What Crop Input Providers Can Learn from Louis Vuitton, Ferrari and Gucci

The Top Three Mistakes Synthetic Crop Protection Companies Make Adding Biologicals to Portfolio there is a good overview of a few challenges when it comes to crop protection and bio-based entities coming together.

I think there are several ways to expand on the points, too. Specifically on the point of working with the wrong distribution partners.

In Ferrari Status, Enzo Ferrari’s “scarcity dictum” is highlighted which states that “Ferrari will always deliver one car fewer than the market demands.”

In The Luxury Strategy, J.N. Kapferer says to treat demand as something to be curated rather than satisfied. He shares that a brand’s value comes from symbolic capital— status, craftsmanship, and heritage so supply is intentionally constrained to preserve desirability and pricing power. In practice, that means resisting volume-driven growth even when orders surge: capping production, using waitlists, tightly controlling distribution, and avoiding discounts or promotions. This engineered scarcity develops an aura of exception and builds brand equity— exactly the logic behind Ferrari’s dictum.

It’s difficult to apply luxury strategy in totality to the crop input business (and most likely ineffective), but I believe there is some valid logic to apply early in the biostimulant product strategy of crop protection companies— specifically as it pertains to constraining distribution and being selective of market access.

The market is swamped with biostimulant based companies and products. But if we go back to Stratus Ag Research’s 2024 Biostimulant Survey, farmers cited manufacturer action as a key driver of product usage: