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The template only earns its keep if you actually put two cases next to each other.

This is the reason every teardown answers the same questions in the same order. Put a luxury house beside a console platform and the differences stop being vibes — one is refusing sales to protect a price, the other is selling below cost to collect a toll, and both are defending a moat.

Case ACase B

Luxury · LVMH (EPA: MC)

Tiffany & Co.

The American jeweller that invented the modern engagement ring, trademarked a colour, and was bought by LVMH in 2021 for $15.8 billion — the largest acquisition in the history of luxury.

Technology · NASDAQ: AMZN

Amazon

Runs a near-breakeven retail operation at enormous scale, and earns essentially all of its profit from renting out the two things that operation forced it to build — computing capacity and shelf placement.

The thesis in one line

Tiffany's most valuable asset does not appear on the balance sheet, cannot be manufactured, and is a shade of blue.

The store is not the business. The store is the customer acquisition cost for the businesses.

Verdict

Own it

Moat

Wide

Brand · Process power · Distribution

Wide

Scale economics · Network effects · Process power · Switching costs

Porter's five forces

Competitive rivalry

Threat of new entrants

Threat of substitutes

Buyer power

Supplier power

Competitive rivalry

Threat of new entrants

Threat of substitutes

Buyer power

Supplier power

Headline figures

Acquisition price: $15.8B
Last disclosed revenue: $4.4B
The Tiffany Diamond: 128.54 ct
First day's sales, 1837: $4.98

Net sales: $638B
AWS share of operating income: ~58%
Retail operating margin: ~5.4%
Third-party share of units: ~60%

Unit economics

One dollar of Tiffany revenue, in its last year as a public company (FY2019)

LVMH paid $15.8 billion for a business earning twelve cents on the dollar whose comparable-store sales had just fallen 1% — roughly 29 times trailing earnings and 3.6 times revenue. The bet was not on the P&L. It was on what a competent owner could do with the colour.

One $50 third-party item sold through Amazon

Amazon captures roughly 38% of the sale price and carries none of the inventory risk. The seller took the risk, paid for the warehouse, and then paid again to be found in a search of Amazon's own catalogue.

What would change her mind

If lab-grown stones cross into the fine-jewellery mainstream — meaning Cartier or Van Cleef & Arpels begins selling them in signature collections, or US natural-diamond engagement-ring unit volumes fall more than 20% in a year — then the price architecture Tiffany rests on is breaking and the moat is far narrower than 1886 suggests. On the other side, if LVMH ever discloses Tiffany's revenue and it is materially below double the 2019 figure, the acquisition case fails on its own stated terms and the multiple LVMH deserves for capital allocation should come down with it.

If AWS revenue growth falls below 15% for two consecutive quarters while segment operating margin also declines, the cloud business is being commoditised rather than merely contested, and the capex is being spent defending share rather than buying growth. That combination — decelerating growth and compressing margin at the same time — breaks the thesis outright. A single weak quarter on either measure alone does not.

1 mechanism in common

vertical integration