Birkin bag maker raises red flag about a disruptive customer trend | Official Website of Louis Velazquez, entrepreneur, finance guy and tech innovator

Hermès (HESAF) , famous for its exclusive and expensive Birkin and Kelly handbags, is facing a growing threat.

Over the past few years, the secondhand luxury market has been booming, as more consumers look to purchase luxury goods at lower prices while battling higher costs of living, inflation, and, most recently, the threat of tariffs making goods more expensive.

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According to a recent survey from Vogue Business, 77% of consumers believe that luxury fashion items cost more than they did a year ago, causing them to change their shopping habits. Also, 46% said they are more interested in purchasing secondhand luxury fashion than they were the year before.

As consumer interest in secondhand luxury goods grows, the market is projected to reach $15.4 billion by 2028, double its size in 2022, according to recent Statista data.

Hermès CEO isn’t happy about customers reselling Birkin bags

Amid this growing trend, Hermès CEO Axel Dumas is making it known loud and clear that he is not a fan of this trend.

During an earnings call on July 30, Dumas said that Hermès does not participate in the secondhand market, despite the company’s original Birkin bag selling for $10.1 million at an auction earlier that month.

He said the growing popularity of reselling Birkin bags makes it harder for the company to serve “real customers.”

“The negative side, and I must say this in the field of speculation, sometimes we have false customers come to our stores to buy them, to resell them, and they prevent us from serving our real customers, and that is a real cause for concern for us,” said Dumas. “Because sometimes it really does spoil something that we adore that is the relationship with our customers.”

He emphasized that he is “not at all happy” with this growing consumer trend, and it doesn’t put him “in a good mood.”

An authentic Birkin bag can cost as much as a six-figure house and is extremely hard to obtain. Hermès’ alleged exclusivity practices surrounding the Birkin bag even caused the company to face an antitrust lawsuit last year. So it is no surprise that consumers are looking for more accessible and cheaper ways to purchase the bag.

Dumas’ rebuke of the secondhand handbag market comes after he said he was “irritated” and “annoyed” by companies selling affordable dupes of the Birkin bag, specifically Walmart’s viral knockoff, dubbed the “Wirkin bag,” which grew in popularity earlier this year.

“Making a copy like this is quite detestable,” said Dumas during an earnings call in February. “It’s really stealing the creativity of others.”

Birkin bags recently became more expensive

Birkin bags and other Hermès products recently went up in price by 6% in the U.S. at the beginning of this year. Shortly after President Donald Trump announced a 10% “baseline” tariff on all countries importing goods to the U.S. in April, Hermès prices increased again by an unspecified amount.

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“We’ve compensated the gross effect of that extra 10% by increasing our prices in the U.S., and we’ll do so from the 1st of May,” said Executive Vice President of Finance Eric du Halgouët during an earnings call in April. “And we’ll do this across all the different divisions and businesses, that price increase.”

During the earnings call on July 30, Dumas emphasized that Birkin bag price increases are not implemented due to the bag’s growing popularity.

“Prices are done as a function of the manufacturing cost and not a function of the desirability,” said Dumas. “This is a commitment that we have with our customers. You may or may not like the bag. It’s not because everybody likes it that we’ll sell it for more. If you ask me sincerely in the success of Hermès, I think that this authenticity and this trust that we try to have with our customers comes into play, whereby even in difficult moments, they come to us.”

Despite higher prices, Hermès’ sales in the Americas increased by 12% year-over-year during the first half of 2025 due to “double-digit growth” in the U.S., according to the company’s latest earnings report.