[Depth] MH'S Internal Personnel Reshuffle Indicates The Next Ten Years Of The Luxury Industry?

Ten years ago, Arnault wanted to make some old brand become a hot topic in the market through a brand-new designer matrix. After ten years, Arnault reorganized the matrix to try to strengthen the men's clothing business.

If Bernard Arnault's luxury Empire plan began to become stable due to the successful acquisition of Dior, "to build a luxury group based on advanced women's clothing, and through the synergy among brands, is all strong."

Judging from the recent changes in LVMH, he still knows this.

In the meantime, LVMH group is undergoing the largest personnel adjustment in history.

The shuffle began with C line, and the news that Phoebe Philo had to leave C e line had spread in the industry before she resigned at the end of last year. After fans said they had difficulty accepting it, the news of Hedi Slimane confirming the replacement of Philo in January this year has surprised many people again.

As Slimane takes office, C e line will also introduce men's wear lines and perfume. Slimane is also responsible for the creative work of men's clothing, Gao Ding and perfume three categories. It seems that C line will start to make a fresh start and say goodbye to the era of Phoebe Philo.

Hedi Slimane also restarted after a quiet period of time.

Slimane in the period from 2000 to 2007 in the LVMH group's brand Dior as a male fashion designer, it is precisely this period of his distinct personal style, almost Dior Homme with the same name, let him in the men's clothing design area increased recognition.

At that time, Slimane assistant was Kris Homme Assche, who has just been replaced by Dior Homme creative director.

In the case of Slimane leaving, New York Times magazine has published the article "Man of the House". In the interview with Dior CEO and CEO Sidney Toledano, he disclosed that Hedi Slimane is irreplaceable for Dior, which has become an important bargaining chip in his hand negotiations.

At the same time, Slimane also mentioned in the interview that she wanted to create her own brand, and stepped into the design of women's clothing. But Sidney Toledano was the chief executive officer. She needed to be responsible for the business requirements of LVMH group's big boss Bernard Arnault. The conditions raised by Slimane were too harsh, Arnault did not match, and Toledano as an intermediary was also strong enough.

Eventually, the position of Slimane was replaced by assistant Kris Van Assche, which took ten years.

The iron camp, the soldiers in the water, in the talent market in the high frequency mobile luxury market, Kris Van Assche in Dior Homme has been regarded as a long love.

Although Kris Van Assche has no power in designing Dior Homme, there is no explosion, but when there is no word of mouth in the street, and in order to serve the Dior wholeheartedly, the personal brand was shut down in 2015.

After leaving Dior, Hedi Slimane joins LVMH's old rival, Yves Saint Laurent of Kai Yun group. If he wishes to take charge of the women's clothing house, he achieves his career's peak. At the same time, he made a thorough pformation of the Old French fashion house. He added his favorite rock and underground culture elements to the original demead YSL. The popularity of the style directly reacted on his performance. According to the annual report of Kai Yun group, compared with the sales of 354 million euros before the Hedi Slimane took over in 2011, it increased by more than 2.7 times in the 4 years.

But in the days of opening the clouds, Slimane also maintained close ties with LVMH group.

Yves Saint Laurent in the Hedi Slimane Era

Slimane entered Dior at that time. Toledano was the leader of the Toledano, and after years of tossing and turning, Toledano took the role of chairman and chief executive of the fashion department of LVMH group and brought back Slimane. The two old partners were reunited. Apparently LVMH still did not want to have this talent. More people pointed out that LVMH Group intends to expand the influence of the group by using the broad followers of Slimane.

The aesthetic style of Hedi Slimane and Kris Van Assche is similar, and the regression of the former is likely to affect the latter in charge of Dior Homme.

As expected, in March of this year, Dior Homme's plain Kris Van Assche was replaced by the popular designer Kim Jones.

Dior is a good idea for Arnault. In the past two years, the good performance has also made Dior the second pillar of Louis Vuitton outside the group, while Louis Vuitton has promoted Supreme Supreme's Kim Jones to become a hot designer. This change may be the intention of the group to copy the success of the Jones to the Kim, and add some fresh elements to the men's clothes that are always warm.

Before joining Louis Vuitton in 2011, Kim Jones had been a creative director of menswear brand Dunhill for three years. She was good at multicultural integration and had extensive resources in the fashion circle.

Starting from men's wear, LVMH hopes that Dior will also attract more fans.

And the creative director position of Louis Vuitton's men's wear has ushered in the more famous Off-White founder Virgil Abloh, the most popular one, or left to Qian Shu Louis Vuitton.

Since last year's joint name with Supreme, Louis Vuitton has tasted the sweetness and has been obsessed with fashion brands since then.

In February this year, LVMH group's LVMH Luxury Ventures undertook the Stadium Goods of the US shoe resale platform, which recently launched Tmall into the Chinese market.

