moved on. Like way on. What feels extraordinary to an organization often feels remarkably familiar to someone who experiences the world's best brands every week. The objective isn’t to design specific moments. It’s to design brand DNA into everything. Ever
The AHA Group
Aug 182 min read
Luxury clienteling is one of the worst experiences in luxury retail.
200 of the world's most valuable luxury retail clients spoke to us about this topic. 65 percent of wealthy, high-net-worth, high-spending luxury consumers report dissatisfaction with the retail in-store and digital experience. 85 percent say the overall luxury client experience has declined. The brands reading top-tier client concentration as loyalty are misreading a warning sign as a report card. Those clients aren't more loyal. They're just the last ones left while everyone
The AHA Group
Aug 182 min read
White Paper: The Consent Collapse
In over 200 conversations with HNW and UHNW clients, they have shared views about retail luxury brands they would never say publicly. Not because they are angry. Because they are done. What is striking is not the dissatisfaction itself. It is the language increasingly being used to describe modern luxury relationship models. Clients describing “VIP relationships” as psychologically exhausting. Clienteling as surveillance. Familiarity as entitlement. Personalization as pressur
The AHA Group
Aug 182 min read
Our 7 Principles Framework for UHNW Event Design
When HNW and UHNW clients come to us about event design, they have already made one decision: the event is a brand extension. Our job is not to plan it, our job is to architect the experience so precisely that the people in the room walk away behaviorally different from when they walked in. That is a fundamentally different design problem. And it requires a fundamentally different model. Here is how our approach compares to what the market is currently offering: The market st
The AHA Group
May 252 min read
HNW/UHNW consumers are becoming extraordinarily fast evaluators
Last week, I spent time with a client discussing something I think about often: high-end consumers are becoming extraordinarily fast evaluators. Not necessarily harsher, but faster. Someone may have stayed at Aman in Tokyo, visited a private members club in London, and had a remarkable experience at Cartier, all before interacting with your organization that same month. Those experiences shape expectations more than most companies realize. This has come up recently in worksho
The AHA Group
May 252 min read
One Thing That Should Terrify Luxury Brands
I regularly talk with millionaires and billionaires as part of our client engagements and here’s one thing I hear time and again that should terrify most luxury brands. Ultra-high net worth (UHNW) individuals - founders, family office principals, business magnates – are changing their relationship with luxury. They are emotionally disengaging. They are no longer impressed. Many are actively bored. We heard the same sentiment repeatedly, “Every luxury experience today feels
The AHA Group
May 152 min read
The Growth in Branded Residences
The branded residence sector is projected to exceed $1 trillion in value globally by 2030. This is no longer just a real estate category. It is becoming one of the most important luxury experience categories in the world. I’m honored to join the judging panel for the inaugural Global Branded Residence Awards, hosted by Boutique Hotel News, taking place this October in Dubai, alongside an extraordinary international panel representing some of the most influential names across
The AHA Group
May 151 min read
Luxury brands are making a dangerous miscalculation
Luxury brands are making a dangerous miscalculation: they believe they are far more differentiated than they actually are. I was speaking recently with the GM of a luxury hotel who proudly described their Baccarat chandeliers. Around the same time, the Captain of a luxury yacht walked me through their mid-deck meditation garden. The problem is not that these things are unimpressive. The problem is that nearly every serious competitor now has their own version of the same form
The AHA Group
May 152 min read
Ready to Make Your UHNW Customer Experience Exceptional?
Our clients contact us with a distinct business challenge in mind - how can they strengthen the experiences they deliver to their affluent and UHNW customers, better prepare their people to engage their customers, or simply how to win and retain more UHNW customers.
Sometimes that work begins with a consulting engagement. Other times, it is a one-day executive facilitation session, sales training, wealth briefing, or an UHNW keynote.
We welcome your inquiry through our contact page or directly to William Andrews at williama@ahaexperience.com.
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