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How sourcing a Himalayan Birkin Turned Into a Crazy Race Against Time

A mad rush to get the Hermès Himalayan Birkin handbag to the airport

Featured Brand: Hermès

You might know that here at Global Boutique, we are experts in finding the luxury handbag of your dreams.

We have an large network of experts and clients worldwide – many with extensive collections of luxury handbags. Thanks to these wonderful connections, we can help our customers find very specific and often rare handbags – usually within 24 hours.

Sometimes we are lucky, and the bag is right here in London, but we also travel near and far to make our customers’ dreams come true – we have sourced bags from Singapore, Rome, and many other places. When we locate a handbag a client has asked us to locate, we often travel ourselves to the location to examine the bag and make sure it’s flawless and authentic. Once a bag has passed our examination, we buy it for the client and deliver it to them.

We have sourced and sold many beautiful Hermès bags already, and most of the time, everything goes very smoothly. But every now and then, sourcing luxury bags can create a little drama, especially when the requested bag is a rare Himalayan Birkin 30.

The Himalayan Birkin is one of the rarest, most sought-after and most expensive Birkin bags. It’s made from the very delicate and light skin of the Niloticus crocodile. These Birkin bags are extremely hard to come by and Hermès historically only sells them to VIP clients with an extremely large spend history with the brand.

We can still remember this day as if it was yesterday. It was a Tuesday morning, and we had just opened our shop, ready for a new day, when a customer called and requested to speak to me. She was in London just for a few days and had heard from a friend that we are quite skilled at making the – seemingly – impossible possible: finding her the bag of her dreams – a Birkin Himalayan in 30 cm. I told her that this bag was quite rare and that we would activate our network to find it for her. I promised to let her know as soon as we found it. I knew we were under a tight deadline; the client was due to leave on a flight on Saturday – we had to try to get the bag to her before then.

For the rest of the day, the team at Global Boutique worked under high pressure. We spoke to our contacts, many of them affluent individuals, VIPs and bag collectors who buy and sell Hermès bags regularly. The shop was buzzing that day – not only with clients coming in to browse our luxury watches and handbags on display but also with me and my colleagues texting and calling to find a Himalayan Birkin bag.

In the early afternoon, success! I had managed to find an authentic Himalaya in the right size through one of my trusted sources. This was one of our international clients who was actually looking to sell one of her Himalayan bags (yes, she had several and was happy to let one of them go) – the bag was in her apartment in New York. We would have to travel last minute to get the bag into our London store, but this was all achievable within the deadline.

We called the client, and she was very pleased. She confirmed she would come into the shop the next day to pay a deposit so that we could travel out to source the bag for her.

On Wednesday morning, she was the first customer to arrive – she confirmed the sale and left the deposit. The same day one of our team members flew out to New York to source the bag and brought it back to the store for the client to pick up on Thursday.

Global Boutique source Hermès handbags

This was all going very smoothly – where is the drama that was promised, you may think?

Well, when the client arrived the next morning, we had the bag ready for her to take home. But she then surprised us by saying that she was quite impressed with how quickly we managed to find this bag for her. She had tried her luck with another reputable reseller before who didn’t manage to source it for her. Because we made it look so effortless, she was wondering if we could source another bag for her. The bag she had in mind was exactly the same as the one we already sourced, just in a different size – she was looking for another Himalayan Birkin, but this time in size 25.

While the happy client left with her first bag to spend a few more days in London, it was back to square one for us. That very evening, we put in an extra shift to activate our most reliable sources. We didn’t have any luck that day, but the next day, we managed to find the second bag as well. Luckily this time it was not on another continent, it was a just a quick hop over the channel to Paris. The seller wasn’t able to see us that very day. The best they could do was deliver it to the store on Saturday at 9 AM – it seemed as if time was not on our side.

We informed our client, who was absolutely over the moon but also anxious because of the timing. Her flight was scheduled to leave Saturday around noon. It was possible, but it would be tight.

Saturday morning, we were ready for the challenge – we had the card reader ready and a taxi to the airport on call. When the bag arrived, we thoroughly examined it – luckily, it was absolutely perfect. We packed the Himalayan Birkin and card reader, and one of our sales assistants took a taxi to the airport in a crazy race against the clock. When she arrived, she quickly found our client, who was very pleased with the bag. But we had another obstacle to face now: the card reader wouldn’t connect, and it took ages for it to reboot. Our client would soon need to leave for the security check.

Luckily, with modern technology, we had alternative options, and when it was clear that the card reader would not manage to connect, she transferred the balance into our account. She left happily with not one but two amazing Himalayan Birkin bags, made it through security, and didn’t miss her flight.

What a great ending to a very exciting week here at Global Boutique.

Are you searching for a specific bag? If so, get in touch with us, and let our amazing network get to work for you. You can reach us via WhatsApp or by filling in this form.

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