Prior to the accession of LVMH Luxury Ventures, Stadium Goods has raised $5 million 600 thousand and expects total paction volume to exceed $100 million in the 2017 fiscal year.

Only two years since its establishment, it has become one of the largest platform for the sale of sports shoes in the United States.

LVMH looks at the "luxury" of sports shoes.

It is reported that the global sports shoes collection market has more than 6 billion U.S. dollars, of which the United States will account for 1/5 of the total, the market size is almost equal to any kind of luxury.

Last year, Balenciaga Triple S became street shoes and doubled its sale price in the market. Since then, luxury brands have followed suit. From Gucci to Louis Vuitton, similar Dad Shoes has been launched. The grafting of traditional fashion houses and sneakers is the fastest way to enter the fashion market for luxury brands. Now, the performance of big brand sneakers in the two tier market is also considered as an important market reference index.

According to the salesperson who worked in Prada, he told the interface news: "men's clothing sales are basically dependent on the sales volume.

Hang on. "

Off-White 2018 spring summer series

LVMH recently launched a hot spot, and its RIMOWA and Chao brand Supreme jointly launched a joint venture. It is reported that the sale of luggage at a price of 1050 to 1150 pounds at the Supreme Soho store in London doubled in a half hour.

With the role of the two tier market, Supreme has become an important tool not only for high-end brands to be street oriented, but also for young consumers.

In addition to these red street brands, Vetements's Demna Gvasalia has been dug up to Balenciaga, so LVMH took the initiative to take the lead. The only remaining designer, "net red" Chao Mei Off-White, took advantage of the street dividends.

The Kris Van Assche who left Dior didn't leave the LVMH group, but soon became the creative director of her menswear brand Berluti. Berluti's original creative director Haider Ackerman was replaced accordingly, while the latter only released the three season series in Berluti.

In three months, the personnel adjustment of four LVMH brands has come to an end. "It has also completed the largest reorganization of the world's largest luxury goods group in men's clothing industry."

The New York Times Vanessa Friedman commented.

Dior Homme in the period of Kris Van Assche

According to the brand's consistent practice, when a designer leaves the brand, she will probably leave her group at the same time. But a series of actions of LVMH are obviously intended to encore the "Big Names" in the market in their own camp, which is different from the designer's intention or leaving the company with the company relationship. The four changes in LVMH are more organically coordinated by the company's purpose and initiative in planning and coordinating the designer resources among the brands.

The four appointment of LVMH took place.

Field, in women's clothing

More mature, men's clothing is a new growth point of many brands, so that the trend of LVMH coveted is also more popular among male consumers.

Floriane de Saint Pierre, who runs the same name consulting and executive search firm, said that the luxury brand of the head began to reflect the trend of the new generation of men's wear designers, which is more street and leisure. "Young independent designers, such as Ami, Virgil Abloh, Martine Rose and Craig Green, will bring changes to those traditional brands.

For traditional fashion houses, the ability to create a culture that resonates with the millennial generation is the key to selecting creative talents.

Mary Gallagher, a European liaison officer of Martens&Heads, a New York consulting firm, also endorsed this view. "For brands such as Louis Vuitton, men's clothing is the next area to gain new customers and competitive advantages when women's clothing and accessories have reached a certain level."

Taking these personnel changes news as an exposure, the brand is replacing the creative director, and the brand is sending signals to consumers. Our design will have something new.

On the day of the announcement of the appointment of Virgil Abloh, the search volume of Louis Vuitton on the The RealReal of second-hand luxury electric business website surged by 64%. Among them, the search volume of millennial male consumers increased by 135% - the influence of Abloh was immediate.

As the Amy M.Spindler of the times pointed out, according to Arnault's style, he always used famous designers to make gimmicks for the brand. This is his typical marketing way. Amy cited the example that he appointed Marc Jacobs as the creative director of Louis Vuitton in 1997. At the same time, Alexander McQueen served as the creative director of the Givenchy.

Ten years ago, Arnault wanted to make some old brand become a hot topic in the market through a brand-new designer matrix. After ten years, Arnault reorganized the matrix and tried to pack many brands with street breeze.

Business.

"This is a way for LVMH to curry favor with young Chinese consumers."

Luca Solca, director of luxury banking at Paris bank, recently explained to the interface news.

Gucci 2018 autumn winter series

The reason for this is partly from the strength of the old rival Kai Yun group in recent years.

Faced with the disruptive changes brought by Gucci to open the cloud, LVMH needs to respond more strategically.

Alessandro Michele brings Gucci more youthful and more hidden luxury.

On the basis of perfect design, the fan effect created by Alessandro Michele with romantic culture has also added to the systematic reform of Gucci. In fact, it is hard to say that Louis Vuitton appointed Virgil Abloh is not using the same pattern.

