Two decades ago, Alex Assouline’s father had an epiphany.
Two decades ago, when Assouline, a leading purveyor of high-end coffee table books and fancy library accouterments, opened its first branded outpost on the seventh floor of Bergdorf Goodman in New York, Prosper Assouline, a founder of the company, experienced a kind of epiphany.
Steep prices and increasingly lavish productions seem in line with a time-tested retail axiom: At the high end of the marketplace, you are only as valued as the company you keep. “Just don’t call us publishers; we are a luxury brand,” said Alex Assouline, who manages sales and marketing at the company’s New York headquarters, pointing out that the company has lately ventured into podcasting, and has produced a digital magazine. Another element of their business is curating libraries for corporate and private clients, furnishing them with Assouline-branded products.
The brand’s latest outpost, an independent boutique on Madison Avenue at 62nd Street in New York, shares a city block with Kiton, Hermès and John Lobb, and accommodates a small bar and outdoor cafe. Its interior, a colourful but somewhat austere amalgam of marble-top consoles, Persian carpeting, and statuary and towering bookcases, does not invite casual browsing.
A customer hoping to examine one of these rarefied objects is promptly greeted by an attendant who heaves it from its resting place and offers a pair of white cotton gloves with which to leaf through its contents, a practice in keeping with the brand’s mission. Among the stores’ most successful volumes are Assouline travel books, purchased as souvenirs and acting as catnip on armchair travellers. “These people want to be part of the world, whether it’s the Sistine Chapel or the Louvre or Versailles,” Kaplan said. Assouline limited editions, including a $US1200 tome on motorcycles, remain popular, he added. “People are buying them as design elements for their homes.
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