Bernard Arnault, Chairman and CEO of LVMH | The Brave Ones

I am very competitive I always want to

win the success of my group is Bates and

the combination of creativity and organization today we will be joined by

far the largest number one luxury brand in the world every competitor is trying

to imitate I think they are not successful but they try [Music]

in 30 years from now every match will still be at head of the luxury sector

and very much is today just at the beginning in spite of its size our

business model is based on creativity innovation and quality many people in

the world who can do what he's done in life he's exactly the opposite what

people think he is we're dealing with one of the most successful people in the world one of the great taste makers in

the world it's somebody with the great vision somebody with a great eye he's always thinking always thinking about

the future not only about the iconic titles brands that he has people who

don't know him have a completely different idea of the people who know him he's one of the wealthiest people in

the world and his wealth was accomplished in a single generation LVMH is comprised of seventy different brands

divided into six different sectors it covers everything from the highest in perfumes and wines to the best leather

goods in the world in the 90s at the

idea of a luxury group and at the time I

was very much criticized for it I remember people telling me it does not

make sense to put together so many brands you know the brands it's Javan

she its Fendi it's even Thomas pink Sephora Sephora he again was completely

ahead of the game I remember when it first opened and everyone said he was crazy and it was never going to work he

recognized that there would be a taste for luxury goods and frankly an ability

to pay for them Bernard Arnault is the architect that brought them all together under one house and it was a success it

is a recognized success when I was a child I was always trying

to have fun it was always what we say in French disobey in school even if I was

not bad at school but I like fun when I was young I was living by my grandmother

because my grandfather died in 1959 and and I saw my grandmother very sad and so

I said one day to my father and my mother okay I cannot leave her alone

because I liked her a lot so I'm going to live with her and I went

on the other side of the street so it's not very far and and she was extremely

extremely helpful I met him back in 1979 in Lille north of France he had recently

joined his father's company and I was still studying I was in my last year of college and I interned with him actually

with his father and him both were at the company at that time my grandfather founded the company in

the north of France then my father runs the company and I was always in contact

with them I was always very interested and I never thought of doing anything

else he started out as a civil engineer he worked for his family's construction

company and my father was really exceptional because he always gave me a

sense of business and when I arrived in the business with him after three years he told me say guy I think you are able

to run the business so let's do it and he gave me the key I was 25 and I

was running it was a small business only 1000 people but no it was risky for him

because it's a business he built over his entire life by his mid-20s he was making some pretty

big changes he wanted to move out of construction and manufacturing and into real estate and he was getting ready to

invest in in America which was very unusual for a small real estate

development company in France France was very conservative at that time you didn't do that especially at his age he

was still in his 20s and it was very unusual for somebody of his age to take those types of decisions when we grew up

he was actually not in luxury he was in real estate it was really something

incredible to witness to see this this incredible ascension he started looking

for gems for things that were undervalued even outside of what his

company had done previously I was looking at several ideas and hid a

Christian job and immediately I thought this brand has a lot of potential it is

under evaluated it is small compared to

what I thought the world was going to become and so I move to buy it do you

was a jolly madam house you know that nice French ladies water lunch and it

was not in any way creating fashion making fashion there was no excitement

around it it was very staid and very safe he's an extremely creative French

entrepreneur who built the largest and best luxury brand in the world he was a

complete visionary he saw things that nobody else saw he saw the increase of

wealth in the world we try to build a large business with our partners with

one criteria the best quality and the most elitists product in every line that

we are selling throughout the world it was a risky move at the time because it was much bigger than the company of my

father but starting from that we built a and the

image today Bernard Arnault is the most talked about man in the fashion world today your itself does over 1 billion

dollars a year because wonders with mergers and acquisitions when I was 10 or 11 years old I understood that

something was going on you know when you start seeing your your father's face on TV and in the newspapers when you also

have people of 11 or 12 years old speaking to you about your own father

saying oh I hear he's incredible and a genius so it that's how it happens

actually and so quite early on we understood that something was going on if there is something he wants you to be

aware of he doesn't beat around the bushes he'll be very very straightforward he invested in an

unbelievable way until numbers came back of the way he expected [Music]

[Applause]

