Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news. Bernard Arnaud is one
Speaker 1: of the richest men in the world. He's right up
Speaker 1: there with Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk on the Bloomberg
Speaker 1: Billionaires Index. But Arnault, who runs the luxury goods company LVMH,
Speaker 1: doesn't have the same name recognition as the founder of
Speaker 1: Amazon or the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX.
Speaker 2: I knew almost nothing about him.
Speaker 1: Brad Stone is the editor of Bloomberg BusinessWeek, who spent
Speaker 1: most of his career covering big tech, and Brad says
Speaker 1: it was his relative unfamiliarity with Arnault and the sprawling
Speaker 1: empire Arnault has built that made him so eager to
Speaker 1: sit down with the French billionaire.
Speaker 2: His accomplishments are much different. He hasn't invented the future.
Speaker 2: If anything, he has marketed the past, and yet he
Speaker 2: has assembled just as much power and resources as a
Speaker 2: lot of the tech titans we think of being icons
Speaker 2: of the business world. There's a lot of value still
Speaker 2: in in luxury retail, in high end travel, in high
Speaker 2: end spirits. It's a completely different business, right. We don't
Speaker 2: think of it in the same way as AI or
Speaker 2: e commerce or software, and yet in a lot of ways,
Speaker 2: it's just as influential in people's lives.
Speaker 1: Over the last four decades, Arnault has acquired dozens and
Speaker 1: dozens of the world's best known and most coveted brands,
Speaker 1: including Dior, Fendi and Celine, Tiffany and Bulgari, Hennessy and Vovkliko.
Speaker 1: LVMH's customers include kings and queens and presidents and countless
Speaker 1: celebrities and supermodels all over the world.
Speaker 2: He's an icon. He's extraordinarily admired. Even people in Silicon
Speaker 2: Valley in tech have started to look at Arnau and
Speaker 2: the LVMH playbook with a lot of admiration.
Speaker 1: Other executives, Brad says, marvel at what Arnaut has put together.
Speaker 1: It's an unrivaled portfolio of more than seventy brands. But
Speaker 1: LVMH also has an elaborate marketing arm and the collection
Speaker 1: of some of the most valuable real estate in the world.
Speaker 1: It's a profit making machine.
Speaker 2: I do think Arnaud has now emerged as one of
Speaker 2: these business leaders whose playbook should be copied and emulated.
Speaker 1: I'm David Gera, and this is the big take from
Speaker 1: Bloomberg News on today's show Bernard Arnault, the hard driving,
Speaker 1: multi billionaire businessman who's come to be known as the
Speaker 1: Wolf in Kashmere. Just how did he build this empire
Speaker 1: and turn it into that profit making machine. After months
Speaker 1: of trying, Bloomberg BusinessWeek editor Bradstone and Angelina Rescuett, who
Speaker 1: covers luxury goods for Bloomberg, landed a rare interview with
Speaker 1: Bernard Arnault, who almost never speaks to journalists. He invited
Speaker 1: them to LVMH headquarters in Paris's opulent eighth Arrondissement.
Speaker 2: We were led into a conference room with this extraordinary
Speaker 2: art on the walls, three war hals, a Picasso, of course,
Speaker 2: leaning in the corner, waiting to be hung, you know,
Speaker 2: grand views of Paris outside the window. Mister Arnaud comes in.
Speaker 2: I mean, what can you say? You know, I've spent
Speaker 2: a career interviewing the schlubs of tech, and Arnault is
Speaker 2: exquisitely dressed, a Dior suit, Berluti shoes. You know, just
Speaker 2: an aura of elegance that you really don't find, or
Speaker 2: I haven't found in most of the business executives I've
Speaker 2: interviewed in my career.
Speaker 1: Brad, you put on your suit, your your one suit
Speaker 1: for these I.
Speaker 2: Did, I dusted. Yeah, he was wearing the Ore and Berluti.
Speaker 2: I had on suit Supply and Nordstrom rack. But still,
Speaker 2: you know, it made for a good photo.
Speaker 1: Arnault has climbed and clawed his way to the top
Speaker 1: from his childhood in northern France. His mom was a pharmacist,
Speaker 1: and Arnault started out at the family construction company, but
Speaker 1: Angelina says he had an epiphany about what the rest
Speaker 1: of his career could look like on a trip to
Speaker 1: the United States.
Speaker 3: He was talking to a taxi driver in New York
Speaker 3: City and he asked them, you know was the most
Speaker 3: famous person that you know? Do you know the name
Speaker 3: of the French president. The person couldn't name the French president.
