LVMH - The Luxury Goods Conglomerate

[FashionPower]

On another forum that specializes in gossip, there is a theory that Frederic is his favorite child, has the most character traits after him, graduated from the same difficult university. Alexandre is now in his father's black books because of his misguided investments in Beyonce and Jay-Z's liquor company. Most suits were against it, but he convinced his father and now they have to clean up after it. According to articles in the French press, he was also supposed to have some sort of alliance with one suit.
Now there is so some friction probably because of declining sales and lack of vision.

I'm fine as long as the family doesn't invest in Kendall's 818 and Kylie's Sprinter LOL

 

[GRCF]

I'm fine as long as the family doesn't invest in Kendall's 818 and Kylie's Sprinter LOL

If Alexandre is lurking here you probably just gave him an idea because that Moet collab with none other than LVMH golden boy Pharrell clearly shows he is lacking in the ideas department.

 

[FashionPower]

If Alexandre is lurking here you probably just gave him an idea because that Moet collab with none other than LVMH golden boy Pharrell clearly shows he is lacking in the ideas department.

Well, jokes aside and considering I don't drink alcohol, so I don't know much about the wine and beverages sector, I read somewhere that Kendall's brand has quite a good reputation in the business. Furthermore, Kendall is considered the least trashy / tacky Kardashians, so a potential business venture with her would not be that detrimental...I guess. Sprinter, on the other hand, it's just a cash grab from greedy Kylie, it's clear she probably does not know who the CEO of the company is and never spent a single minute in a distillery...
Your statement raises another concerning point though, LVMH obsession with Pharrell, why did he turn into an Arnault right hand all of sudden, especially considering he was a Karl / CHANEL protegè (one of LVMH biggest competitors) for more than a decade? Do leather Speedys P9 sell that well? In terms of virality and fashion relevancy, let's be honest, only his first Point Neuf show had an impact with the damouflage and the release of the P9, LV menswear went autopilot from the second RTW show...

 

[GRCF]

Well, jokes aside and considering I don't drink alcohol, so I don't know much about the wine and beverages sector, I read somewhere that Kendall's brand has quite a good reputation in the business. Furthermore, Kendall is considered the least trashy / tacky Kardashians, so a potential business venture with her would not be that detrimental...I guess. Sprinter, on the other hand, it's just a cash grab from greedy Kylie, it's clear she probably does not know who the CEO of the company is and never spent a single minute in a distillery...
Your statement raises another concerning point though, LVMH obsession with Pharrell, why did he turn into an Arnault right hand all of sudden, especially considering he was a Karl / CHANEL protegè (one of LVMH biggest competitors) for more than a decade? Do leather Speedys P9 sell that well? In terms of virality and fashion relevancy, let's be honest, only his first Point Neuf show had an impact with the damouflage and the release of the P9, LV menswear went autopilot from the second RTW show...

I think LVMH suffers (or maybe it's a brilliant strategy, I don't know) from the "if it ain't broken, don't fix it" mentality, which leads to replaying the same tired ideas that have been known to work. This means keeping MGC around for a million years, it means artists collabs with Murakami and Koon (or whatever other artists rich people with no taste are into), it means working with Pharrell because they have been doing so since the early 2000s. I'm sure if Kanye had not gone bat sh!t, he would still be there. Or maybe they just actually like this people and are friends with them, so they work with them. Also we all know Alexandre tries to be an honorary member of black pop culture, so there is that with Pharrell. I think the criticisms we see from 99% of people in TFS in every Dior fw thread can be applied to LVMH more broadly. LVMH is above all a company selling luxury, not a company seeking to innovate or disrupt anything, so as long as it sells and the profits are coming in and the Arnaults get their million dollar dividends, it is working as it should.

 

[justpassingthrough]

Source: Bof

 

[GRCF]

Looks like The Puck's sources were right... I still contend that this is a demotion. He didn't do anything worth noticing in the Watches division, so I wonder what Bernard's strategy here is. I find him rather unimpressive, though people like to point to him getting into Polytechnique like Bernard, but it impresses me as much as someone getting into Harvard. It's what you do with your career that is impressive not being good at taking tests, and his career thus far unremarkable. Although all 4 of those boys are unremarkable in my opinion. I wonder if the new CEO of LVMH watches will be his little brother.

https://www.reuters.com/business/retail-consumer/lvmh-heir-frederic-arnault-head-loro-piana-exit-watches-division-2025-03-12/

Also wondering if the same reporting is true of Delphine leaving Dior.

