Ferrari - A Pretty Remarkable Company

It's interesting but I didn't see anything really weird in there. Ferrari incentivizes dealers to put on awesome events and to take care of the customers? The horror! It's a premium brand and I for one appreciate things like track days with only other Ferrari's, dealership techs there etc.

The rest of it is things like "OMG they make a profit" (how do they think we can afford these cars anyway?) or standard sales incentives like trying to push options. Upselling is standard across all industries. Again I like the fact that I can customize my car and buy some sweet luggage with it or whatever.

None of this sounds at all off or weird in any way. If I ran Ferrari I would be negligent not to push the dealers hard. Welcome to business.

 

I couldn't even read the full article. I don't need his opinion to form mine. When it come to passion and the strive for advancement in technology, Ferrari is hard to beat. Admittedly, I'm less fond of the recent direction of the company.

 

The author in My opinion is an idiot. When he wrote "These margins have been achieved by branding Ferrari as a luxury-goods company as opposed to merely another car maker" . Well holy **** they are not merely another car maker. He should be complaining more about companies such as Toyota and Honda, regarding their Lexus and Acuras as luxury brands when they are basically high end versions of their own "merely another car brand" cars. He is stunned that people put $70,000 of options on a car costing $300K plus? Has he ever seen the price difference between a base model F150 XLT and an F150 King Ranch or a Limited? The price is double. The guy probably drives a bicycle.

 

Ferrari another example of the more greed in the world, I dont know how a dealers stay business with such demands, and yes i am used buyer of Ferrari lol Thank you for the good reading I was interest in the news

 

If you can’t see that the point of the piece is information from the inside. If you have been around this stuff for awhile, you know what they are up to. Enzo was brilliant at making himself and his cars a legend. I personally think you would be daft to order $70k in carbon doo dads. But I’m happy to buy them for 10 cents on the dollar 2 years down the road. Ferrari knows their current customer. They really aren’t the enthusiast of old, who would track his car and have his friends over to help work on it. Their base generally uses the car as an accessory for their Rolex and to get a a good valet spot. They buy the latest and greatest track day special and never go near a track. Hell, they barely break the speed limit on a ‘spirited drive’ or on their way to show off at any of the hundreds of coffee events around the country. Ferrari knows exactly who is their target. It’s a luxury goods buyer and they’re very adept at fleecing them. I would do exactly the same thing. Just as Enzo did


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Well, Michael Sheehan has always sometimes been rather controversial; I only disagree with the comparison to Hermes and Louis Vuitton. It is valid considering the margins, that's all. But the "Ferrari of old" was closer to what Hermès was, and has more or less managed to remain: still held mainly by the original family, and with a rather small production and long waiting lists (I don't have any horse in that race...). Vuitton of today is now "luxury for the masses", with large series production etc...unfortunately closer to what Ferrari is now becoming,
If you agree that the first characteristic of a luxury item is that it is very rare, Vuitton ain't luxury anymore. Montezemolo wanted a cap on the number of cars produced at 7,000 per year to keep the scarcity.
But as Ferrari, Vuitton indeed knows how to make money; it has a bit lost its soul in the process, but that doesn't seem to matter for the customers.

Rgds

 

Ferrari has been spun off three years ago, and he still talk about FCA as "parent company" ?

 

It doesn't paint a pretty picture of classiche. Preserving heritage my ass. It's about making money. Nothing wrong with that, but don't try and put lipstick on that pig.

 

LMAO!

 

+1! What he said!

$6,000 for a book that took 5 minutes to research and 10 to print.

 

While I am quite sure that Ferrari is using leaf blowers to blow lira into piles they can jump into, the article says nothing about the cost of running the traveling circus of an F1 team. That figure must put a pretty good dent in the bottom line. There is no way sponsorship income covers that nut - I know next to nothing about the economics of F1 (other than that Bernie is wealthier than the Queen), but the money must come from somewhere even if the entities are separate.

 

Having been closely involved for most of my adult life I find it useful to separate the actual car design and production part of the company from the management side. One has been varying degrees of distasteful for its entire history.

 

If this company was not building items that are our hobby but instead was involved in some mundane industrial product and we were studying them in business school they would be held up as an example of great ways of monetizing and profiting on every aspect of their business. Instead, being on the consumer side and using discretionary money to do it we think of them as the Evil Empire.

 

I was just wondering how accurate are all his numbers. Where did he get all that inside info?

 

Ferrari is now a luxury brand. They have said so themselves. In others words, they are in business to pull every last cent they can out of your wallet.

 

A lot of people dislike Sheehan. A lot of people like Sheehan. But he has survived in the biz for a very long time. However, I have never heard anyone accuse him of making things up. I would trust the numbers he puts out there.

 

When it comes to cars he doesn't like he puts his thumb on the scale a lot.

 

It's my understanding that he is responsible for the values in Forza magazine. I don't know if he is or is not, just what I've read. Who ever is responsible, for at least the 355, does not have a clue - zip, nada, nothing. It's so far off it's not even funny.

 

Thats the job of every corporate officer world wide. It is what shareholders pay them for. Top level corporate operations is like making sausage, they need to use the whole hog and it ain't always pretty. Ferrari among car companies is in a unique position to explore avenues of income not available to most of the others and that puts many off. They would be derelict in their duties if they did not take advantage of those avenues. The only valid argument is, are their decisions harmful to the long term health of the brand? That is debatable but only the future will tell us. So far, it tells us they are right. We may not like it but the shareholders do.

Ferrari does not exist to make the hard core enthusiasts happy, it exists to make investors money. They are doing that. If they do that long term they have done their job.

 

And people are lining up to pay.