Speaker 1: The one famous French person the cab driver could name
Speaker 1: was legendary fashion designer Christian Dior, and that's stuck with Arnault,
Speaker 1: who went on to buy that brand out of bankruptcy
Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty four. In the years that followed, Arnault
Speaker 1: acquired other fashion houses, along with watchmakers and jewelry designers
Speaker 1: and the cosmetics retailer Sephora Brat. When you look at
Speaker 1: this company as a whole, how do all of these
Speaker 1: brands work together.
Speaker 2: Yeah. To the casual shopper, it may seem like they're
Speaker 2: totally separate, but behind the scenes, there are incredible synergies
Speaker 2: on economies of scale, from the supply chain to marketing,
Speaker 2: the way in which they can command lower rates across
Speaker 2: all the media properties in the world, to executives who
Speaker 2: will shuffle from one brand to the other. So lots
Speaker 2: of synergies behind the scenes and ways in which it's
Speaker 2: just easier for them to go and higher celebrities, higher
Speaker 2: ambassadors sponsor the Olympics. They're a primary sponsor of the
Speaker 2: Paris Olympics.
Speaker 1: Brad says, Arnaut's empire has a huge real estate footprint.
Speaker 2: He has literally exported luxury and all the little decisions
Speaker 2: and details that go into it all around the world.
Speaker 3: There are other luxury groups that own other brands, but
Speaker 3: really in that scale, he's pretty unique.
Speaker 1: One of the secrets to his success, which is also
Speaker 1: the envy of LVMH's rivals, is Arno's understanding of the
Speaker 1: magic and the power of celebrity, which Brad says goes
Speaker 1: back to the early days of Arno's career.
Speaker 2: He had his designer reinvent the door handbag line, and
Speaker 2: in the nineties, Lady Diana, on one of her trips
Speaker 2: to South America, was carrying the bag. A global frenzy ensued.
Speaker 2: They renamed it the Lady do Or Bag and they
Speaker 2: sold hundreds of thousands of them.
Speaker 1: He's just done that again and again. Luxury goods are
Speaker 1: a high margin business, Brad says. And to succeed a
Speaker 1: company like LVMH has to strike a very delicate balance.
Speaker 2: You know, you might be selling one hundred dollars handbag
Speaker 2: for one thousand dollars or more. And so what are
Speaker 2: people buying. They're buying a brand, They're buying an essence,
Speaker 2: They're buying maybe the way in which their friends or
Speaker 2: people will think of them if they're holding the item.
Speaker 2: And so are no recognized that you need to invest
Speaker 2: these brands in desirability and elegance, and that is what
Speaker 2: he has done so well.
Speaker 1: And Arnault is preoccupied with desirability, Angelina says.
Speaker 3: The tricky question is how do you make sure you
Speaker 3: keep on growing, you know, revenue for your brands while
Speaker 3: not over exposing them. That's really a very difficult one
Speaker 3: to hit. You know, some of the luxury brands out there,
Speaker 3: they can be overexposed, and that's that's very difficult. So yeah,
Speaker 3: that's his obsession.
Speaker 1: In an economy where luxury can be increasingly out of
Speaker 1: reach and questions swirl about the ethics of producing and
Speaker 1: selling high end goods at a markup our nose brands
Speaker 1: are still desired by so many and they're seen as
Speaker 1: status symbols by the most fashionable and powerful people in
Speaker 1: the world. So how does he do it? What's happening
Speaker 1: inside the c suite at LVMH, and how is ourn
Speaker 1: setting up the company to carry on when he's no
Speaker 1: longer running it. That's after the break. LVMH is a
Speaker 1: four hundred billion dollar company. It had two hundred and
Speaker 1: thirteen thousand employees at the end of last year. That's
Speaker 1: more than Apple and Bloomberg's Angeline Rascuette says, Bernard Arnaut
Speaker 1: is intimately involved in every aspect of the business.
Speaker 3: Every Saturday, bernardout is known to drop in on his stores.
Speaker 3: So of course he's at the fashion shows. Of course
Speaker 3: he's you know, meeting hanging out with the creative people.
Speaker 3: But you know, his business at the end of the
Speaker 3: day is retail and retail is detailed, so he'll go
Speaker 3: into the stores and then he'll talk to the sales assistant,
Speaker 3: and then he'll you know, send emails or text to
Speaker 3: his managers telling him what he thinks and how this
Speaker 3: bag maybe should be this category should be exhibited somewhere else.
Speaker 1: Perhaps unsurprisingly then, Arnaud also has a reputation for being
Speaker 1: a bit of a micromanager. He's concerned with details as
Speaker 1: specific as the brand of shoes that sales associates wear
Speaker 1: in his stores. Obviously he wants them to wear LVMH
Speaker 1: brands head to toe. He's involved in the day to
Speaker 1: day in a way Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos aren't anymore,
Speaker 1: but the companies they started well. Asked Bradstone if he
Speaker 1: caught glimpses of that fastidiousness when he talked to Arnaut,
Speaker 1: And if Arnault is involved in the nitty gritty on
Speaker 1: the creative side of the business, is he telling Grammy
Speaker 1: winner Pharrell Williams, who's now one of the creative directors
Speaker 1: at Louis Viton, what he should and shouldn't do.
