The Strength of a Brand

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Gross margin is an interesting place to look to understand the strength of a brand because it's basically showing like, what can you mark up over your cost of goods sold and sell it to people and still have them swallow that price. Porsche is at 29%. So about 50% higher than BMW. Ferrari is 48%. Is do not care what it costs. It just doesn't offer me. Right. Okay. What do you think I drive? It's, I'm model free. That's a good guess. And that's probably what I would. I, Mazda CX five. Yeah, those are good cars. The Porsche Macon of the, uh, mainstream car. It

Nobody’s perfect — including Porsche. Despite that phrase appearing in their famous 1983 magazine advertisement, they managed to get damn-close to the perfect luxury business (even Bernard Arnault would be jealous!). Porsche is both quality AND quantity, owning the most prestigious brand in its market, while at the same time churning out almost half a million mass-market soccer mom/dad SUVs per year. And like any good luxury brand, it’s packed with enough juicy family drama and creeping takeovers to fill a Netflix series.

Yet, behind it all lies perhaps the darkest origin story we’ve ever told on Acquired. Not only was Porsche was started by Nazis, Adolf Hitler himself was deeply involved in its early fortunes. And, following WWII, the Allies simply looked past these facts and essentially bestowed a license to generate wealth on Porsche and its owners — setting the stage for them to become one of the top ~15 wealthiest families in the world today.

Joining us to explore it all is perhaps the very most-qualified person in the person in the world: the one & only Doug DeMuro. Not only is Doug the largest independent car reviewer on YouTube with millions of subscribers (we’re HUGE fans), he previously worked at Porsche corporate and owns a legendary Porsche Carrera GT — which served as the recording backdrop for this episode. Make sure you tune in to watch the video version! :)

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