How’s this for a sales pitch: “If you buy this Diesel T-shirt, we’ll throw in a free condo in Miami.” Sounds pretty sweet, right? Oh, by the way, the T-shirt will cost you anywhere from $370,000 to $5.5 million. But, come on. Free condo!
This is something Diesel is actually trying out with its first venture into real estate. The apparel company is building a residential development in the Wynwood section of Miami, and is advertising it by printing 143 T-shirts with corresponding floor plans. If you buy the shirt, you get the apartment it advertises. Seems … normal?
The Miami Herald writes:
Plunk down $1,049,000 for the D6-L7 shirt and you’ll also get a 1,900-square-foot one-bedroom, 2-1/2 bath unit with a den. Live large and splurge $5.5 million on the F2-L7 shirt and you’ll get a 2,376-square-foot one-bedroom, 1-1/2 bath penthouse with your purchase.
This is some major industry disruption. Real estate types try just about every trick in the book to get you into a brand new apartment, but we’ve never seen them using T-shirts as the selling point. Especially when you’re actually buying the T-shirt and getting the apartment as the bonus gift.
The Miami New Times writes:
“How does a storied luxury brand communicate its foray into residential real estate?” the company asks rhetorically in its press release. “By selling clothes of course. DIESEL has created an unconventional, bold approach to the process of buying an apartment. Introducing ‘The Condo T-Shirts — The Most Expensive T-Shirts Ever,’ a range of 143 unique T-shirts, each featuring a corresponding floorplan of an actual DIESEL Wynwood unit and retailing for the approximate cost of a new dwelling.” Cool.
It’s also a weird venture for an apparel company to get into the real estate game, but in the re-urbanization world we live in where companies are capitalizing on millennial spending habits, it makes as much sense as anything else.
https://twitter.com/jessicalipscomb/status/1202228912773877760
We still think the T-shirt should say “I bought a T-shirt and all I got was this lousy condo.” Diesel, we’ll sell you this idea for $5 million.
