The overlooked line in the budget
Luxury has spent years, and fortunes, on the visible layer of retail: store design, CRM systems, the newest clienteling technology. Yet the return on all of it still passes through a single person — the associate standing in front of the client. As Clarkston Consulting put it in a July 2026 analysis, technology "can provide better information, but associates turn those insights into conversations and recommendations that define the luxury experience." The most valuable investment a house can make is often the least glamorous one: teaching its people.
What enablement actually covers
Training in luxury is no longer a product briefing before a launch. Clarkston describes a serious enablement program as resting on five pillars: brand fluency, client intelligence, digital confidence, localized execution, and change management. In practice that means an associate who knows the house's history well enough to tell its story, can read a client's preferences before they walk through the door, and uses the CRM without letting it interrupt the conversation. It is a training discipline, not a one-day induction.
The Hermès standard
The benchmark example is Hermès. As Clarkston notes, new associates there spend months learning the brand's history and watching how the products are actually made before they ever work with a client. That is not indulgence; it is what allows someone to speak about a bag with the authority its price implies. Depth of knowledge is precisely what separates advice a client trusts from a transaction they could have completed online.
Training as a retention tool
There is a second return, one that never appears on the day's sales report. In a market where experienced client-facing talent is scarce and turnover runs high, a real development path is one of the few things that keeps good people. Associates who feel equipped and invested in tend to stay; those left to sink or swim on the floor tend to leave. Seen this way, client development starts with developing the people who deliver it — training is a retention strategy wearing a service badge.
Why it is an advantage now
The reason this matters more in 2026 than it did five years ago is that the technology has stopped being a differentiator. The clienteling apps, the predictive tools, the data layer beneath the conversation — these are fast becoming table stakes that every serious house can buy. What cannot be bought off the shelf is a floor of associates who use them with confidence and grace. As Clarkston frames it, the winning brands will be those that equip associates to use technology with confidence. The edge has quietly moved from the tool to the person holding it.
What it means for hiring
For employers, the implication is a brief that treats onboarding and development as seriously as recruiting. The best client experience a brand can offer is ultimately capped by the experience of the people delivering it, and no campaign closes that gap. Brands building teams this way can tell us what they're looking for; increasingly, the strongest hire is the one you are prepared to keep developing.