Axel Dumas, every mention

Hermès (Audio) · Acquired Feb 20, 2024 · 30 mentions

• ▶ 17:10 David Rosenthal So Axel Dumas and Pierre-Alexis Dumas, who are the two descendants of Hermes, the sixth generation, that are running the company today.
• ▶ 17:18 David Rosenthal Axel is the CEO and Pierre-Alexis is the artistic director.
• ▶ 17:49 David Rosenthal Excel is the CEO of a two hundred billion dollar plus company.
• ▶ 18:53 David Rosenthal Now, obviously, there is a different CEO and artistic director that are both members of the same family and who are cousins.
• ▶ 21:43 David Rosenthal They've been apprenticed together, gonna be like Axel and Pierre-Alexis today.
• ▶ 49:40 Ben Gilbert Yeah, and so fast forward all the way to 1988, when Excel Dumas has his very first internship with the company.
• ▶ 1:21:28 David Rosenthal You know, Axel talks all the time about dinner table conversations between his uncle, Jean-Louis, who we're about to talk about now, who is the fifth generation CEO of Hermes, and his mother, who was head of production at the dinner table…
• ▶ 1:27:05 Ben Gilbert And Excel even says this in an interview.
• ▶ 2:13:58 David Rosenthal So, he starts buying Hermes shares, and Axel, I think, jokes about this in an interview.
• ▶ 2:14:12 Ben Gilbert And by the way, when David and I are referencing these Axel interviews, it's one interview.
• ▶ 2:16:19 David Rosenthal There's not a clear CEO heir, and in fact, Jean-Louis Choice, Axel, who ultimately does become CEO, he's not in the business yet.
• ▶ 2:16:37 David Rosenthal So the story is that Accel really wanted to go work in China, and so he goes into investment banking after undergrad.
• ▶ 2:16:56 David Rosenthal Accel has
• ▶ 2:17:40 David Rosenthal He starts in the finance department in 2003, and then in 2006, when Jean-Louis retires, Accel takes over running the jewelry métier as CEO of jewelry.
• ▶ 2:35:38 David Rosenthal So she leaves and full-time becomes head of the defense, I assume, alongside XL, who obviously comes from the banking world, too.
• ▶ 2:36:22 David Rosenthal My understanding from comments that family members in Excel make about them, and spoiler alert, recently they've renewed the term of this for another 10 years, so it's into the mid-twenty-forties.
• ▶ 2:43:20 David Rosenthal And that is the story of the sixth generation of Pierre-Alexis and Excel, who I think have certainly fixed those problems, but have really led Hermès the business and the company into a whole new era.
• ▶ 2:43:38 Ben Gilbert There is a quote that I want to start with for the Excel Dumas era, which is possibly the best articulation that I've ever heard of business strategy anywhere.
• ▶ 2:46:48 David Rosenthal And actually, still to this day, Axel talks about this a lot, any one of their production sites does not have more than 250 to 300 craftspeople.
• ▶ 2:47:05 Ben Gilbert And Excel even says, if you have more than 300, it is not a workshop, it's a factory.
• ▶ 2:47:31 Ben Gilbert And when XL started at the company all the way back in the eighties, there were 250 craftsmen, period.
• ▶ 2:57:32 David Rosenthal Mark Newsom was consulting for Apple specifically on the watch, and Johnny asked Mark to introduce him to Pierre-Alexia and XL and to Hermes.
• ▶ 2:59:13 David Rosenthal Axel and Pierre-Alexei talk about this all the time when they're asked about, oh, XYZ flashy celebrity, you know, is carrying a Birkin bag, blah, blah, blah.
• ▶ 2:59:31 David Rosenthal So Axel has a great quote on this.
• ▶ 2:59:52 David Rosenthal Okay, this thing on my wrist is exactly what Axel is saying there.
• ▶ 3:05:04 David Rosenthal By 2018, that's six billion euros.
• ▶ 3:05:26 David Rosenthal As we've said, what Axel and Pierre-Alexei and this generation of the family has done, like all the generations before them, has been nothing short of amazing.
• ▶ 3:06:14 Ben Gilbert Well, I thought one fascinating thing was Excel saying that with the, ah, 4.3 billion in net income that they do, they always split it roughly the same way.
• ▶ 3:18:49 David Rosenthal Revenue's grown, 15% compounded annually since Excel took over in 2013.
• ▶ 3:54:28 David Rosenthal This comes through when you watch the interviews with Excel and Pierre-Alexis, and when you read the articles and hear people talk like Beatrice about Jean-Louis, they are really having fun doing what they're doing.