Speaker 2: David, I don't get the impression that there is any
Speaker 2: aspect of the business that mister Arna is not involved
Speaker 2: in Look. Does he go and micromanage the actual sort
Speaker 2: of camouflage design on the men'swear jacket that Louis Viton.
Speaker 2: Probably not, but he is certainly involved in the hiring
Speaker 2: of the fashion the creative directors, and the ambassadors at
Speaker 2: every house Look. I think he looks at everything, not
Speaker 2: just the creative side, but the executives and how each
Speaker 2: business is run and how it's doing on a daily
Speaker 2: and weekly basis.
Speaker 1: Given our no's relentless focus on image and reputation, I
Speaker 1: wanted to understand from Angelina how he's navigating another hot
Speaker 1: button issue at his companies, recent reporting of unsafe and
Speaker 1: illegal labor practices in the factories that make LVMH goods.
Speaker 3: Sometimes you do your best to de trait' sability tracking
Speaker 3: all these labor conditions, but sometimes when it's too removed. Yeah,
Speaker 3: their struggle in even LVMH has struggle.
Speaker 1: And recent Bloomberg reporting reporting we featured on this podcast
Speaker 1: found serious problems in LVMH owned Lororo Piana's supply chain,
Speaker 1: including paltry compensation for indigenous workers in Peru who shear
Speaker 1: the wool used in some of the world's most expensive sweaters.
Speaker 3: Their response was like, we'll look into it and we'll
Speaker 3: make sure to fix what we can fix.
Speaker 1: At the time of Bloomberg's reporting, Loro Piana also stressed
Speaker 1: their economic support for the local community. Our nose degree
Speaker 1: of involvement in his company raises another question, what happens
Speaker 1: when he's no longer at the helm. His age now
Speaker 1: seventy five has outside observers looking for clues about what
Speaker 1: LVMH's future could look like. He recently raised the CEO
Speaker 1: retirement age at the company from seventy five to eighty
Speaker 1: and Warren Buffett wrote to him after that to tell
Speaker 1: our No, he made a mistake setting that new limit.
Speaker 1: So Low Buffett, who is ninety three, still runs Berkshire Hathaway.
Speaker 3: The big question is who will succeed him when he's
Speaker 3: no longer around, and obviously some of the candidates include
Speaker 3: his five children, who were all work inside LVMATS.
Speaker 1: And they're all seen as potential heirs or heiress's apparent
Speaker 1: are No's eldest daughter is the CEO of Christian Dior Couture.
Speaker 1: Is eldest son is an executive at LVMH. Another son
Speaker 1: is the number two at Tiffany and His two youngest
Speaker 1: sons are involved in the company's watch business, which Brad
Speaker 1: says is an area where LVMH might make more acquisitions.
Speaker 2: He has brought more kind of thinking and precision to
Speaker 2: succession than I've seen almost anywhere. Right, and the way
Speaker 2: in which they have designed the holding companies, the way
Speaker 2: in which the five kids, who all have equal shares
Speaker 2: of one of the holding companies, have to agree for
Speaker 2: a period of many decades. None of them can withdraw
Speaker 2: from the business. They can't unilaterally pass any major strategic decisions.
Speaker 2: And so he's thought not just about succession, but about
Speaker 2: preserving the peace among his heirs, and that is where
Speaker 2: so many other family owned companies have suffered. So he's
Speaker 2: really thought about how to avoid the famous pitfalls. This
Speaker 2: is not the roy family for now.
Speaker 1: Though Arnot says he has no plans to retire, He'll
Speaker 1: keep visiting stores every Saturday as long as he can.
Speaker 2: This is an ambition fueled multi decade spree to develop
Speaker 2: an unassailable and generations long empire in luxury. I think
Speaker 2: like this guy. Even though people talk about retirement, they
Speaker 2: talk about succession. He is still an empire building mode.
Speaker 2: And I don't think he will stop until he has to.
Speaker 1: This is the Big Take from Bloomberg News. I'm David Gura.
Speaker 1: Today's episode is produced by Thomas Leu. It was edited
Speaker 1: by Aaron Edwards. It was fact checked by Arafat Gelosso
Speaker 1: Perry and Adriana Tapia. It was mixed by Blake Maples.
Speaker 1: Kim Giittleson and Naomi Shaven are our senior producer. Old
Speaker 1: Beemster Borr is our executive producer. Sage Bauman is Bloomberg's
Speaker 1: head of podcasts. Thanks so much for listening. Please follow
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