The Card Wars Between Luxury Giants Continue.

Luxury fashion retail continues to grow, the biggest in the world.

Group LVMH also started looking for new breakthroughs.

According to the world clothing shoes and hats net,

In secret negotiations with the social media queen, the American hip hop singer Rihanna Rihanna, she plans to set up a brand new luxury brand in her name, which will be released later this year. The product will cover many categories including clothing, leather goods and accessories.

According to sources, LVMH began preparations in Paris 6 months ago, from LVMH

Group Chairman and chief executive officer SidneyToledano is responsible for deploying manpower from the two most important brand teams of Louis Vuitton and Celine to communicate with Rihanna.

Sidney Toledano has been the chief executive of Dior fashion, and has won the recognition of Bernard Arnault, chairman and CEO of LVMH, with the success of Lady Dior handbag. Under his guidance, Dior performance has been growing steadily.

From then on, we can see that LVMH attaches great importance to the luxury brand name of Rihanna. If the news is true, it will be the second luxury brand launched by LVMH since its establishment in 1987 in Christian Lacroix. It is also the first luxury brand that it has launched with the female stars.

Up to now, LVMH has refused to respond to the news, and Rihanna has not responded to media interviews.

It is noteworthy that this is the third important strategic move LVMH has launched over the past month or so.

Following the $3 billion 200 million acquisition of high-end hotel operator Belmond in December last year, LVMH announced this week that it would acquire a minority stake in New York designer Gabriela Hearst.

After the deal is concluded, Gabriela Hearst will be the first designer brand acquired by LVMH after shutting down Edun last year.

But unlike buying a brand, LVMH now has to rebuild a luxury brand, which is not easy in the current changing market environment.

Some analysts believe that Bernard Arnault dare to make this bold decision at this time node, not only in the high degree of concern and commercial value of Rihanna.

A senior executive revealed that despite the hip-hop singer's status, any fashion collaboration with Rihanna can break the record of performance, which is inseparable from Rihanna's huge social media influence.

At present, she has more than 67 million fans on a Instagram social platform, and is not inferior to any luxury brand.

Rihanna is also fully aware of its strong influence, and constantly cooperating with fashion brands to realize its own traffic flow, and has achieved great success.

In 2012, Forbes magazine named Rihanna one of the most influential celebrities in the world. In the same year, she was also named "the 100 most influential people in the world" by the times.

In 2014, Rihanna was awarded the "fashion idol Lifetime Achievement Award" by CFDA, the American Fashion Designers Association.

In May 2015, Rihanna set up its own fashion company, Roraj Trade LLC., and registered $CHOOL Kills Roraj in New York, with trademarks of "leather products" and "clothing".

Rihanna's creative director, Ciarra Pardo, emphasized in the legal document that Rihanna is trying to prove that she is a serious fashion designer.

Rihanna and LVMH started from Dior. At that time, she was Dior's first African American spokesperson, not only in fashion show, but also in collaboration with Dior to launch sunglasses.

In 2017, LVMH's beauty incubator KENDO invested more than $10 million to launch Fenty Beauty by Rihanna with Rihanna.

According to the research of Slice Intelligence, the average annual consumption of consumers in Fenty Beauty is US $471, which has exceeded Kim Kardashian, the same name cosmetics brand KKW and other popular online beauty brand.

Although LVMH will not disclose the specific data of its beauty products separately, it has mentioned in its annual report last year that the performance of Fenty Beauty is one of the main driving forces to boost sales of its perfume and cosmetics department by 14%.

At the beginning of last year, Rihanna launched its first underwear brand "Savage x Fenty" with the help of fashion group TechStyle. Its products include T-shirts, corsets, accessories and so on, priced between 14.5 and 99 dollars.

It is reported that Savage & Fenty offers $50 a year of paid member selection, and members of the consumer can enjoy early benefits of new products, exclusive limited products, free distribution and refund.

However, Rihanna's first official position in the fashion industry comes from the sports brand Puma.

In December 2014, Puma appointed her as the creative director of Fenty by Puma.

Although the contract period is only 3 years, the industry has been shocked by the profit growth created by Rihanna for Puma.

With the promotion of Fenty by Puma products, the popularity of Puma brand has been rising for 5 years, and its performance has begun to grow. In 2016, it gained new breakthroughs. Net profit rose by 68% to 62 million 400 thousand euros, and sales increased 7% to 3 billion 627 million euros. Rihanna was regarded as the greatest hero. Once defeated Yeezy designer Kanye West became the most concerned designer in New York fashion week.

In addition, Fenty by Puma series Creeper shoes also beat Kanye West Adidas Yeezy Boost 750 launched in Adidas, sold on the shelves in only three hours, and has been rated as "shoes of the year" by the industry.

What it means is that Puma was part of Gucci's parent company Kai Yun group. It was not until the beginning of last year that it resumed its independent operation. Rihanna also cancelled its agreement with Kai Yun group in 2017.

Therefore, the industry has speculated that LVMH's choice of Rihanna as the founder of the new luxury brand may have other intentions.

Since last year, the war between LVMH and Kai Yun group has been escalating, and the fuse is the most vigorous Gucci.

