Ben Gilbert: evaluation

Transcript context

…It's so fun. Now he's known as this almost reclusive, wealthiest man in the world. He doesn't do interviews very often. He used to do a lot of interviews. Right, and he would say stuff that was super clarifying and illustrative of how he did all this. We're not just speculating that he learned this bag of tricks about leveraged buyouts from America. He actually said in an interview, "When you live in a country and do business in it for some time, you try to be influenced by it, especially when you do business in the paradise of business, which is America." I always love that. It's just so like, okay, yup, I definitely learned this in America. The other thing that I think he learned from this first transaction is he really discovers the power of what he calls star brands, where if a brand is truly luxury, you are able to generate much higher margins from it, not a little bit, but the whole step change different of margins because you're serving a customer that has very little sensitivity to higher prices. Even if manufacturing costs go up a little, the price can go up a lot. He starts to realize there's a very limited number of brands in the world that are both timeless and growing, and then on top of that, have the capability to adapt to modern life without losing the timelessness. This is where he makes it his mission. Once he realizes that power of Dior, he's like, this is super different from other fashion businesses or any consumer business. This characteristic of luxury and of a truly international star brand that's so special, I think I need to find more of these. That's interesting. Maybe we'll talk more about this in analysis. I do wonder if Yves Saint Laurent hadn't done that first saving of Dior and certainly transitioned it from a tied-to-a-person entity to an enduring brand, this wouldn't have been the case. But also, even though he was only there for three years, that brief glimpse of modernizing fashion and luxury within Dior, if Dior were just the new look, would that have been the case with Dior?…

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