Louboutn And His Red Shoes

< p > in the past few years, there has been a new crowd in the luxury industry. I call it "luxury" refugees: < a target= "_blank" href= "http://www.91se91.com/" > designer /a, perfume merchants, and greedy and disappointed high managers in the luxury world.

They fled and started working on some niche products that would enable them to return to places that initially attracted them: create the best products that can be bought with money.

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< p > perhaps my favorite luxuries refugees are French high heels < a target= "_blank" href= "http://www.91se91.com/" > shoes < /a > designer Christine Louboutn (Christian Louboutin). He is perhaps the most scorn of luxury fashion industry nowadays.

"I just met someone who wanted to buy my company," he told me when we met in his headquarters office on a cold night in April 2006. "I said no again."

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< center > < img alt= "Christine Louboutn" width= "570" height= "448" src= "http://img00.hc360.com/shoes/201304/201304081052285789.jpg" / > /center >

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< p align= "center > > Christine Louboutn < /p >

< p > < strong > the birth of a rare animal < /strong > /p >

< p > in today's luxury industry, Louboutn is a rare animal. A company owned and run by a designer is very successful, and insists on being a small group to create perfect products.

Louboutn's silk high-heeled shoes and crocodile skin light shoes are loved by those beautiful social celebrities and fashion celebrities.

His high-profile regulars include Jennifer Lopes (JenniferLopez), Queen QueenRaniaofJordan (JORDAN), Madonna (Madonna), Ellizabeth Taylor, and Today's news anchor Ann Currie (AnnCurry), who occasionally flashes Louboutn's Scarlet soles in front of her head.

Judging by the standards of the luxury sector, Louboutn's company is small.

After 15 years of operation, he has only 7 stores and 35 employees, including salesmen.

He has special counters in some senior department stores, including Barnes, New York, BarneysNewYork, Berg, Dov Gutman, Neiman Markus, the Sax mall in Fifth Avenue, Harvey Nichols, HarveyNichols, Selfridges and Harrods in BergdorfGoodman.

He did not advertise and did not set up a marketing department. He did not actively seek products for the red carpet fashion stars.

He sells about 100 thousand pairs of shoes every year.

When I asked him what he was doing every year in sales, he looked at me blankly. "I don't know."

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< p > strong > luxury is not consumerism.

Nurture your eyes, so that you can distinguish the special qualities.

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< p > is Louboutn's values that separates him from his peers.

"I look at these people who create luxury brands in order to make money, and I am in the same industry with them, but I don't think they have much in common with them," he explained. "Luxury is a possibility to make yourself close to customers, and do things that you know they will like.

This is a matter of subtlety and detail, and of service.

I can't accept a place where customers are being treated rudely.

I can't imagine that you spent thousands of dollars on shopping, because the shop assistant was impatient for 15 minutes.

Luxury is not consumerism.

It is to nurture your eyes, so that you can distinguish the special qualities. "

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Louboutn P was infused with this idea in his childhood.

He was born and brought up in a factory family in eastern Paris, and his mother took care of him and his 4 sisters.

His father is a carpenter, making exquisite wooden furniture and model of French train interior decoration.

"The house is full of models of the interior of the train," Louboutn recalls.

Louboutn often spent an afternoon sloshing in the nearby African and Oceania art National Museum.

There is a pair of icons on the door, and a conical fine heel shoe pattern is painted off by a huge red fork; the sharp heel will break the carved wood floor.

Flat shoes were popular at that time.

Louboutn wondered, what exactly was this fine, thin shoe? He began sketching sketches on books and paper.

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< p > he is the shoe designer of Dior in 1950s and is known as the inventor of stilettos.

One day, a friend gave him a book about Roger Viville (RogerVivier).

As Louboutn looked through the book, he found his ambition.

At the age of 16, he was employed in the famous Fris Burgers (FoliesBergeres) nightclub, designed shoes for actors, and learned how to make shoes strong enough to withstand the excitement of professional dancers.

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When p was more than 20 years old, he designed shoes for Chanel, Yves Saint Laurent and Charles Dan. At that time, he also designed shoes for Dior and helped the museum hold a retrospective exhibition of Viville, when Viville was almost 70 years old at the age of 70.

"Viville taught me that the most important part of shoes is shoes and heels," Louboutn said. "Like the structure of a good skeleton, if you get this right, everything else is just a supplement."

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< p > when the exhibition is over, Louboutn needs a job.

He knows he doesn't want to go back to work for big brands.

"It's no longer my dream," he told me. "I asked myself," do you want to work for others all your life? "He thought of setting up his own shoe making company, but he said," I don't want to put my shoes in a tattered briefcase and show it to a retailer in a tattered office in New York. "

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< p > < strong > balanced industrialization and exclusive < /strong > /p >

< p > when Louboutn was shopping in Vero-Dodat, Paris's second largest area (SecondArrondissement), she met the owner of the antique Gallery, Eric Philip (EricPhilippe). He told Louboutn that a shop on the street was on sale.

