The Perfect Paradox of Star Brands: An Interview with Bernard Arnault of LVMH

The fact is, star brands take time to grow. Take some of the small makeup companies we have acquired recently, like Bliss and Urban Decay. When we bought them, they were little start-ups run by their founders—very simple businesses, but with a lot of originality in the products. So now we know we must nurture them until they have some history. But

The biggest mistake a consumer company can make, Arnault says, is to delegate advertising to the marketing department.

Our philosophy is quite simple, really. If you look over a creative person’s shoulder, he will stop doing great work. Wouldn’t you, if some manager were watching your every move, clutching a calculator in his hand? So that is why LVMH is, as a company, so decentralized. Each brand very much runs itself, headed by its own artistic director. Central

with the right management, can any brand become a star?

No, I ’m afraid not. That is like asking, “Can any human being become a genius?” You cannot become Vladimir Horowitz, even if you can play piano and you practice ten hours a day. You need something more to be a star brand—you must have a gift. Many brands have the potential to be stars, but the

A lot of companies talk about quality, but if you want your brand to be timeless, you have to be a fanatic about it. Before we launch a Louis Vuitton suitcase, for example, we put it in a torture machine, where it is opened and closed five times per minute for three weeks. And that is not all—it is thrown, and shaken, and crushed. You would laugh i

I don’t want to sound like a pessimist. Some brands out there will make it to stardom. But their managers cannot be in a hurry. It takes time. But once you get the elements of a star brand aligned, they last for a long time. They stay and stay, and they deserve to.