Hermès, every mention

Hermès (Audio) · Acquired Feb 20, 2024 · 100 mentions

• ▶ 14:27 David Rosenthal So speaking of, both Hermes
• ▶ 14:45 Ben Gilbert Is Hermes the same client?
• ▶ 14:59 David Rosenthal In the case of Hermes, and for her luggage and for her trunks, and actually I think also for her packing.
• ▶ 15:18 David Rosenthal Eugenie and everything going on at this time makes Louis Vuitton and makes Thierry Hermes.
• ▶ 15:48 David Rosenthal Not the case with Hermes.
• ▶ 15:50 David Rosenthal And actually today, I think this is one of the biggest strengths of Hermes and they still, you know, the equestrian theme, the horse is so much of their brand.
• ▶ 16:13 Ben Gilbert Hermes is deeply rooted in French history, in Parisian history, and really a key part of how France as a nation has the identity that it has today.
• ▶ 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.
• ▶ 17:49 David Rosenthal Excel is the CEO of a two hundred billion dollar plus company.
• ▶ 18:03 Ben Gilbert What this company could become.
• ▶ 18:30 David Rosenthal So critical to understand about Hermes and what really in my mind differentiates it from LVMH.
• ▶ 18:49 David Rosenthal At Hermes, these are not different people.
• ▶ 20:31 David Rosenthal The building that is today known as Le Faubourg by everybody in the Hermès universe.
• ▶ 20:47 Ben Gilbert You can feel the presence of Hermès and all the other brands that are there.
• ▶ 20:52 David Rosenthal Yeah, the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré is where the French presidential residence is, it's where the British Embassy is, it's where French Vogue is today, probably because Hermes is there, and because all of the other luxury flagships are…
• ▶ 21:06 David Rosenthal So Charles Emile runs the business for 25 years, he adds saddles, he moves the company to the Faubourg, and then in nineteen-o-two, he retires.
• ▶ 21:18 David Rosenthal And his two sons, Adolf and Emil, who have apprenticed in the business just like him, just like every generation will do for many generations to come, they take over and they change the name of the company to Hermes Frères, Hermes…
• ▶ 21:36 Ben Gilbert And they're gonna do this forever together, and they're gonna be thick as thieves, and, you know, they are of one mind on how this company should go.
• ▶ 21:58 David Rosenthal There's this great story that in the late 18 nineties, so before his father Charles Emile retires, the young Emile sets off to conquer Russia for Hermes.
• ▶ 22:16 David Rosenthal Hermes makes.
• ▶ 24:51 David Rosenthal And none of these three men could have seen it at the time, but this accessory to the real business of saddles and horses and harnesses was going to become the perfect transition to move Hermes into the age of the automobile.
• ▶ 25:10 Ben Gilbert We mentioned Hermes, founded in 1837, is the oldest company we've covered on Acquired, but we might have to caveat that.
• ▶ 25:27 Ben Gilbert You only survive as long as Hermes or J.P.
• ▶ 27:01 David Rosenthal So while Hermes explicitly avoids e-commerce for their most coveted products, as we will talk about later, for the other 99% of you out there, that's probably not your strategy.
• ▶ 28:43 Ben Gilbert Now, David, how was Hermes perfectly positioned for the age of the automobile with this new accessory?
• ▶ 29:50 David Rosenthal And to the, you know, manufacturing efficiencies point, he actually does take some elements of the assembly lines and brings them back to Hermes.
• ▶ 33:06 David Rosenthal Regardless though, the big thing for Hermes that he brings back is,
• ▶ 33:12 Ben Gilbert Okay, so we're still in the third generation of the Hermes family.
• ▶ 34:32 David Rosenthal And I think this is still kind of legend around Hermès of like, what can we make with our hands that will interest our clients today?
• ▶ 34:58 David Rosenthal Who better than Hermes and finely handcrafted leather bags and accessories that you can outfit your car in the same way you could outfit your horse.
• ▶ 36:28 Ben Gilbert Hermes is not yet a recognized brand, so merely slapping Hermes on it won't do the trick.
• ▶ 37:42 Ben Gilbert And something interesting that is different than the Hermes you know today, the way that they're adding all of these things, they're finding craftspeople who are experts at particular crafts.
• ▶ 37:55 Ben Gilbert They're finding a watchmaker, and they're saying, can we work with you on designing something uniquely Hermes, but you're the craftsperson.