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[Music] when I go working in the morning I

always think I will have fun today with this of this I remember him telling me

one day that 90% of his time was actually you know meetings that were not

that interesting he said the other 10% are absolutely fascinating and then you

know you speak to Carla Gore fellow you'll spend an hour with Frank Gehry these are the ones that you must enjoy

but the other ones are important necessary to I am never bored it's what I have in

mind when I think of myself young it's fun and I am very competitive

so it's like in tennis I always want to win well that's fun you know I share a great admiration for

a tennis player called Roger Federer and I think the happiest that I have ever seen Ben are was when his children

secretly arranging for men are to have a match with Roger and I swear he showed

me the video he acted it out stroke by stroke and then just last week he was

telling me about a more recent game that they had had and at the end of the fifth

game it was 5-0 Roger said well I'm gonna play now the way I would in a

Grand Slam he stepped it up and all bare now could talk to me about was the fact that he'd actually won one point I have

been looking and must say to have fantastic children they are all of them interested by family business so when I

was 17 he gave me a pair of shoes and Berluti shoes they were the most incredible and beautiful shoes that I

had ever seen but yes they gave me a sense of what this business was of the

rarity and and beauty of it all but also it gave me a sense of responsibility

like indeed at that time I kind of understood okay this is going to be the business that I'm going to be in I'm

very very impressed with his relationship with his children he's just it's so attentive family is

really all important to him and he really makes the time and I find that

that is something that people miss out it takes a very special human being to

be able to do that family business especially in in the luxury area is key

for success [Music] when you are in a family you have two

major advantages one is you can think long term it implies I'm not that much

interested by the number of the next six months what I am interested in is that

the desire for the brand will be the same in ten years as it is today the

second advantage of being a family business is to hire people because when

people come to Envy image they do not come in a group with some anonymity they

come in the family you are not just a little person in a big thing you are

member of the family and you will be taken care of as such many of these

luxury houses many of these luxury companies began as family businesses

luxury by definition has heritage it has a legacy and that's what you find and

the consistency of a family to have the Empire he has based upon talent and good

management skills but with very creative people who themselves probably think

they're the best in the world at what they do and in many cases they're right and somehow he's able to get those

people to work collaboratively and organize them and work for him which is

saying a lot he never ceases to surprise me with his risk-taking and his ability

to understand how important a creative force is at every house that without

that you can have the most brilliant CEOs in the world you can have incredible marketing you have a brilliant strategy but without a driving

force behind each each brand that you have nothing a lot of people see him as

a great financier great strategic mind in in terms of how to build an empire

that's not at all how he thinks in my opinion I think his big strength is

actually to speak to creative people and to make them thrive under his

management it's not to create profit or create more revenue or double the size

of the business I know that's the consequence and that's usually what happens but his real talent is with

creative minds you know the success of the group is made of the quality of the

product and the quality of the product is a consequence of the extraordinary

craftsmen and women that are working with us we have a large campaign of

hiring young people that sometimes are

not really thinking of becoming craftsmen or calf women but once we have

given them the idea and once we train them we have a rate of success which is

near 90 percent and it's very rewarding for us to see these young people being

so proud he's developed that long tradition of quality and craftsmanship but but he also adapts and he adapts to

the different generations you could think of Arno as a merchant but he's

also thinking of just the tectonic plates and the shifts in the world I

always try to think of what can we bring to a brand if we are looking at buying a

brand what can the brand be how can it be

improved also does it fit with the other

brands most of the time it is a competitor but does it feel a niche where we could see we are not very much

present and when that happened I must say we we can move

it takes a certain amount of courage to stand against the tide there were a lot of naysayers he was paying full prices

for things that weren't close to what other people would want and other people scoff that he would ever realize value

or or anything from the prices that he was paying I met him when the Fendi take

over was in the air there were other people who wanted Fendi too but when I met him I said to myself this one and

nobody else and I've also hired the invested in an unbelievable way and the numbers came back the way he expected I

am close to many of my businesses but so

so one I have for the longest period of time is Christian Dior followed by Louie

Vuitton so maybe these are the two I am the closer's he knows what he wants for

his brands he manages to explain it quite clearly and if the result doesn't

correspond to what he wants well he will very politely but quite clearly throw

campaigns away and and have everybody rework open eyes a fascinating man he's

reserved but also very direct and very clear if there is something he wants you

to be aware of he doesn't beat around the bushes he'll be very very straightforward it's one thing to

