Ben Gilbert: belief

Transcript context

…Totally. It subsets as a hallmark of Bernard. Although, I think if you were to ask him today and he were to be honest, he lost here. Even if he made €760 million, he lost on this one. De Sole and Ford eventually do clash with Pino. The number one thing that they wanted from him to stay out of the business doesn't happen, maybe predictably. In 2004, they leave and they start Tom Ford International. That itself becomes a huge success. It just got acquired last fall by Estee Lauder for $2.8 billion. That doesn't sound like a lot compared to the other numbers we’re throwing around. But from a startup brand to acquisition in 15-ish years, that's pretty awesome. This Gucci thing, we've talked a lot about the rise of Bernard Arnault and LVMH, and this is pretty much the only time so far that they weren't successful. Even then, they made $700 million and this whole time had been generating more and more and more revenue. I think in 2000, they did $12 billion in revenue. That would continue to grow to close to $20 billion by 2010 and up to $40 billion in 2017. More recently, right before Covid hit, they were right around $55 billion and then I mentioned, of course, closer to $80 billion today. On the one hand, it's a miss. On the other hand, they were plenty productive during the whiff. It's like the NFL missing social media. It was a miss, but they're just fine.…

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