• ▶ 38:11 David Rosenthal They are selling products in their stores that are not made end-to-end by Hermes-employed craftsmen.
• ▶ 38:52 David Rosenthal So what does Hermes do?
• ▶ 40:12 Ben Gilbert The rich people are gonna go find an Hermes store somewhere.
• ▶ 40:34 David Rosenthal You had a nice time going into the Hermes store in X, right?
• ▶ 41:03 David Rosenthal So, I think we've laid the groundwork of a few critical components of Hermès so far.
• ▶ 41:12 David Rosenthal These things are handmade by artisans with their hands, and the family and the people who own the company are the chief artisans.
• ▶ 41:36 David Rosenthal We've talked now here about the true modernization of the company and the transition to the automobile era.
• ▶ 41:42 David Rosenthal What we haven't talked about yet, and what Hermes at this point certainly is not, is this element of, like, whimsy and art that is really, really critical, I think, to the company.
• ▶ 41:57 Ben Gilbert If you've ever been in an Hermes store, you can feel a warmth that doesn't exist in other luxury stores.
• ▶ 42:21 Ben Gilbert And then you arrive at Hermes, and it feels warm, and it feels soft, and it feels welcoming, and it feels whimsical.
• ▶ 42:54 David Rosenthal And it is a critical one in the kind of weaving of the Hermes business.
• ▶ 43:33 Ben Gilbert Owns the business in the same way that Hermes is the Hermes Dumas family.
• ▶ 44:22 Ben Gilbert And the way Hermes describes it today when you read their annual report is they talk about their trademark humor and imaginative flair.
• ▶ 45:26 David Rosenthal Iconic Hermes item in there.
• ▶ 45:34 Ben Gilbert I know Hermes sprinkles around French words in all their literature, and it just expects Americans to deal with it.
• ▶ 45:56 David Rosenthal And this is what Hermes calls their divisions.
• ▶ 46:39 Ben Gilbert And so, an important thing to know here is, when you're buying Hermes products, they're really not pushing the brand.
• ▶ 46:48 Ben Gilbert There is not an iconic, recognizable Hermes H, or horse and carriage logo, or bright color that you're supposed to identify.
• ▶ 46:59 Ben Gilbert This is really the origin of quiet luxury, where Hermes is handcrafting the highest quality product.
• ▶ 47:27 Ben Gilbert And Hermes hadn't even really developed the iconography yet that would become the
• ▶ 47:33 Ben Gilbert Hermes' version of, you know, slightly louder luxury.
• ▶ 47:47 Ben Gilbert Hermes is on the lighter side of branding their goods today, but it's still…
• ▶ 47:54 Ben Gilbert The customers want some way to let people know that they're wearing an Hermes item, even if it's lower key than other luxury brands.
• ▶ 48:01 Ben Gilbert So Hermes
• ▶ 48:30 David Rosenthal Robert introduces the other key pillar of Hermes products that is less talked about today relative to the bags and the leather goods, but for many, many decades was the bigger business.
• ▶ 48:47 David Rosenthal The Hermes classic silk scarves.
• ▶ 49:26 David Rosenthal CEO of Hermes, but he's making woodblock engravings, and then making silk scarves out of them.
• ▶ 49:32 David Rosenthal That's the first design that they put out there, and quickly they become a huge, huge phenomenon with Hermes clients.
• ▶ 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.
• ▶ 49:51 Ben Gilbert Was 55% of the company's sales.
• ▶ 50:10 Ben Gilbert So 1937 through probably the 19 nineties, where these silk scarves were the Hermes franchise.
• ▶ 50:19 Ben Gilbert And the reason this sort of took off is it almost became part of the French woman's uniform to have an Hermes scarf as a part of your outfit.
• ▶ 52:09 Ben Gilbert Like, if you watch documentaries about the craftsmen at Hermes, which there's a couple of good ones we'll link to in the show notes if you want to just sort of watch Hermes craftspeople at work, they do seem to be translating designs off…
• ▶ 53:01 Ben Gilbert If you've ever been to an Hermes store or you own one of these, you just can't believe that this is done by hand without any of the layers being out of alignment, because if any of them are out of alignment, you ruin the whole thing and…
• ▶ 54:06 Ben Gilbert Where you specialize in this one crazy little piece of the production process that no other company has your same production process, and the attention to detail is so staggering that once you enter the Hermes universe, then you're sort of…
• ▶ 54:36 Ben Gilbert Part of what makes Hermes Hermes at this point is their callbacks to their own history.
