😴 Gucci tracks you in your sleep with new partnership (Oura collab)

This is The Level Ups. The newsletter that breaks down business news like your friend (not your professor).

Today's issue:

• 😴 Gucci launches collaboration with the Oura Ring

• 📈 Was the collab even a success?

• 🤝 Breaking down how a deal like this works.

• 🤖 Adding “high-status” luxury to new consumer health-tech (beyond the watch).

Let's get into it.

Estimated reading time: 2 minutes & 59 seconds.

Gucci Tracks Your Sleep with New Partnership:

The luxury fashion house partnered up with Oura, a health tech company that uses special technology in their rings to track everything related to your sleep.

They’ve launched a new version of the sleep-tracking ring with luxury flair.

The concept is simple. It tracks your biometrics while you wear it sleep and you wake up to all the details on the app.

Things like your heart rate, temperature, and sleep are all measured on the ring through its special sensors. Every morning, you get 3 scores: 

• Sleep score: "how well did you sleep?" including REM sleep hours.

• Activity score: the balance between movement, rest, and sleep to help you hit your goals.

• Readiness

The best part: it shows you how to improve your sleep. People (not just health fanatics) love it. My old boss wore his as his wedding band.

Luxury brands are always looking to stand out. While the tech is not “new,” it is to their audience that’s often not connected to the latest tech.

For Oura: it's a classic sales play and a test in luxury markets.

For Gucci: it’s about brand and the ever-important stock price.

So, was it the right move? 

Success in the Stock Price:

Kering is the house that owns Gucci, Balenciaga, Saint Laurent, Bottega, Alexander McQueen and several others. It’s publicly traded and so pretty much everything comes back to the stock price.

The collab went live on May 26th, 2022.

• A week before the launch (May 19th), Kering stock was at 454 Euros.

• A week after the launch (June 2nd), Kering stock was at 520 Euros.

That’s a 14.5% increase; a significant gain. Here are the pics. 

Before: 

After: 

Of course there’s more to the stock price than just this one launch. But the numbers don’t lie. It's a success as far as shareholders are concerned.

There’s more to the deal than just the stock price. Knowing it’s a success, now we can break down what’s really going on.

Deal Details:

For starters, it’s a brand partnership. Meaning Gucci didn’t create any new technology. Instead, they branded Oura’s technology and added their aesthetic with 18k gold.

This is often called “white-labelling” or “re-skinning” someone else’s product.

Oura’s tech is top-notch (which it better be if it’s a Gucci collab). Using their tech avoids the expensees of building a team and developing anything. Best tech, lower costs, and it's faster. 

The partnership also brings something new to their existing customers as mentioned earlier.

See the ad here: you've got younger and mature customers all wearing the ring.

That headline is a gem: "don't die wondering." 

A health product that shows you how to live healthy and get better sleep with a headline that triggers fear & curiosity. I'm a copywriting nerd and this is amazing to me. 

Pricing Luxury Tech:

The ring retails for $950 (Oura’s base model is $299) and includes the annual app subscription for free.

The savings aren’t much btw. Oura already gives 6 months free when you buy the ring and it’s $6 a month. Big savings right? 🙃

If you're buying Gucci you don't care about saving $36, but it’s a big part of the pitch. I went to Gucci stores myself to see the ring and salespeople always brought it up. 

Fun fact: the ring was sold out in three stores. I only saw one display model, which didn’t even fit my finger. Sales look good. 

The Takeaways:

The implications go on.

Brand always wins.

• Gucci is over 100 years old (founded in 1921).

• New tech they've never touched sells out as soon it goes live. It's amazing.

Collabs open new doors (PR) .

• The ring wasn’t covered by fashion publications. Tech Crunch and other tech publications covered this (they normally don’t cover Gucci) .

• Partially why the stock price shot up as it did.

Anything can become “high-status”

• Gucci is leading the way showing that anything can have a “high-status,” luxury version that sells out because of the brand.

• Don’t be surprised when new products from indie companies are re-skinned by the big fashion houses (they already are).

It's a critical time for partnerships like this because the recession is pushing companies to limit expenses. Collabs seem like the right move. Younger brands know this already.

Will Supreme release a limited-edition lambo? How about a Nike x Hilton collab? Who knows. Exciting times all the same. 

Thanks for reading! See you tomorrow.

PS - If you ever feel like you’re not qualified for a job just read this. It’s hilarious.