Inside every large luxury house there is a spreadsheet that never appears in a press release. It ranks client advisers by the revenue attached to their personal book, and its top rows carry numbers that would embarrass a small boutique.
Turnover is now expensive enough that some groups run internal academies, teaching product knowledge, fit and the etiquette of silence in a fitting room.
None of this appears in a window display. It appears in the fourth quarter, when the stores that kept their people keep their clients.
The tension is structural. A company that owns the list survives a departure. A company that owns only the address does not.
