TIVP058: HERMES: THE MOST PRESTIGIOUS LUXURY BRAND IN THE WORLD

W/ DANIEL MAHNCKE & SHAWN O’MALLEY

TIVP058: HERMES: THE MOST PRESTIGIOUS LUXURY BRAND IN THE WORLD W/ DANIEL MAHNCKE & SHAWN O’MALLEY

08 February 2026

Daniel Mahncke and Shawn O’Malley take a deep dive into Hermès — the family-controlled luxury house that has turned craftsmanship and scarcity into a compounding machine. Hermès still produces the vast majority of its leather goods in France, and a single artisan handcrafts each bag from start to finish.

The episode explores why it can be notoriously hard to even get your hands on products like the Birkin: limited capacity, strict allocation, and a client-relationship dynamic that is a vital part of the brand’s moat. That engineered scarcity is also why prices on the secondary market can trade at multiples of retail and why studies frequently cited in the collectibles world argue that Birkin prices have historically outperformed traditional assets like the S&P 500 over long periods.

Join Daniel Mahncke and Shawn O’Malley as they assess whether Hermès can remain the pinnacle of luxury and whether it deserves a spot in The Intrinsic Value Portfolio.

SUBSCRIBE

IN THIS EPISODE, YOU’LL LEARN:

  • What makes a brand true luxury
  • How important local production and family ties are
  • Why Hermès started producing bags
  • How Hermès built its moat and reputation
  • Why no one can copy Hermès
  • What markets matter most to Hermès
  • How Hermès can keep growing
  • Whether Shawn and Daniel add Hermès to the portfolio
  • And much, much more!

Disclosure: This episode and the resources on this page are for informational and educational purposes only and do not constitute financial, investment, tax, or legal advice. For full disclosures, see link.

TRANSCRIPT

Disclaimer: The transcript that follows has been generated using artificial intelligence. We strive to be as accurate as possible, but minor errors and slightly off timestamps may be present due to platform differences.

[00:00:00] Daniel Mahncke: Hermès is probably the most valuable brand in the world, but you also have to pay a hefty multiple to call yourself an owner of Hermès.

[00:00:09] Shawn O’Malley: And anyone who knows this knows that Usually we stay away from stocks this expensive, but I have never seen a company that was able to maintain such a high valuation multiple over so many years.

[00:00:21] Daniel Mahncke: I guess it’s telling that their popular Birkin bags literally outperformed the market in most other asset classes over the last few decades. But one stock they could outperform is Hermès itself.

[00:00:38] Intro: You are listening to The Intrinsic Value Podcast by The Investor’s Podcast Network since 2014 with over 180 million downloads. We’ve learned directly from the world to best investors. Now we are applying those lessons to analyze businesses and investment opportunities every week, helping you uncover intrinsic value. And now here are your hosts, Shawn O’Malley and Daniel Mahncke.

[00:01:10] Shawn O’Malley: We are on the hunt for high quality companies here on this show. I’m sure you could argue about the definition of high quality, but part of it certainly is these businesses that defy the laws of economics or business. And really when a company makes outsized profits, what we would normally think is that competitors will come in and profit will normalize as profits will be eroded away.

[00:01:33] Shawn O’Malley: That’s the idea typically what you would learn in a textbook. But some companies have what Warren Buffett calls a moat, something that protects them from competition and allows them to keep earning outsized profits. And companies that have done that successfully in the last decade or two have typically been the tech giants that we all know.

[00:01:53] Shawn O’Malley: Building these self-reinforcing ecosystems that just make it incredibly hard for competitors to come into the market and take share. There is another group of company that has achieved the impossible and kept those moats for much, much longer, not just a decade or two, but for centuries at this point.

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