If I had a million dollars, I would start a company that acts as a Consumer Reports for luxury goods. 

As a retailer of things that are nice, and more expensive than many alternatives on the market, one of our challenges is that many consumers may shop our store or website with expectations that are impossible to meet. And the manufacturers of many of the products we sell don't help because they don't offer an explicit warranty or guarantee. 

Some of our brands are great about this: El Casco offers a lifetime guarantee on all of their products, so you know it should last a lifetime. Davek umbrellas does too. And Xikar with their cigar accessories, which are not exorbitantly expensive, but which they'll replace if there's an issue. Bills Khakis is committed to 110% satisfaction, so if a pocket tears, they'll replace it no questions asked, but if you dive into a briar patch, you're on your own. (Don't ask me why briar patch came to mind there.)

But how long should an $80 leather wallet last? A year? Two? Three? Doesn't much of it depend on how the end-user uses it? George Costanza is the type of customer that wouldn't pay more than $40 for a wallet, stuff it full of every receipt he's ever been given, and then wonder why the wallet was unraveling after a few months.

What about a $150 dress shirt? An $80 golf shirt? We've all bought a shirt that has had a button fall off after the first or second wash, and if you're like me, that was the last shirt from that brand you ever bought. (I can say, unequivocally, that we do not sell any products from any brand like that -- it's not worth the trouble to you or to us).

With cars, it's conventional wisdom that a car should last about 100,000 miles. If it lasts more than that, it's considered incredibly reliable; if it lasts much less than that, people believe its quality was below average. Today, for luxury goods, we can really only rely on the reputation of the brands themselves. But as brands extend into new categories or license their brand to others to make goods in their name, sub-par product extensions can dilute the brand's reputation. If a Mulholland Brothers bag lasts you 10+ years, it's belts or leather jackets better last a long time too.

I envision a day when I can hire a team of minions to use the products we sell along side competitors' products that are both more and less expensive, and compare their longevity. I would come out of my hole every Groundhog's Day to issue proclamations like:

• A wallet under $50 may last only a year or less;
  
• A $50-$100 wallet should last 2 years;
  
• And any leather wallet over $100 that doesn't last more than 2 years should have the designers and/or CEO's of the company thrown in jail. 

I would do this for a lot of categories: suits, shirts, pants, wallets, luggage, lighters, watches, espresso machines, and more.

I would like to think most consumers already have some intuition about matters such as these, but having an unbiased 3rd party test, rank, and report on goods other than vacuum cleaners and air purifiers would help clear the air (pun intended!) for both luxury consumers & manufacturers trying to understand how much bang for their buck they're getting.