Ben Gilbert: observation

Transcript context

…There's this really important point here that you're bringing up with the people. Bernard will say and he'll say to this day, that the greatest advantage that LVMH has is its people and its talent. I heard him say this a bunch of times in research and I was like, okay, that's Bernard being a public figure now, everybody says that, and blah-blah-blah. But he's actually right, it's really important, especially here in luxury. What they realized by building this group is that they can get economies of scale on attracting the top, both creative talent and business management talent within the luxury industry. The economies of scale are that, one, It's a money thing. Because they're so much bigger as a group, they can pay more than anybody else. But two, it's a career thing for these people that go work there. If you come and you work within the LVMH family, they're always talking about it as a family. Even the kids talk about it as a family. They say like, oh, we don't mean family like us, we mean this whole corporation is a family. They're constantly rotating people around, both on the business and creative side, learning from, working in, and getting opportunities to work across all these brands and all these different verticals. That's a much more compelling pitch for somebody than to go work in this family-controlled single brand business. Most companies, the only way to advance is your boss retiring. We're all very fortunate to have worked in, especially in the tech industry, the finance industry, or in businesses, where there are lateral moves to be made all over the place. We're switching divisions. That's a fairly modern concept. That's what Bernard applied here, where you can move up by changing houses without your boss retiring. Even look at the kids, the Arnault children now, they've all done this. They've all gone around through so many different brands and roles within the group, and they're learning the business. They're not the only ones there. Outside executives are doing the same thing, too.…

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