Being Beautiful or Wealthy: Identity Tensions in the Growth of Luxury Artisan Ventures

Our exploratory study investigates identity tensions during the development of luxury artisan ventures. As artisan ventures, entrepreneurs in luxury artisan ventures are strongly embedded in cultural context, yet they also strongly reach out to customers outside their cultural context. As such, identity tensions differ between traditional artisan ventures and luxury artisan ventures. Our insights are gathered by the analyses of primary and secondary data from 11 entrepreneurial ventures. We find several sources of identity tensions that mainly pertain to the venture's deep embeddedness in a socio-cultural context with several cultural elements that juxtapose commercial needs. Besides, strong identity tensions emerge when ventures by international expansion depart from their local embeddedness. The departure from the home socio-cultural context by reaching out to international markets sets the challenges to persevere the cultural kernel but also change product and production elements to serve customers. Our findings contribute new insights on identity tensions that evolve during venturing growth and that are specific to the identity hybridity of luxury artisan ventures.