Christophe Lemaire: Teamwork Winning

Before Christophe Lemaire renamed the personal brand of the same name to Lemaire, the designer had to swim between her own brand and other brands for many years.

Now, he is ready to work with designer Sarah-Linh Tran and chairman Bastien Daguzan, devote herself to the operation of personal brand, and will work together with Uniqlo to start a new brand.

Paris, France - Paris office building in the afternoon is usually relaxed and leisurely, but the newly renamed Lemaire company (formerly Christophe Lemaire) has a strong view: the porch is occupied by the temporary dressing room, and the hangers are full of clothes, and the workers who come and go are all taking off their shoes.

The brand is taking photos of the newly launched website.

Despite the heavy tasks, everything was in order, and the atmosphere in the office was calm (perhaps because of bare feet, unable to hear footsteps).

Everyone has a soft voice and a calm movement.

This is the work style of Christophe Lemaire: everything is leisurely and unhurried.

Setting up shop is the latest development of Lemaire.

The company is small but growing fast.

Turnover rose from 1 million 600 thousand euros (1 million 800 thousand U.S. dollars or 10 million 970 thousand yuan) in 2013 to 3 million 100 thousand euros (3 million 500 thousand dollars or 21 million 300 thousand yuan) in 2014, almost doubled.

The company predicts that the turnover will reach 5 million 500 thousand euros ($6 million 200 thousand or RMB 37 million 770 thousand yuan) at the end of 2015.

Today, Lemaire announced that it will cooperate with the Japanese retail giant Uniqlo and jointly launched a series of clothing for men and women from the autumn and winter of 2015.

"Cooperation with Uniqlo is our dream all along," the company said.

The design of Uniqlo is exquisite and can meet all daily dress requirements.

This is consistent with our interpretation of fashion, and is consistent with Lemaire's concept.

Tadashi Yanai, chairman and chief executive officer of Fast Retailing group, the parent company of Uniqlo, said: "the design of Lemaire respects individuality, is committed to improving the quality of life, and perfectly agrees with Uniqlo's philosophy of dress."

In 2010, Lemaire became the artistic director of the Herm s women's wear department. He worked there for four years and left last summer and began to focus entirely on her brand.

He said, "Herm asked for concentration, and I did.

But now we need to devote ourselves wholeheartedly to making our own brand, because only in this way can Lemaire develop into an upscale brand.

I basically do everything personally, not because I am a control freak, but because I love fashion design, production, details and so on.

I don't like to be designed by other designers, but I only supervise.

What I like is not to let go of any details.

I can't participate in several projects at the same time.

After such a long struggle, I concluded that there is no law in this industry.

"It is very difficult to carry out Lacoste and my own brand at the same time.

So a few years later, I decided to postpone my brand.

This is not only a matter of capital considerations, but also a question of production and wholesale.

At that time, my brain was exploding.

Now Sarah, Bastien and I did all the work at the time, and I adopted the wrong way.

During that period, it was a thankless effort, but it laid the foundation for future success. "

For Christophe Lemaire, the word "team" is of great significance, because it is because of the lack of a good team that he has experienced many difficulties in the past few years.

The Christophe Lemaire brand was founded in 1990, when Christophe Lemaire won the Andam award after Martin Margiela.

He said, "before I started, I really didn't know how to do it.

I succeeded in Japan, but I did not form a team at that time.

Lemaire's development in Japan made the brand continue to develop for some years, but in 2001, when Lemaire became the artistic director of Lacoste, he finally did not have enough energy to develop her brand.

The products designed by Lemaire for Herm s are very similar to what he does for his own brand.

The core of the two brands all adore timeless elegance and low-key luxury.

Of course, there are great differences between the two brands.

In Herm s, garments make up only a small part, while in Lemaire, clothing is the key to business operation.

"We sell much more clothes than jewelry. There is no doubt about that.

It also reassured us, because it means that people do not just go with the stream to buy famous brands, "Lemaire said.

"Designing outdated clothes, we enjoy it.

I used to put a lot of pressure on myself, trying to find inspiration for every season's design and bring different creations.

But now this is not the idea we admire.

Lemaire learned a lot in the years of Herm s.

"I know that it is very important to have a good grasp of the delicate relationship between the market and the creation.

In Herm s, we can say that there is no marketing department.

We do not require designers to design for satisfying market needs.

Once the product is designed, once we are sure, we will think about how to display it and how to make the customer better understand it.

Many brands always put the market in the first place, so they also lost their essence.

If there is no good product, the market will be worthless.

In addition, Lemaire's work experience at Herm s has "given us the confidence to relocate the Lemaire brand to the luxury brand and turn it into a high-end garment, and we have no hesitation about it," Tran said.

More importantly, this position promoted the upgrading of Lemaire status.

"This is the added value of my own brand.

Everyone recognized my ability because I served as director of Herm s women's clothing department.

People who have not paid attention to our brands are starting to pay attention, and people who have no sense of our brand are beginning to like our designs.

Although three people are thinking about developing accessories, they do not think accessories are the key to win the market.

"There are no rules for success. This is my experience along the way.

What I do is contrary to what I have been told.

Everyone said that it was crazy for me to build my own accessories studio, but it turned out that our decision was wise.

We aim to be clear, follow our heart and act rationally.

But we don't plan too far. "

In the short term, Lemaire, Tran and Daguzan plan to continue their efforts in last year's results.

Last year, the first online shop of Lemaire began to operate, released the first early autumn series, and continued to pay attention to the design of men's wear.

The men's clothing department now accounts for 40% of the turnover.

Next, the company will open a new store in New York or Paris.

In terms of financing, Daguzan said the company was willing to

Minority interest in the sale of the company.

"Our financial standing is good, but we do need money to help the company grow."

Lemaire and Daguzan said they were already negotiating with interested investors.

But it still takes a while to find the right investors.

Lemaire once suffered losses in choosing investors.

Because the failure of the first single fight left a deep wound to Lemaire. When he was working in Lacoste in 2007, he wanted to find someone to work together to reinvigorate his brand.

So when a Japanese investment company threw olive branches to his new brand, including Paris new store, he readily accepted it.

The idea was to complete garment design in Paris and then to Japan.

But Lemaire soon found this way of cooperation unsustainable.

It's not easy to work with a team far from Japan.

"They have already set up a team, though they are excellent, but they are not enough manpower, and they lack the necessary skills that I need."

Lemaire relieved its cooperation with Japan and bought it back.

"We are back to the origin."

The company now has only a dozen employees. In order to develop business, it will need to recruit troops in the future.

This is not overnight.

When Herm s was a designer, Lemaire learned a unique way to build an enterprise culture.

"We recruit only the people we know, and this person himself loves this.

And intends to work on it for a long time.

We don't want applicants who are looking for a better resume.

Cohesion is the most important.

In my opinion, team spirit is reflected in clothing.

If the internal members disagree with each other, the mood is low, do not do the real thing, the honor is all occupied, the clothes designed are also absurd.

I feel sad every time I encounter such a thing. "

Of course, Lemaire's company is not just seeking growth.

"We do not want to become an international giant with 300 retail stores.

Maybe this is not attractive to us.

There are other excellent business models at different levels. We don't want to expand quickly and hire too many employees. "