Customers sue Hermès over Birkin bags
A new lawsuit says Birkin handbags — the leather-crafted status symbols celebrated in song lyrics and priced at tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars — are being used by their manufacturer to coerce customers into buying other products first, in violation of laws against the abuse of monopoly power.
The companies, New Yorkbased Hermès International and Hermès of Paris, are carrying out “a scheme to exploit this market power by requiring consumers to purchase other, ancillary products from (them) before they will be given an opportunity to purchase a Birkin handbag,” lawyers for two local customers said in a suit filed Tuesday in federal court in San Francisco.
Those products include shoes, scarves, belts, jewelry and home goods, the suit said. By allowing only customers who have bought a certain quantity of those goods to buy Birkin bags, the lawyers said, Hermès has effectively increased the price of those bags as well as its profits.
The suit claims violation of federal and state laws against restraint of trade and anti-competitive conduct. It seeks unspecified damages for all customers who have bought, or tried to buy, other Hermès products in the last four years in order to buy Birkin handbags, and a court order against the practice.
Hermès did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The company has eight stores in California, including two in San Francisco and one in Palo Alto, and 33 in other states.
The luxury handbags are handcrafted by artisans in France. The lawsuit described them as “icons of fashion” and said thousands have been sold since 2000, with millions spent on advertising by the company. In-store prices range from thousands of dollars to $100,000, the suit said, but some current online ads offer them for more than $250,000.
They have also become a cultural symbol. Many rap lyrics use “Birkin” to refer to gifts that are employed to please or bribe a woman. One of the more printable lyrics, by rapper Reno Sinatra, goes, “Back at mall, All she want/She be irking for Birkin, Raising hell for Chanel.”
According to the suit, Hermès does not publicly display Birkin bags at its stores, and instead tells its sales clerks to allow only “selected customers” to view them — those who have “established a sufficient ‘purchase history’ ” by buying other, specified products from the company.
The clerks are paid a 3% commission for sales of the “ancillary” products and 1.5% for other handbags, but no commission for selling Birkin bags, giving them greater incentive to pressure customers to make the other purchases, the suit said.
One plaintiff in the proposed class-action suit said she had already spent tens of thousands of dollars at the store, buying a Birkin handbag and related products, and tried to purchase another Birkin bag in September 2022 but was told they were available only to “clients who have been consistent in supporting our business.”
The second plaintiff said he attempted repeatedly to buy a Birkin handbag last year, was told he needed to purchase other products first and finally gave up.
The suit contended the practices violate the federal Sherman Act, and similar laws in California, that prohibit a business from engaging in “anticompetitive conduct with the design, purpose, and effect of unlawfully maintaining its market and/or monopoly power.”