A luxury lifestyle extends far beyond real estate, and few know how to cater to it as well Mayur Bhatnagar.
As CEO and co-founder of New York-based Arlo Skye, a high-end travel brand known for its quality luggage, his customers are almost exclusively high earners. His experience spans across multiple industries and countries, holding executive roles in London, Moscow, Paris and Warsaw for luxury goods brands like Louis Vuitton and Moët Hennessy.
Mayur will take the stage during Inman Connect New York, January 17 through 20, for his general session talk, “A Luxury Consumer Brand Takes Flight: The Arlo Skye Story.”
We caught up with Mayur to give us a preview of what goes into creating a great consumer brand, how to stay sane while starting your own company and a even a few packing tips to get you ready for New York.
What are some tips you’d give those trying to build their own brand?
- Create desire for your clients.
- Define a unique aesthetic. Then always stay true to it.
- It’s OK to fail. But it’s not OK to offer an average client experience.
- In the long term, integrity, authenticity and creativity matter most.
What are some of the key components of the brand you just built and how do you translate those elements to a consumer audience?
Arlo Skye is a luxury travel brand with a simple mission: to inspire people to daydream.
We built our brand around five core attributes.
- Product integrity
- A category-defining aesthetic
- A delightful client experience
- Creating desirability
- Building community
All of our business decisions — from product design to marketing — are driven by these attributes.
You left a well-known brand to venture out on your own. What kind of advice can you give people who want to execute on their own grand vision?
I believe that the key to execution is having monomaniacal focus over long periods of time. It took us 1.5 years of continuous design and engineering changes to land on something we felt happy about.
But throughout this time our mission never changed: inspiring people to daydream.
Do you have any tips for trying to keep a good work/life balance while executing on a vision?
- Remember that it’s totally OK to not know how to manage your startup. A startup, by nature, is chaotic. Everyone makes it up as they go along. Some are better at faking it.
- Find 10 minutes a day to meditate.
- Practice gratitude.
Any packing tips for those heading to New York in January?
Pack right and pack light.
I usually lay out everything I plan to take before I start packing. A visual “lay of the land” gives me a better sense of what mixes and matches well. And it helps me prune away one or two unnecessary items.