From the design point of view, the works of Michele and Abloh are full of playful and satirical elements.

The word "Guccy", which is deliberately misspelled on the purse, carries a strong street and personal color to the salute series of Dapper Dan of hip-hop predecessors.

Abloh's men's clothing business, controlled by Louis Vuitton, accounts for 1/3 of the company's overall business, which is enough to bring considerable traffic to the group brand.

This makes the star brand Gucci and LVMH Louis Vuitton of Kai Yun group start a positive traffic competition.

Before that, the routes of Gucci and Louis Vuitton were the same.

In addition to the basic cater for the millennial preferences, both sides take the way of refurbishing existing shops but not building new stores too much. They are investing in establishing new production plants and increasing their prices after reaching a certain height. All of them are the same way. Kai Yun and LVMH realize that they should make their own leading brands "self reliant", so that consumers can have emotional ties with brands instead of groups.

So far, Gucci has not shown any slowdown in growth.

A few days ago, Kai Yun group announced the results of Gucci 2017, data show that Gucci sales increased 46% last year. On the other side, the first quarter earnings report released by LVMH also showed strong momentum in 2018, and revenue rose by over 10%. Although LVMH did not announce the sales of individual brands, the group's largest business segment, fashion and leather goods category reached a 16% rise rate.

Such sales results have once caused investors' doubts whether there is a bubble. For this reason, Francois Pinault, chief executive of cloud computing, once indicated in February that all kinds of Gucci products had recorded growth without bubbles, while LVMH chief financial officer Jean Jacques questioned the outside world about Abloh, and even said she was not afraid that Louis Vuitton would be overexposed because of star designers.

But in the recently published Business of Fashion, "what should we do next? Kai Yun group is really thinking about it," Solca wrote. Recently, there were many remarks that Kai Yun said that Gucci could replace LV sooner or later.

But achieving this goal without losing the "exclusiveness" of the luxury brand is not easy.

"Luxury is such a contradiction, because this exclusivity and sales growth tend to run counter to each other, and brands tend to become" slaves "of their own success.

In fact, from the general trend, Kai Yun and LVMH are trying to control the number of two brands, and refurbish shops that can directly increase store traffic.

On line business, the online sales of Kai Yun group climbed 60% in 2017, while LVMH did not disclose the figures, but people familiar with the matter said that online sales accounted for 5% of the group's sales.

But even so, LVMH's investment in digital business is still more comprehensive. LVMH chief financial officer Jean-Jacques Guiony has told investors that while reorganizing the store, the core investment will be used for digital pformation, of which the launch of the 24 Sevres of e-commerce website is one of the investment projects.

This is an e-commerce project relying on offline department stores, which is rich in category and solid in channel foundation.

The digitalization of Gucci is very good, and it is gradually landing the new store concept. If it can be implemented according to plan, 25% of all 550 will be pformed into a full channel mode, but after all, it is only a brand success.

Solca has questioned whether it is necessary to sort out some undesirable brands and go out with Gucci and Saint Laurent.

Relative to its internal reform of small brands, the lack of innovation momentum at the group level.

The current situation is that LVMH is still in a leading position, but the growth of Gucci, Yves Saint Laurent and Balenciaga of Kai Yun group is faster than that of LVMH.

For a long time, LVMH and Kai Yun group are clearing up obstacles for the current series of internal restructuring.

LVMH basically solved most of the internal problems: DKNY has been sold, DFS has got rid of the loss of Hongkong airport franchising, including Marc Jacobs, which is in a dilemma for a long time, is also gradually stepping out of the predicament.

And the Puma group and the Volcom group, which are slowly stripping the group, are putting their focus on luxury business.

They all seem to have found the key to breakthroughs in the next stage.

Of course, when LVMH is eager to attract Street designers to their own big trees, opening the cloud seems to have its own rhythm and develop each brand in a differentiated way.

Business.

At the beginning of this year, Boucheron Boucheron, the jewelry brand of Kai Yun group, opened the first boutique in mainland China in Shanghai.

Although the three jewellery brands of Boucheron, Pomellato and Dodo account for less than 20% of the total performance of Kai Yun group, but in the latest financial reports, Boucheron and Pomellato last year's strong performance, and the sales of jewellery category of cloud group increased by 13%.

Arnault, of course, is an old hand in business, but Franois-Henri Pinault, chief executive of Kai Yun group, has publicly expressed that it is narrow minded to care about expansion and profit only. But interestingly, Pinault is influenced by the father education of art collectors, but Arnault has invested heavily in art collection. It is hard to say that they are all radicals.

But in short, leaders' experience and conceptual differences are bound to lead the two big groups to take different paths.