Bernard Arnault was born March 5, 1949. He was the 7th richest man in the world and France's richest man with an estimated net worth of $26 billion us dollars, according to a Forbes report in March 2007.
Arnault is famous to play LVMH, already giant luxury items when he won control in 1989, became a global empire through acquisitions, marketing well informed, and thick design.
Bernard Arnault is a native of Roubaix and graduated with a technique from the École polytechnic in 1971. In 2007, Arnault was listed among Time Magazine 100 most influential people in the world. He said to be a skilled pianist.
At the age of 35 years, using a combination of family money and loans, he bought Boussac, France bankrupt textile group that has financed the original fashion house Christian Dior in 1946. Arnault stripped Boussac to Dior and use it as a vehicle to create LVMH, which was born from the merger of 1987 between the Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessy and. Once in control, Arnault fired executives from both companies, put on his own team, then spent the 90 's luxury brands grabbed still more, include shirt maker Thomas Pink, Chaumet jewelry, Fendi leather goods, the Pucci and Donna Karan fashion line, Krug champagne and TAG Heuer Watches. With his father, Jean, she still controlled 47% stake in LVMH and 63% of the vote, while, which has 68% of Christian Dior Couture, Dior fashion side.
Louis Vuitton invented in 1854 by a Parisian artisan who developed the first flat shaft covered by a waterproof canvas. Later, in 1896, he discovered the famous LV logo by printing the initials on canvas. His business flourished with the growth of travel by train and ship. In the late 1980s, though, Louis Vuitton has become a bag your mother bought. Expensive and well made, but boring.
That changed in 1990 when Arnault brought Yves Carcelle Louis Vuitton to run. Then, in 1997, Arnault hired Marc Jacobs, a young, hip young designer from New York, as Creative Director. Jacobs studied a history of Vuitton and developed a series of twists in it. The first is the graffiti bag, which bore a scrawled signature Louis Vuitton. The second is the handbag Murakami, designed collaborated with artist Takashi Murakami, Japan provided the famous LV initials in a kaleidoscope of colors on a white background. "Marc brings that the spirit of modernity with the product," said Arnault. However, he remains a strong focus on quality brand. On the back of Vuitton factory in Ducey, France, shredding machine to destroy sitting bags that are not adequate. Inspectors tally the number of stitches on the handbag strap. If it is off by even one stitch into the shredder, he went. "Japan Counts stitches," said factory director Stephen Fallon. "If they count four on one side and five, they bring the bags back."
As the bag gets edgier, Carcelle works important to create buzz through a combination PR stunts, celebrity endorsements, and most effective, artificial scarcity. They spent $1,500,000 scaffolding erected in the shape of two giant Vuitton suitcases around the renovation of the Paris shop of Louis Vuitton's.
Since 2000, Arnault and his management team have sold a bunch of them from trying. Gone is the Bliss spa and cosmetics, fashion, Michael Kors watches Ebel, champagne Pommery, Tajan auction house, and Hine cognacs. (LVMH could sell other brands of half a dozen, but executives would not have their names.) Instead, Arnault has focused on the most promising underperformers, which include wearing a women's line Celine, Zenith Watches, fashion, Pucci, and Ruinart champagne. In addition, he has notable success so far.
Perhaps the best example is Celine. Four years ago, Celine's sales have plummeted, and losses reached $16 million. Therefore, Arnault named Jean-Marc Loubier, no. 2 in the Louis Vuitton, Celine to the head. Loubier mined the past brands, such as Jacobs has done at Vuitton. He found that they had started as a high-class shoe merchant in 1945 in Paris. "I think we can use this date as assets, allowing us to showcase Celine as one of the first modern luxury brand, a symbol of the revival of Paris and Europe," said Loubier. So, with designer Michael Kors–such as Jacobs talented United–he remade the image of the woman, Celine into the street-smart cosmopolitan Paris. Offerings–including things like graceful dresses red gloves-boucle, two-faced camel's hair pencil skirt and scarf, mink–attract buyers from Chicago to Tokyo.
Loubier also changed the product mix. The Celine she inherited has produced most of the clothes and only a few bags. However, he knows the bag is a great Louis Vuitton profit makers. Therefore, Kors go to work creating more bags, such as Boogie, the classic square-shaped bag with double rolled leather handles, available in five colors and exotic like alligator skin. That bag is an instant hit: Madonna, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Sarah Jessica Parker all wounds Facebook took it. (Celine send free bags, but celebrities pay nothing to take them.) Loubier took another cue from Vuitton bags at prices beginning at a steep $1,150 to model the skin of calves. Celine then came out with version $580 in denim, a calculated move: the buyer has seen models $1.150 thought they seemed like a deal.
