Luxury hedge is a unique real time index that gives you the relative cost of a brand around the world.
Imagine you’re about to head overseas on a holiday or work trip and you want to quickly see whether it is cheaper to buy a brand in your home country, or overseas where you’re travelling. Perhaps you’re already overseas, hitting the shops, and you want to know whether it’s cheaper to buy a brand here. Luxury Hedge is the handy tool that gives you the answer. It uses product prices, real time exchange rates and a country’s VAT, GST or sales tax refund scheme to give you an overview of the relative price of buying the brand in that country. All results are tuned to your home country. You first select your home country, then the brand, and then filter the results by countries you are visiting or interested in.
For example, let’s look at the brand Louis Vuitton. Luxury Hedge has picked key items from the brand and extensively researched the price of those items around the world. It then converts these prices into your home country’s local currency, using live exchange rates that update daily. It then compares the prices around the world to the price of the product in your home country, and shows you the relative increase or decrease, on average, compared to your home country in an index form. Your home country index is always 0%. If another country has an index of -20%, this means the brand is on average minus 20% the cost of the brand in your home country, and this represents a saving to you of 20% if you buy in that other country (based on the averages of our selected products). Conversely an index of +20% means it is 20% more expensive, based on the averages of our selected products that we have researched.
We work on the notion that luxury brands price products in a fairly uniform way- for example, if product A of the brand Louis Vuitton is 10% cheaper in France than in the USA, then product B of Louis Vuitton will also be cheaper in France- though it may not be 10% cheaper. It might be 5% cheaper, or 15% cheaper. Sure, it could also go against the grain and be 5% more expensive, but as a whole, the brand is likely to be cheaper to buy in France than it is in the USA.
We’ve done the research and hard work for you. We look at product prices and analyse the relative prices of luxury goods between countries, by using real time exchange rates. Use our index to get a quick and easy worldwide overview of the cheapest place to shop.
Product Prices
Luxury Hedge picks popular products across a range of lines within a brand. It then regularly researches and monitors the price of those products around the world. We then use these products to create an index based on averages. Luxury Hedge shows the index result for each country, as well as the individual product percentages for six popular products. This allows you to get an overview of whether the brand is more expensive of cheaper in a certain country, compared to your home country.
Some brands, for example, Cartier, have more uniform pricing between products compared to overseas markets. Some brands, like Hermes, have less uniform pricing. It is always important to check the product percentages to get a clearer picture. In any event, it will allow you to identify an opportunity to save when travelling.
Exchange Rates
We use live exchange rates that update throughout the day. Our index is real time. With so much exchange rate volatility, the prices of luxury goods can be dramatically cheaper, or more expensive, overseas. Luxury Hedge uses exchange rates, as well as product prices and taxes, to give you a real time guide.
Taxes
We’ve researched the VAT, GST and sales taxes of all countries around the world! Shopping tax free is a real way to save when eligible. In some countries, the tax refund increases depending on the price of the good you buy. We’ve taken all this into consideration, where the luxury hedge index will show you the relative prices with and without tax. We’ve also taken into account the commission points that refund companies, such as Global Blue, usually take. For example, even though the VAT rate for some products in Greece might be as high as 24%, you never receive that much tax refund back. It’s not an exact science, but it will give you and indication of whether you will save when shopping overseas.
