06 — Intro to Taste Class
Take three houses, with three kinds of buyers:
1. A mobile home
2. A tract home
3. A custom home
Each of these is associated with levels of wealth, affordability, and refinement. Taste in photography and art can also be understood this way:
1. Inexpensive, lacking taste
2. Typical & popular taste
3. Customized, informed (good) taste
A visionary business makes products for buyer 3
A builder may make all three types of homes (maybe) but they typically choose one and go all in
They understand the buyer for one set will not cross over and become the next kind of buyer easily, and good taste almost never slides down the hierarchy
Depending on the taste distribution in your area, there are a preponderance of buyers with good taste (concentrated in cities)
Selling typical & popular products will never (never, ever, ever) attract buyers with great taste
Discontent with your clients’ taste? Stop producing middle class taste work
They will immediately disappear
My clients are middle to upper middle class economically, but are in the highest possible taste class
It’s in this way that wealth and visionary business are connected
Buyers for visionary products are rich in taste and high in motivation to press book
Images by Dos Mas En La Mesa, one of the most visionary businesses I’ve ever seen, and a constant encouragement to dig deeply into the soul of the work
Read their feature in The Lane here