Meanwhile, Loubier increase product quality and delivery time are shortened from months to weeks–making both merchants and customers happy. The result of all the changes: Celine sales last year rose 40% from the year 2000 to $203,000, 000, and profits rolled in for the first time in ten years. Profit this year will be ten times what they were in 2003, predicts Loubier. Celine's fall 2004 line, arriving in stores now, looks strong. However, there is a question mark in front: the season is the last for Kors, who depart this past spring to focus on his eponymous line. Arnault selected Roberto Menichetti, at Burberry, to replace him but it is too early to say what he might do.
Zenith Watches, Arnault did another talent transplant. In 2001, he brought Thierry Nataf, which never managed to Veuve Clique, one of the most successful brands of champagne LVMH's. There have been redesigning the Nataf watches, exposing the mechanism and hand stitched using the band to highlight the history of Switzerland brand movement quality. The company has 120 years of great glory and then forgotten in the last 30 years. This is a diamond in the rough form. For the first time in 30 years, the brand also sells watches ladies in pink, baby blue, lime green, bright red, and Pearl gray, and black. Now there is the logo, the same as in Louis Vuitton: stars on the Crown of the watch. Zenith sales grow at a single digit while Nataf arrived; now they are growing double digits.
Pucci, too, has enjoyed the care of Vuitton. Italy clothing line known for its vibrant mod ' molds were 60 everywhere to Arnault asked for Christian LA Croix to redesign at the beginning of 2002. LA Croix extended icon Pucci prints everything from shoes to carpets and furniture. In the example Vuittonesque synergy, LA Croix has designed a box Pucci for a limited edition for $200 a bottle-a-1996, Veuve Clique champagne. Pucci celebrates at party-studded celebrities from Florence to LA and like Louis Vuitton, Pucci opened a flagship store on Manhattan's Fifth Avenue, the luxury shopping of Qibla. Sales have more than doubled since 2002.
Even in the champagne, the formula seems to work. At Ruinart, an exclusive Champagne priced under Dom Perignon, Arnault is built on a rich history of a story to sell, as he did for Louis Vuitton. To do that, he hired historians to find little facts about the background of the brand. They found that the Ruinart developed in 1729, taken by Marie Antoinette, and exported to other European royalty. Ruinart identity is elitist, aristocratic. Therefore, borrowing techniques from Vuitton, a buzz in the spring of 2004, LVMH began a series of promotions, such as a champagne dinner $220 at the Ritz Hotel in London, to the position of Ruinart. It is too soon to see how well the new positioning works.
Arnault is still struggling with a certain label. Four months after the London meeting, for example, she still had not found a new women's wear designer for Givenchy. Donna Karan, Loewe, and Kenzo is a masterpiece in the settlement. However, with profits rolling in fat from Hennessy, Louis Vuitton, and Dom Perignon, Arnault has the luxury of time.
Arnault also formed an investment fund with his good friend Albert Frere in 2006; the couple has two vineyards along. LVMH hired Frank Gehry to design a museum $127 million in Paris. In December opened a four-star hotel Le Cheval Blanc in the ski resort of Courchevel, France, where he often spent New Year’s, Eve.
In January 2007 Kathryn Blair, the daughter of the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Tony Blair, completed an intensive French language and culture in French Sorbonne University. Tony Blair has been criticized for accepting the invitation on behalf of her from Bernard Arnault. During Kathryn Blair, which took place from 12 October 2006 to 26 January 2007, he is alleged to have been fitted with security, accommodation, and transport package worth about £ 80,000.
As of March 2007, Arnault has a plurality of 47.5% of LVMH (Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton), along with Christian Dior SA. Arnault is the Chairman and CEO of both companies. The son of Antoine, 27, joined by sister Delphine, 31, on board the LVMH in 2006.
The main competitors are Arnault. French businessman François-Henri Pinault, whose holding company PPR owns Gucci, Yves Saint Laurent, Alexander McQueen, Stella McCartney, Sergio Rossi, Bottega Veneta, Boucheron, Roger Gallet products &, Bédat & Co. and Christie's Switzerland-based Richemont, which owns Cartier, Van Cleef Arpels &, Piaget, Baume et Mercier, IWC, Jaeger-LeCoultre, a. Lange & Söhne, Officine Panerai, Vacheron Constantin, Dunhill, Lancel, Montblanc, Montegrappa, Old United Kingdom, she believes, Chloé, and Shanghai Tang.
The influence of Arnault's reaches far beyond couture and champagne. He was a close friend of the President of France Nicolas Sarkozy, a newspaper baron who sells one business daily, La Tribune, and gains rivals, Les Echos, and the powerful patron of the Arts: Arnault got a green light last fall to build a Center for LVMH's Art Foundation in the Bois De Boulogne.
The formula, designed by Arnault, goes like this: Sharp determine brand identity–or "DNA,"–by mining the history of brands and find the right designer to express it; strict quality control and distribution; and create a buzz marketing expert.
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