identify a moment in time and to have your taste and your vision collide with

what the world would want at that moment in time but he's been successful over a

lot of moments over a very long period of time across the world lucky to have

met Steve Jobs the beginning of the 2000 and we were

talking and joking he told me you know I don't know if in 50 years my iPhone

will still be a success but I can tell you I'm sure everybody will still twinkle don't Perino

the question next who is going to succeed you I wouldn't be giving him his

lifetime achievement award yet I would wait a while longer because I think there's two more chapters

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LVMH price is oriented to find the most talented young designer I think if you

look at the success of the LVMH fashion prize which was started by his daughter

Delphine a number of years ago I think he really started that as a garden if

you like to discover new talent that was a genius idea you have to apply on the

internet you have to have less than 35 years of page and you have to have

already presented to shows and we were astonished at the beginning with the

number of applicants we select 10 among

these thousands of applicants and then certain are in fact meeting here with

that project and this project has submitted to some of the best

experienced designer because yeah certainly

Delphine and then I will ask me what I think but in the end the decision about who the winners will be are made by a

team of LVMH designers starting with with Karl Lagerfeld so I think they're

certainly far more qualified than I would be to to pick a winner this year there will be changes because some

people left as that people came because there are many musical chairs and the is a fashion world except me and it's

always very interesting to see this young designer showing the products and

defending the ideas there are creative ideas [Music]

[Applause] he's become a great benefactor and

philanthropist and of course foundation Louie Vuitton and the museum is just one

example of it just the most famous example at the moment we started to do

some philanthropic work for the group in the beginning of the 90s and I immediately thought of building

something that was more a mark of what the group is doing and then at the end

of the 90s beginning of 2000 I met Frank my first encounter with this museum is

he and his wife brought me to the shard and acclimatize young and when I

realized where he was bringing me he brought tears to my eyes because I felt like Proust was here a few months

later he send me sketch of his first vision and it's not very different from

what it is today I thought it's extremely creative and I asked for him

to give me more details so we designed a museum that's solid mouse and then we

enclose that in another envelope of glass and the glass was not to enclose

interior it was just like sales and I talked about it like a sailboat like a

regatta of sail so we started to build and then where to stop and then to we

stopped building and all in whole it took me ten years today I looked at it

and felt very proud to be part of this place the foundation was a great gift on

behalf of Bonanno and his family to Paris when you think of cultural

institutions in Paris it's been a long time and since a new one was built and I think it was a shot of vitality in the

city of Paris [Music]

[Applause] he sparks ideas he says what if for oh

but Franck what could we do could we have a small concert hall or you know he

says things just very softly but I know

when he says it he means it and I go for it and and then we have fun

trying to make it happen I can't say how much I love working with him he's a

dreamer he dreams big dreams and then he has the guts to go after those dreams

sometimes I try to tell him it's it's the dreams too big but of course he's always right the dreams are never big

enough he does not compromise on quality he doesn't compromise on the quality of

execution he doesn't compromise on commitment and I think that's really a big part of his recipe they imagine him

in his big tower with his huge excel sheets with with numbers it's very very

far from reality it's not as serious as some might think up there no I try to to

keep God maybe people around are more nervous than I am I tried to guard them

also in terms of where we are in the life of Bernard Arnault and LVMH he's

got a lot of runway ahead of him and he thinks young and he thinks current I wouldn't be giving him his lifetime

achievement award yet I would wait a while longer because I think there's still more chapters he has no interest

in standing still he is no interest in repeating himself he has no interest in anything remaining the same he is a man

that is intrigued by what can happen not by what has happened I admire him I'd

like to be with him I like to be with his family and the God I can say he

continues to you know arrive at the office early in the morning to leave often almost the last one

the evening and he just enjoys it he likes managing people taking decisions

important ones difficult one sometimes because you question next usually who is

going to succeed you but the question for me is the best in terms of

management capacity will be chosen in the future not because he is member of

the family but as I said the group as a whole is a family and so we will choose

in the family with the best but I think I will be there for some years

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