LVMH

“The perfect exit is to be acquired by a company that has some sort of a synergy and relationship to what you do. My fantasy, you know, we run the Louis Vuitton restaurant in New York City. Would be that LVMH come in and acquire star restaurants or part of us.”

“So the LVMH deal is a hundred million dollars per year, and that's the Louis Vuitton banners everywhere, Tag Heuer being the official timekeeping sponsor, the LV trunk, and of course they spray Moet all over each other on the podiums.”

“In a fast takeoff scenario, you would imagine that France actually getting serious about AI is getting their national champions of all types. France LVMH, even the brands, it's, wasn't Christian Dior actually owned by a big, like, infrastructure company back i…”

“So we closed that round of them investing fifty million. I don't remember the valuation, but it was a good valuation. And that was February of 2000, and then March of 2000 is when the bubble broke.”

“Louis Vuitton or Christian Dior, both of which were massively distressed by the way, and had to be turned around through a merger now known as LVMH”

“Yeah, one of the secrets of beauty is that you make your money in the repeat. You don't actually make as much of your money in the first time trial, and so the big three in beauty, LVMH, L'Oreal, and Estee Lauder, win on creating products that have enough love…”

“Trades would be a blow to Arno's empire, whose largest market is the U.S., equal in size to all of Europe combined.”

“The Arnaud's conglomerate, even pays rent to the Trump Organization, which is the landlord for LVMH's Louis Vuitton store in Midtown.”

“During Trump's first term, Arno's decision to expand handbag production in the US and publicly promote the move with Trump helped the lecture industry largely avoid an initial wave of tariffs that hit other European sectors.”

“I would imagine that if there's a tax on Louis Vuitton stuff, the price goes up, it becomes even more exclusive. They sell roughly the same profits. Aren't majorly disrupted”

“LVMH is counting on strong US demand to power its growth in the coming years. After sales in China, the second biggest market plunged around 20% last year.”

“LVMH operates 14 factories in the United States already and is planning to pump more money into Tiffany, the iconic American jeweler it acquired in 2021.”

“The drinks business faces more difficult straits in the conglomerates leather goods and fashion divisions. Drinks have much thinner profit margins, making it harder for them to absorb any additional levies.”

“LVMH is spending 10 times more on Tiffany stores than its previous owners and more than twice as much on marketing.”

“They almost bought Sephora before LVMH buys it.”

“If you look at the European economy, the DNA are 90% of the companies are family businesses. Some of the best companies like LVMH, Peugeot, Fiat, Ferrari, they're all family owned”

“If you look at LVMH, if you look at Kering, which owns Gucci, if you look at Burberry, their sales are declining for the first time in a multi-decade period. They're starting to fire 10% of their staff.”

“Service Titan is actually closer to LVMH than it is to Tesla. And that's fine. People should, you know, sort of invest in, you know, sort of brands that have, you know, sort of great distribution. Clearly returns can be made there, but let's, you know, sort of…”

“I have this instinctive belief that all derivative assets eventually increase the value of the original asset. Meaning in a way pickleball just, the more pickleball is out there, the most, the more the value of 10 is going up. The more, you know, the more ther…”

“Bernard targets Boussac because he wants Dior. That is the first in a chain of events that's going to eventually lead him to overtaking and taking over LVMH.”

“He has this rare combination of he's intolerant of slowness, and he has an unbelievably long-term view that I think is very, has been beneficial.”

“People had to prove themselves before they won Arnault's confidence. They had to be good, and they had to know how to stand up to him when they were sure of their case.”

“I remember people telling me, it doesn't make sense to put together so many brands, and it was a success. It was a recognized success, and for the last 10 years now, every competitor is trying to imitate. I think they are not successful, but they'll try.”

“He starts buying into LVMH, I think, in 1987, and has complete control by 1989, I think. Let's go back to the beginning of the book to make sure I'm right. Yeah. Friday, January, 13th, January 1989.”

“LVMH was now quoted at only 1200 francs. It was down 50%.”

“Immediately, he transformed Dior Couture into a holding company, allocated its stake in LVMH, and offered the capital to the holding company, and offered the capital of the holding company to private investors. Why did he do that? Because this brought Bernard …”

“At the time, it looked expensive. What looked expensive was actually unbelievably cheap, and no one saw it but Arnall.”

“Arnold said he wanted to make LVMH the biggest luxury goods group in the world.”

“He targets timeless brands that have proven themselves in different economic cycles and through changes in consumer preferences, even though LVMH may be 3040 years old, whatever it is, some of their brands are hundreds of years old.”

