“The word ‘luxury’ doesn’t mean anything anymore.”

A CEO of a multinational high-end brand said this to me recently. And he’s right.

Luxury has become ubiquitous, and in the process, diluted. Everyone now has a luxury offering. You can buy a “luxury” lunch in the USA for $5. Taco Bell and their Luxe Box has you covered. It’s a good deal, but is it luxury?

And that is the problem. Luxury has become an abused word. It now means everything, which means functionally it means nothing. It’s lazy shorthand. And there are real consequences.

Luxury brands are at risk of being trapped like the meat in a sandwich.

Below the luxury tier, Main Street is innovating faster than the luxury segment. Not with marble, private chefs, or branded indulgence, but by applying luxury principles with discipline and speed.

Clarity. Friction removal. Respect for time. Predictability where it matters, surprise where it counts.

Community banks, regional home builders, technology companies, retailers, and founder-led businesses are borrowing the operating logic of luxury and applying it with intent and measurable results.

Above the luxury tier, UHNW is doing something else entirely. They are not polishing the old playbook. They are abandoning it.

New concepts. New ownership models. New definitions of value, privacy, control, and belonging.

This is not “better luxury.” It is post-luxury.

And in the middle?

Stagnation. Too big to move quickly. Too invested in legacy signals. Still debating what “luxury” means while both ends of the market move past them.

That’s the real problem.

We work across all of these segments, and our Main Street clients are every bit as significant as our UHNW practice. Not aspirational. Not adjacent. Actively building, testing, and applying these principles at scale.

What all of our clients share is not a category, a price point, or a label. They share an ambition.

They want their customers, guests, clients, homeowners, and members to have experiences that stand apart from every other brand in their world. They are ambitious, unrelenting, and uncompromising, and they all compete and win on experience.

An elevated experience, at any level, can be described as luxurious. But the brands winning today on experience don’t lean on the label. They know real luxury is not said. It’s felt.