The economy may be in a fairly bad place right now, but the right people still have money to spend. How about on joining a car club where membership starts around $38,000/year and goes all the way up to $100,000+? Oh, I forgot to mention the $15,000 initiation fee. Today we’ll be profiling Luxautica, the ultimate car club.

What Is It And How Does It Work?

Luxautica is a high-end car club that allows the elite to have access to an arsenal of vehicles from a $184000 Aston Martin DB9, to a $1.7 million Bugatti Veyron. They even have one of seven Maserati MC-12’s ($1.4m) in their fleet.

For a yearly fee, members get access to points, which can be redeemed for a car. Let’s take a look at a sample scenario. Let’s say you get the Silver membership ($38,400), you are given 1,200 points. You could go for a Lamborghini Gallardo, which is 20 points for a weekday, 30 points for a weekend, or 140 points for a week. The cars in this price range should expect to be around this many points. So you could rent a Gallardo for about 2.5 months out of the year. On the other hand, their most expensive car, the Bugatti Veyron, will run you 1,000 points/day.

On top of having access to the cars, you also get a few extras:

• Access to the private member lounge
• Private VIP events
• Concierge services
• Access to premium tickets to local sporting events
• Chauffeur services for the Maybach and Rolls Royce cars
• Exclusive golf excursions
• Sales and acquisition services for exotic cars

The concept of why somebody would pay such high prices for just renting these sort of cars comes behind the high cost of ownership and the little amount of time these cars are actually driven. Between the cost of maintenance, and depreciation, these cars are very expensive to own. Luxautica lets you get access at potentially a much cheaper per mile cost when you look at the big picture…on top of more selection.

The Fleet Of Cars

Luxautica has a fleet of 20 cars worth over $11 million, but plans on growing it further. They said if they have 100 memberships, they will double the fleet. Here’s what you can currently expect:

Aston Martin DB9 Volante | $183,250

Bentley Flying Spur | $170,990

Porsche GT3 RS | $124,900

Spyker Laviolette | $278,000

Ferrari F430 | $173,079

Ferrari F430 Spider | $201,123

Lamborghini Murcielago LP640 | $313,600

Mercedes SLR | $495,000

Ferrari 599 GTB Fiorano | $264,034

Ford GT | $139,995

Lamborghini Gallardo | $180,050

Bentley GTC | $193,990

Lamborghini Gallardo Spyder | $206,000

Rolls Royce Phantom | $340,000

Mercedes Maybach 62 | $386,500

Porsche Carrera GT | $484,000

Saleen S7 | $555,000

Ferrari Enzo | $1.1m

Maserati MC-12 | $1.4m

Bugatti Veyron | $1.7m

Who’s Behind The Company?

Luxautica was started by Raju Mantena, some of the cars even came from his personal collection. Raju founded a privately held specialty pharmaceutical management firm in 2003, which he sold in 2006. He sold it for almost $200 million, more than enough to start Luxautica.

The Facility

Luxautica is located in a 12,005 square-foot bulding that used to be the Millennia art gallery. Part of that space is a private lounge for members only.

The private lounge is a 4,800 square-foot clubhouse that features high-tech audio/video with 16 plasma screens, a game room that converts into boardroom, a cigar room, a private bar with world-class wine list and cigar collection, and a 1,600 square-foot patio.

If you don’t want to go for the cars, you can have access to the members lounge for $15,000/year. Gerry Mattia, an Orlando chiropracter who has a nondriving membership was interviewed in this article.

??I??ll take them over there, and they see $1.6 million Bugattis, and the club is done so extremely well, it??s very impressive to them. It??s great for me in business circles,?? Mattia said.

The social aspects are a plus, he said.

??It??s similar to a country club, but instead of it being golf and tennis, it??s cars,?? Mattia said. ??You get to meet a lot of other people. Most of these people, obviously, if you join this, are fairly successful. If you want to advance sometimes, that??s the place to be.?

No detail was overlooked, the lighting in the facility, done by Electronic Systems Design, was a $500,000 project on its own. In fact $2 million was spent in renovating the facility for Luxautica.

For us regular people that could only dream about driving these sort of cars, you can at least go look at them for $20/adults and $10/children. Here’s all of the contact info:

Luxautica
4190 Millenia Boulevard
Orlando, Florida 32839
1.877.666.6878
info@luxautica.com

There are a ton of people that are celebrity obsessed. That’s why sites like TMZ and PerezHilton are so popular. Celebrities are usually the forefront of the latest fashion trends, and companies can sometimes launch a product with huge success just by having celebrity backing. It’s the reason why gift bags at big events are worth tens of thousands of dollars…companies want to get their products in the hands of celebrities.

So where am I going with this? I’m sure you’ve seen the major trend lately with higher end purses. From Coach to Louis Vitton, women everywhere are eating these bags up…and it doesn’t come at a cheap price. These bags range from hundreds of dollars to thousands, and you see them everywhere (many times they are knockoffs).

With such a huge market of women wanting these high-end bags, what can you do to monetize on that? A couple of internet companies have thought of a great way, and it looks like they are raking in the big bucks for doing so. They are renting out these bags to women using various payment models. The concept is why buy a $2,000 bag just to have it sit in the closet a month later because you wanted to get the next best thing. You can simply rent the bag for a fraction of the cost, and when you’re done, return it for a new one. This way you don’t have a ton of bags taking up closet space and being a waste of money.

Two companies that were profiled in a USA Today article are doing this, Bag Borrow or Steal, and From Bags To Riches.

Bag Borrow or Steal

BBOS was launched in 2004, carrys over 3,000 bag styles, has 450,000 members, and rents out tens of thousands of bags per month. Their payment model is based on a membership fee which ranges from $5-$10/month. Members pay less for a bag, which ranges from $6/week-$275/month + $10 for insurance and $10 for shippping. I’m assuming the 450,000 members aren’t 100% active, but lets say half of them are, and those half are paying the bottom line $5/month membership fee. This means BBOS is pulling in $1,125,000/month or $13.5M/year in membership alone at a very conservative lowball estimate. If they are also renting “tens of thousands” of bags per month, lets estimate the minimum at 20,000 at a very conservative $40/month. That’s $800,000/month or $9.6M/year. Add $10 for insurance to get another $200k/month or $2.4M/year to the bottom line. Add the same number for shipping as well.

All of this put together equals out to a conservative estimate of gross sales being $2,325,000/month or $27.9M/year. I would say that’s not too shabby at all. I’m sure that they also reduce their expenses a ton by reselling the bags after they are completely outdated, or too worn out to keep renting.

One thing to keep in mind is that BBOS also rents out other high-end products such as jewelry, so this may skew the numbers somewhat (which is why I tried to do a conservative estimate).

From Bags To Riches

FBTR was launched in 2005, and is quite a bit smaller than BBOS. They use a different model where you just pay a monthly fee to rent a bag, from $35-$300/month. Standard shipping and insurance up to $100 is free. Of course, they recommend paying the $40 for full insurance coverage. They carry 350-500 different bag styles, and rent out “thousands” a month. Lets work the numbers. We’ll say 2,000 renters a month paying 25% of the $35-$300/month fee ($101), which equals out to $202,000/month or $2,424,000/year. We’ll say that 15% of the 2,000 convert for the insurance for $12,000/month or $144,000/year. Obviously much smaller then BBOS, but still a lot of money, and growing I’m sure.

I think these are great examples of ways to monetize on a trend.