David Rosenthal: belief

Transcript context

…Yeah, that's such a good point. It's funny. I have a playbook theme called selling a sense of place to those outside it. The numbers behind this are crazy. Today, 76% of their production is in France and 85% is sold outside of France. First of all 76% of production in France is incredible the fact that they do this with all these different workshops that are scattered around the country. The incredible French history that is encapsulated by the brand, the French nobility, and the French sense of place, it really is just an intangible connection to the culture that is lusted after everywhere in the world. Why on earth would you throw that away when that really is the essence of your core asset? Now, easy for us to armchair quarterback here. Obviously, it didn't work. They end up selling it off actually pretty recently to the Agnelli family from Italy, which is the family behind Fiat. Certainly that one, the Leica thing, it's the combination of all these and the beach bag incident. Bernard sees all this. Here's what he says in the press at the time. "I would never diminish the quality of Hermes. Hermes can be an even rarer and greater quality business if they ever wanted to work with us." I think he's genuine about that. The family obviously circles the wagons and mounts their rebel alliance here, mounting their defense against the empire. Which I think is quite impressive.…

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