 

[tctra]

This company is everything we should hate about mega corporations

 

[JohannesL]

LVMH finds making Louis Vuitton bags messy in Texas​

By Tassilo Hummel and Waylon Cunningham
April 10, 2025 2:25 PM GMT+8Updated 3 days ago

https://www.reuters.com/business/retail-consumer/lvmh-finds-making-louis-vuitton-bags-messy-texas-2025-04-10/

 

[velvetandsilk]

I'm not surprised that they are having trouble finding employees. When they opened it, I was watching some video of local news on youtube and in the comments people then ridiculed them for opening it in such a place. They claimed there that it was an area without any tradition in leather production and a lot of people had drug problems, so they wouldn't find highly skilled workers.

 

[Lola701]

I mean, they were doomed from the start. We all know why in part that move was made but the reality is that in terms of skills, making leather goods is in Europe or Asia a long standing tradition.

Tbh, I never looked too deep into it but why make a Louis Vuitton factory when they have two American brands: Marc Jacobs and Tiffany and could have produced some stuff for those brands there?

Too bad for them, it’s all over the world now. They are talking about it in France and in US. So now Made in US Louis Vuitton stuff will have a negative biais from customers.

Moving workers from California to Texas seems to be the solving problem idea. Let’s see how it turns out.

But I think this is a good lesson for excessive capitalism. There are people who spend 3/5 years in order to be skilled in those metiers. All factory jobs are not equal.

 

[blueorchid]

Not to sound North American but I’m surprised there isn’t a history of leather craft in Texas… you know… cowboys (and ranchers) with their cowboy hats, boots, chaps, etc… of course, it couldn’t be as fine and detailed as French/Italian.

 

[rivegaucheface]

I'm not surprised that they are having trouble finding employees. When they opened it, I was watching some video of local news on youtube and in the comments people then ridiculed them for opening it in such a place. They claimed there that it was an area without any tradition in leather production and a lot of people had drug problems, so they wouldn't find highly skilled workers.

The problems aren't druggies and low-skilled workers
The article states that they have the same kind of training for American and European workers.

The problem is LVMH trying to pay people less than fast food wages in a country that doesn't have a European social safety net. Who is going to work for $13/hr - sorry, it's up to $17/hr now - to make a bag that will sell for $3,000?

No one who is willing to work for those wages wants to work for French fops with quality standards that far outsize what they're paying for. That's it. And people aren't going to move from California to Texas for those wages, either:

Pauchard confirmed the town hall and said Louis Vuitton intended to streamline its California operations and transfer more skilled artisans to Texas - with so far limited success. Its executives, he said, “underestimated the fact that Texas is far away from California.”

 

[rivegaucheface]

Not to sound North American but I’m surprised there isn’t a history of leather craft in Texas… you know… cowboys (and ranchers) with their cowboy hats, boots, chaps, etc… of course, it couldn’t be as fine and detailed as French/Italian.

There's a rich history of skilled leatherwork across the Southwest. I've seen tooled leather that looks like a sepia painting. Native American beadwork that's literally priceless. Boots in particular are an important part of the culture and can be treated like heirlooms. I've seen boots that cost five digits and were made with skill that deserved every cent.

The Southwestern style is incredibly distinctive. It doesn't work with most luxury brand aesthetics. But more to the point, American leatherworkers are an independent and proud type of people. They know what their craft is worth. They're not going to leave their own setups to go work for LVMH wages and production targets. And honestly I doubt LVMH is looking for them, either.

 

[JohannesL]

U.S. has produced lots of high quality fashion garments and leather goods for its own market and sometimes exported some of them to Japan before the NAFTA and WTO, so it is not like American workers don't know about making leather goods, it is more about what @rivegaucheface said about exploiting the wage in that country. The only hope they can have is those immigrants who have no choice but are vulnerable to accept low wages.