“You can kind of go down the list of every major American whiskey brand, and I can tell you who owns them. So like all the- ... The Diageos, the Sazeracs, LVMH, absolutely. They, you have essentially five that own everything.”

“As much as they sort of get lumped together with brands owned by LVMH, they are in many ways the anti-LVMH.”

“LVMH, as we talked about on that episode, has world-class, best-in-the-world business executives who partner with world-class, best-in-the-world creatives. At Hermes, these are not different people.”

“Hermes is the most insulated of all the luxury brands where they have the sort of least cost-sensitive clients.”

“So in 2001, right after he lost Gucci, Bernard quietly buys an initial stake in Hermes of 4.9%. Now I believe that was just under the threshold that they would have to disclose it under French securities regulations. And then, here's what they do that the Herm…”

“He takes the Hermes shares and does a share swap. So swaps that value directly With the 25% of Dior that he doesn't own, to bring that first into Group Arnault, his family office, and then he trades that into LVMH. So LVMH now finally, as a result of this, is …”

“From, let's call it the real beginning of when LVMH publicly announces Their stake in Hermes. So, twenty-ten. Hermes' market cap is up 16 X.”

“There's the opposite of scale economies to an individual luxury brand, but at the group level There is power, and specifically scale economies power, that does not exist at the brand level.”

“Well, LVMH's total turnover in twenty-twenty-two was 24%, versus Hermes's six percent.”

“Novo Nordisk has become Europe's largest company, surpassing even LVMH last year”

“Is that those stories and studying the LVMHs, the Costcos, the Nikes of the world, if anything, that's like even more important than studying the great technology companies for building a great technology company.”

“I think LVMH, that episode alone, I think, completely changed, acquired.”

“I highly suspect he might be the best entrepreneur on the planet that's still operating and running his company right now. And if you think about the fact that he knows everything down from the tiniest details, which there's crazy stories about this, to the bi…”

“They were very disingenuous. And it deeply troubles me to this day. The way that my father was treated the promises that were made simply to get a deal done and then not kept I think is a reflection on principle, and I'll leave it at that.”

“Well, if you're as good as they are, what they've done, you have a lifetime to do it in, or now a lifetime, really three or four lifetimes to do it in. You can create another, but it's not easy.”

“LVMH's gross margins, 68%. It turns out you can mark up leather way more than you can mark up cars.”

“They offered me a bigger job because they were looking for a head of U.S. Head of U.S.? For Loewe.”

“And LVMH, we got. 40,000 new subscribers.”

“It's our number one episode by a huge margin. 40,000 more people have listened to that episode than the next highest, which was amazon.com.”

“We had an investment from Arnold Kashyama and we had the investment in 99 from LVMH. Definitely put us on much more stable ground to grow the business and to launch Michael Kors accessories in the early, I think it was, 2000, actually.”

“And she did by 2018. So a year after it launched, It was doing five hundred fifty million dollars in revenue. Five hundred fifty million in revenue in 2018. And at that time, it was the valuation of Fenty was reported at 2.8 billion”

“Pretty much every major fashion label you could think of, or like, say two-thirds of them are owned by either LVMH, Kering, or Richemont.”

“The Diageos, the Sazeracs, LVMH. Absolutely. They, you have essentially five that own Everything.”

“I mean, look, Cinnabon's not LVMH, but relative to donuts and baked goods and any of those, it is absolutely. Luxurious. It's enormous. It's expensive. It's complicated to make. It's made from scratch.”

“Oh, I, for the simple reason that there's no intellectual property. You can't patent color.”

“Well, the first call was with Benefit Cosmetics, who's owned by LVMH, and I remember that call so vividly. It was like pacing around, and it was so exhilarating and so exciting, and at the end of about what ended up being a 30 minute call, he was like, okay, I…”

“So LVMH, after 2001 they started to divest of most of their beauty businesses, and we were one of the first ones to get snapped up by another business. So Starwood Hotels and Resorts bought us because they wanted to have bliss bars, and they wanted to put thos…”

“Oh, I, for the simple reason that there's no intellectual property. You can't patent color.”

“It was a hot time for beauty companies. So, retrospectively there were a lot of cool new companies starting, and a lot of interest in those companies from the big beauty conglomerates. They were starting to buy up smaller players rather than, you know, trying …”

“We had more than one large, large company come and try and get us, and I think the most exciting thing for me at that time was the idea of not having all of the financial responsibility for that business on, on my head.”

“So LVMH, after 2001 they started to divest of most of their beauty businesses. And we were one of the first ones to get snapped up by another business. So Starwood Hotels and Resorts bought us because they wanted to have bliss bars, and they wanted to put thos…”