• ▶ 55:22 David Rosenthal This tells you about Hermes and Hermes clients.
• ▶ 55:32 David Rosenthal I mean, I don't know that there is a more recession insulated business than Hermes.
• ▶ 55:51 Ben Gilbert Hermes is the most insulated of all the luxury brands where they have the sort of least cost-sensitive clients.
• ▶ 55:58 David Rosenthal So after this, there's World War II, and famously, before the war, Hermes products came in cream-colored boxes.
• ▶ 56:43 David Rosenthal Robert embraces it, and the Hermes orange box is born.
• ▶ 56:51 David Rosenthal Hermes owns this color.
• ▶ 56:59 Ben Gilbert It's interesting you say Hermes owns this color, so you are correct that Hermes has selected a non-Pantone color, but what Hermes tries to do is say, well, we own
• ▶ 57:28 Ben Gilbert And so, what they've done is they've actually leaned into this, where there is a classic Hermes orange, but it presents differently on each of the leathers.
• ▶ 58:44 Ben Gilbert The Hermes oranges are almost like, to continue the Disney analogy, it's almost like the people that go to the park and look for the hidden Mickeys.
• ▶ 58:50 Ben Gilbert It's a way to even more deeply participate in the Hermes universe.
• ▶ 59:04 David Rosenthal Supposedly in Cannes, a number of gentlemen were refused entry to the casino and thus went to the neighboring Hermes shop, you know, next door and said, can you take some of your beautiful silk scarves and cut and tailor them into ties for…
• ▶ 59:46 David Rosenthal After World War II, Robert decides that Hermès needs a logo, so taking inspiration from the nineteenth-century painting Le Duc Atelier Groom à la Tente, which means hitched carriage waiting groom, the famous Hermès logo is born.
• ▶ 1:01:45 David Rosenthal There are probably some Hermes products in there, but it's like a museum exhibit, it's artwork.
• ▶ 1:01:54 Ben Gilbert There is no utility to these displays, and these displays, much like any advertising that you see of Hermes today, it's not about the product, it's about how you feel.
• ▶ 1:03:09 Ben Gilbert And so when you buy an Hermes product, you aren't just buying the product, you're buying a piece of art, a piece of their heritage, a feeling that connects you to the maker and the place it was created.
• ▶ 1:03:19 Ben Gilbert You're trying to buy a piece of Hermes' heritage and reputation and hoping to adopt it as a part of you, as a part of your identity.
• ▶ 1:03:38 David Rosenthal There's this genius aspect, too, to what Hermes is doing and what Robert's doing with the arts, like these window displays.
• ▶ 1:03:56 David Rosenthal You will never see any of these brands, Hermes included, become art galleries.
• ▶ 1:05:38 David Rosenthal The most amazing, unbelievable, fantastical dream of the 19 fifties happens to Hermes in real life.
• ▶ 1:09:08 David Rosenthal They're coming up on Hermes here.
• ▶ 1:11:01 David Rosenthal I mean, honestly, it's like Hermes over the past couple years.
• ▶ 1:11:41 David Rosenthal Certainly, this plays right into this whole dream thing that we've been talking about, and burnishes Hermes' already incredible brand and image.
• ▶ 1:12:09 David Rosenthal Yes, I'm pretty sure it becomes Hermes' biggest selling bag.
• ▶ 1:13:39 David Rosenthal As we head through the sixties and into the 19 seventies and the end of Robert's tenure and his generation as the head of Hermes, the company kind of starts to fall on hard times.
• ▶ 1:14:03 Ben Gilbert Hermes is not quite in those dire of straights, but
• ▶ 1:14:06 Ben Gilbert I mean, they have the ingredients of Hermes that we know today.
• ▶ 1:14:09 Ben Gilbert They've got the Kelly bag, they've got the orange box, they've adopted the logo.
• ▶ 1:14:12 David Rosenthal They've got the scarves.
• ▶ 1:14:13 Ben Gilbert They've got the scarves, they have these small workshops where they make everything, but it's not working yet.
• ▶ 1:14:56 David Rosenthal And the dream of Hermes that was once so elegant and so desired by so many people, but inaccessible,
• ▶ 1:15:38 David Rosenthal Is very, very, very different than what Hermes is selling.