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Recently I was looking at the list of richest people, and for the most part it makes sense to me, but one thing confuses me: why is Bernard Arnault so rich? It seems to me that one can't get that rich simply off of fashion - you can get rich, but you can't become the third richest person in the world off of fashion. It's possible that I'm wrong, but I strongly suspect that there's some part of the story that I haven't heard yet- I suspect that one of his ventures is creating value in a way that goes beyond mere fashion, and I am curious to figure that out.
Expensive real estate actually seems like a great way to become one of the richest people. Maybe we just have different priors.
Edit: apparently, the real estate isn't where they make their money though...
1MikkW
I agree that real estate can make a person rich. But the path I see for that is only tangentially connected to luxury
For most sectors, I think there's tiers. Apple sells less devices at a slightly more expensive price point than e.g. Microsoft or Google. I think the highest tiers, that only a few can afford, but at the highest price point (which is actually a selling point of your product) makes intuitive sense as a path to being one of the richest, and real estate, as an asset class, makes intuitive sense to apply this strategy to.