First, Fran ois-Henri Pinault, CEO of Kai Yun group, put it to "eliminate" Louis Vuitton. Gucci CEO Marco Bizzarri also said it would achieve the target of $10 billion in annual sales of Gucci as soon as possible.

In June last year, Gucci suddenly announced its show in Paris, which was held on the same day with LVMH's Dior, which directly fired the war into LVMH's base area.

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From the performance level, Gucci successfully broke the spell of "fire but three years". Sales rose 35.1% to 2 billion 100 million euros in the third quarter of September 30th last year. On the basis of last year's high base, it has recorded an increase of 35% over the seventh quarter.

In the first 9 months, Gucci sales surged 40.8% to 5 billion 948 million euros, a record high.

Thanks to this, sales of Kai Yun group rose 31.5% to 9 billion 526 million euros.

In contrast, LVMH's revenue grew 10% to 11 billion 380 million euros in the third quarter of last year, and its core fashion leather goods department, including Louis Vuitton, grew 14% to 4 billion 458 million euros. It has recorded double-digit growth for 8 consecutive quarters.

Some analysts predict that if LVMH can not effectively block the pace of Gucci, according to the current Gucci quarter average growth rate of 20% over the LVMH fashion leather sector, the number of luxury brands will occupy Gucci in five years.

What makes LVMH more vigilant is that apart from Gucci, the group also supports the two quasi Gucci of Saint Laurent and Balenciaga, and has appointed the 33 year old creative director, Daniel Lee, who has served in Celine for the group's other core brand Bottega Veneta, which aims to make the second tier brand contribute more sales to the group while avoiding the risk of disgrace.

Bernard Arnault naturally will not let the open cloud group wanton provocation. He once told the foreign media that the competitors such as Kai Yun group were imitating in the past ten years and thought they would not succeed.

After making up their minds to defeat the cloud group's spirit, LVMH's action has also become very decisive and rapid. It has carried out a creative director's shuffling in a rare way. The controversial Street trend opinion leader and Off-White founder Virgil Abloh have attracted the attention of the company, and have pferred the designer Kim Jones, who is good at giving brand new vitality, to Dior menswear.

In this regard, the industry regards the positive defense of Louis Vuitton and Dior as LVMH's "A plan". Celine is the group's "B plan". If the cooperation between LVMH and Rihanna was started six months ago according to the source, this means that this action does not exclude another secret weapon that Bernard Arnault should deal with.

His intention is very obvious, that is, using the most current and commercial value stars to create a luxury brand that brings fresh feelings to young people.

But we need to be vigilant that stars create luxury fashion brands and have higher risks while having a certain fan base.

Victoria Beckham, a member of the US spice girls group with 24 million fans in Instagram, is a typical example.

Victoria Beckham founded the brand of the same name in 2008, which is very similar to the Celine in the Phoebe Philo era. In November last year, it obtained the private equity fund NEO 3000 million investment to expand its digital business and retail business, and NEO boss Ralph Toledano served as the chairman of the brand.

However, according to public data, Victoria Beckham's losses in recent three years are increasing. Victoria Beckham, which has two design teams and 100 employees in London, is under tremendous pressure.

Although its sales surged 17% to 42 million 500 thousand pounds in 2017, the loss was recorded at 10 million 200 thousand pounds, or nearly 90 million yuan, much higher than the 4 million 600 thousand pound loss in 2015 and the 8 million 400 thousand pound loss in 2016.

The reason for sustained losses is that the brand represents a continuous investment in brand infrastructure and staff costs, as well as an increase in expansion costs in Asia and the United States.

According to analysts, the Victoria Beckham is currently valued at about 100 million pounds.

Earlier, it was reported that LVMH's L Catterton was interested in acquiring Victoria Beckham shares, but the negotiations ended in failure.

In addition, LVMH is also at risk for the high-end positioning of Rihanna's personal brand, especially when investors predict that global luxury consumption will slow down. Consumers may not be willing to take the price of buying Louis Vuitton handbags to pay for Rihanna.

Diana Espino, vice president of KENDO global marketing and brand development, who has worked with Rihanna for many years, believes that although Rihanna still ranks first in the attention of celebrities in social media, how to display the authenticity of a fashion icon and entertainment star is the key to the continuity of its business value in the era of social media pparency.

Yesterday morning, LVMH suddenly issued a statement that Bernard Arnault's only daughter, Delphine Arnault, has joined the board of directors of the group. At the age of 43, she was the youngest member of the board of directors and the first offspring of the Arnault family who joined the LVMH board.

Bernard Arnault stressed in a statement that the accession of Delphine Arnault to the board of directors will help the group to promote younger development better.

There is no doubt that the battle between the luxury giants continues. The competition for luxury goods in the future is no longer a single brand competition, but a dispute over the matrix.

People in the industry pointed out that nowadays consumers should not read the editorial reviews or magazines published by editors. They are concerned about what shoes Rihanna wears on Instagram.

For luxury brands, social media is changing the choices of consumers.

More interesting reports, please pay attention to the world clothing shoes and hats net.