Louboutn took out his savings and raised nearly $200 thousand to his friends, signed the lease agreement and opened his own store in November 1991.

The store was designed as a jewel box, with a comfortable cubicle on the wall, and two shoes in each compartment.

"If the environment is very precious, things will be very valuable."

He told me.

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< p > < strong > the secret of Louboutn's success is his ability to balance industrialization and exclusive products.

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< p > his first pair of shoes was made in nice, EvelyneShoes.

"The shoes are beautiful, but they are not very good at it. They are very slow."

Louboutn recalls.

The cost of shoes is also very expensive; if Louboutn provides leather, the cost of a pair of shoes is about 110 dollars, and if manufacturers supply leather, the cost will be 125 dollars and a pair.

"Original cost!" recalls Louboutn, turning his eyes.

"Can you imagine mom?" his retail price is two times the cost, plus 20% VAT, and his shoes will sell for 270 to 300 dollars.

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< p > his first group of customers was PrincessCaroline. When she tried Louboutn's high-heeled shoes, she told her friends that the shoes were "Anouk PrincessCaroline", a very elegant French actress.

Another customer in the boutique was a reporter for W magazine.

When this article about Princess Caroline was published, Louboutn immediately became a star in the luxury industry.

In March, American retailers ran to buy winter women's shoes from 1992 to 1993. As Louboutn recalled, "I have no shoes.

I never thought that retailers needed to buy my shoes.

France has no luxury department stores, and French people do not buy luxuries in shopping malls.

I am like Guerlain [micro-blog] perfume, only boutique shop without distributors.

Buyers found Louboutn's shoes very expensive.

When he explained that his raw materials were expensive, they said, "why don't you go to Italy?" < /p >

< p > he adopted their suggestions and discovered a highly efficient factory with half the cost in Lombardy.

He liked the spotless place, and the shoes made there were beautiful.

"If you are in the luxury industry," Louboutn explains, "you must be humane and behave well.

You can't ask the poor people to make beautiful things.

Despite his reputation and production, his company is still small; he himself, an executive and a part-time salesgirl.

"When I was not in Italy," he recalls, "I sold it in the store."

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In the third season of P, he joined the iconic red shoe sole.

In less than 3 years, he managed to make ends meet and repay all debts.

In 1997, he opened a store on the left bank of Paris.

Then they opened stores in London and New York and Beverly hills.

In 2003, he opened a franchise in Moscow.

"I'm not excited about opening a franchise," he said. "But the franchisee is the kind of place where you don't often go there or feel strange.

In an unfamiliar country, a franchisee is equivalent to one of your plations.

In 2007, he opened a store in Las Vegas.

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< p > the secret of Louboutn's success is his ability to balance industrialization and exclusive products.

He will produce twenty thousand pairs of elegant, classic high heels, but he will also design shoes that he calls Cinderella (Cinderella) shoes, which are extremely limited treasures.

"I have a small piece of batik cloth that I brought back from Mali. I want to use it on my shoes," he told me. "I think I can make 20 pairs of shoes with it, and put 10 pairs in two different stores.

In this way, a female customer can be happy to buy a pair of shoes that she has never seen anywhere. "

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< p > apart from Cinderella shoes, Louboutn provides a custom service, like a high-end women's clothing store, you can change the height or design of the color, or customize the brand new shoes according to their feet.

"That's why I keep the company on a humane scale (small scale to facilitate communication with customers)."

He said, "without the lab, I would lose the joy of design."

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Another reason for the prosperity of his company is simple: P.

"I remember how my father saw wood."

He told me, "if you follow the texture, it will be beautiful.

If you reverse the texture, it will break.

So is management.

If you follow the trend, it grows naturally.

But if you try to develop your company in an unnatural way, it will collapse.

I didn't make this company for money.

I made shoes, and then I got the company.

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Less than P, luxury tycoons have coveted their company for years.

At a dinner party of 8 people in 2000, Louboutn found himself sitting in a sofa surrounded by 4 top business tycoons.

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< p > "when can we buy a share of your company?" one of them eagerly asked.

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< p > "I am like a little girl invited to dance," Louboutn recalls.

"I answered in a blushed way," no, thank you. "

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< p > > "my company grew up a little bit. One of the reasons is that I handle every link personally," Louboutn told me. "I haven't quickened my pace at all, and I want to develop more markets.

If I have, I will lose the core of my work, that is to design shoes.

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P, of course, Louboutn did not completely dismiss the idea of selling the company.

"If I don't want to play this game any more, I will sell the company to cash in and use that money to do something to help the poor and the sick," he said. "I will sell it then."

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