Kai Yun Group CEO: Let The Group Achieve Sustainable Development

When you wear bright

You may not think that those beautiful shoes have polluted the drinking water of the rural people in India when they are interlocking in the restaurant in New York. The pretty clothes have made the Merino sheep suffer.

Francois Henry Franvcois-Henri Pinault doesn't want you to have such a sense of guilt.

Near the end of the year, the 54 year old French businessman is toast the achievements of his 2016 sustainability report.

According to the world clothing shoes and hats net,

Behind the bright industry is serious pollution, barely earning wages and ill treated animals.

It has 16 such as Eve San Roland (Yves Saint Laurent), Gucci (Gucci), Boucheron (Boucheron), Puma (Puma) and so on.

In 2012, Pino set up a series of goals, hoping to solve all the bad problems in the Group supply chain in four years by CEO.

The above goals have not been fully realized, and the word "challenge" has appeared 34 times in the group's sustainable development report.

Nevertheless, various companies in the group used more recyclable paper in the packaging, improved working conditions, and eliminated more toxic chemicals in the production process.

Although it is already a fashion magnate, the $13 billion fashion company has done little to compare with the trillions of costumes, but Pino said it would be too much to see their efforts as a conceptual argument.

Since the above four years ago, the share price of Kai Yun group has doubled.

A: Francois Henry Pino (Kai Yun group CEO)

Q: why do you propose to enable the group to achieve sustainable development goals?

A: our (2013) acquisition of Puma is an important turning point.

It was Rogen Zeitz (Jochen Zeitz) who ran Puma at that time, and Tsai himself had always acted in support of environmental protection.

When he was in Puma, he went a long way on the road of environmental protection.

It is he who has given me a new way to achieve sustainable development.

If your path is right, you will not only create new opportunities for yourself, but also benefit our planet.

This is for your employees, for the shareholders of the company, and for all stakeholders.

Your vision will be totally different.

It took us three years to establish such a mechanism of "environmental profit and loss" (EP&L), which refers to various environmental cost factors and extremely complicated.

We have joined hands with partners and non-governmental organizations and invested huge sums in this regard.

This mechanism is free to all.

(Kai Yun group has also developed an application called "my environment profit and loss", using 5000 standard elements to evaluate the impact of products on the environment.

What you need to do is to ensure that the organizational form of the group can carry out such a commitment.

The first action we took, if I remember correctly, dates back to 2008, and we set up a commission on sustainable development at the board level of the group.

We are the first French listed company to do so.

For the CEO of the group's subsidiaries, part of their annual bonus is linked to sustainable development goals.

Each of them has a full-time role in sustainable development.

Q: do you have philosophical or spiritual considerations in deciding to do so?

A: I was influenced by my father.

I often hear him say that no matter how big the company is, it should pursue a business other than profit targets.

It's about that, no matter where the business is, you are still not a member of the society.

I have been in charge of the company for some years, and I hope to pass it on to my son or anyone else.

The question is, what else should I create at the same time?

My father has created an outstanding career and I want to leave something behind.

I firmly believe that this will be and I want to be my legacy.

You have said that sustainability is part of luxury now. Is the essence of luxury not a waste? Desire is temporary, and each of us has dreams.

Fast fashion is about your desire, luxury is your dream, always.

If you cheat your customers and your products have nightmares behind them, then you can't bring people dreams.

Q: will you personally pay attention to this work? For example, the python skin used by Gucci?

A: Gucci is one of the most famous brands that use Python skin as raw material.

Boa is not an endangered species, but if we do not make changes, it may become endangered species, because Python skin trading is not pparent.

You can say, look, I have the certificate you need, because you know that most of the certificates are not true.

We and Gucci decided to go further.

The only solution is to breed boa, so we invest in Thailand and China's Python field.

Q: what does it look like?

A: very special, boa constrictor needs to feed live animals, so keeping snakes also needs rats.

We also need to ensure that we respect the residents around the snake farm, and we want to buy snakes from them.

We will not waste snake meat, and snake meat can be used for other purposes.

This is also true in our crocodile farm.

This is the only way you really have complete control over the supply chain.

Q: is it difficult for every brand under your name to agree with this mission?

A: it's not that difficult.

But you have to understand that for a luxury brand, your employees are divided into two kinds: innovative talents and ordinary people.

People always think so, you have to allow those innovative talents to do whatever they want.

These people can't be disciplined and can't be shackled, so don't bother them with sustainable development.

It will be a disaster.

The first thing I did in 2008 was to interview the designer one by one.

I told them, "this is the promise I want, and where do you think you are?" to my surprise, they were far more distant than I thought.

I remember Thomas Mel, the creative director of Bottega Veneta (Tomas Maier).

No one in the company thinks of such things, but Thomas carries out everything in detail.

Po Tejia was the first luxury brand to reach 99% without PVC, which took less than two years.

You should see how Thomas urged everyone and how many designs were reversed.

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Q: what do you say to Stella Macartney (Stella McCartney, a British fashion designer)? We know she doesn't need leather.

A: Stella always takes the lead, and I follow her.

Inside of us there is a so-called new business model.

Stella was largely involved in the idea of this model.

For example, in order to reduce landfill, we formed a partnership with H&M, the name is "wear and wear".

(the company developed a recycling technology that separations fibers from different materials and reweaves them after removing chemicals.

The idea came out of Stella.

We have also made great efforts in a new technology from biotechnology, which is to generate leather from cells of living animals.

It is to collect cells from the skin of live animals and then cultivate leather.

The leather thus developed will be pparent.

About 10 to 15 years ago, a student from the London Fashion Academy who had won a scholarship to open a cloud had cultivated such a kind of leather based on mushrooms, long mushrooms around the trees and beautiful ones, which are actually parasites.

Q: do other companies in fashion industry focus on sustainable development as you do?

A: I really consider the luxury industry of fashion industry to lead the sustainable development competition, because we have such resources.

But the complexity of the fashion industry is that we are not monolithic.

This is a value chain with many, many participants.

What is shocking is that 93% of our actions are outside the legal framework. This is the first thing we know when we begin to launch the "environmental profit and loss" mechanism.

Q: if more people adopt your mechanism, can you say that the effect will be even more significant?

A: as always, when you find something, someone will tell you, "we know how we can do this more sustainable, but it will cost more."

What do we do? Of course, we need to spend more money, because this is different from what we did before.

But there is no reason why it should be done.

In the case of metal free leather tanning process, because salt is added at the beginning of the tanning process, the cost will be 20% to 25%.

That's why I told my team that we are not proficient in sustainable NGOs.

We are just a company that wants to find economic solutions through innovation and try to sell tanned leather to other industries that require such high-quality leather.

In this way, our cost is only 10% to 12% higher than it used to be.

We can also reduce costs through the scale effect, but we can do that.

A: for me, sustainable development and politics are not related.

The government can lend a helping hand, but this is not a political issue.

If we take this issue for political debate, we are all wrong.

I can not imagine that the United States will not participate in the Paris climate agreement.

This is just the question of a four year President.

Countries like China are taking swift action. You can imagine that the United States should end up in the last stage.

This is a new journey to the moon. The Americans landed on the moon in the 60s.

This will be a great feat of opening up territory and expanding territory. The Xinjiang domain that mankind is going to conquer is sustainable development.

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