
Letter #100: Bernard Arnault (2016)

Seth Godin • Speculation is the new luxury good
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
... See moreSuzy Wetlaufer • 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
... See moreSuzy Wetlaufer • The Perfect Paradox of Star Brands: An Interview with Bernard Arnault of LVMH
The Grand Complication reveals another fundamental characteristic of luxury goods: as price rises into the stratosphere, the number of units available also seems to disappear into ever-thinner air.