The Taste of Luxury: Bernard Arnault and the Moet-Hennessy Louis Vuitton Story

by Nadege Forestier, Nazanine Ravai

A biography of Bernard Arnault, from his obscure beginnings to head of Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessy, France's leading luxury empire, with a stable of champagne, brandy and haute couture.

Genres: Business, Biography, Biography Memoir, Entrepreneurship, Art

224 pages, Hardcover

First published August 1, 1993

Reviews

[Ramy Gerges · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked up this book without inspecting it too much, and had falsely assumed it would describe the the growth of LVMH from when Arnault first purchased Dior, until some time in the 21st century.
This book covered a much more detailed account of the events that unfolded between Bernard Arnault, Henry Racamier and Alain Chevalier, over the period of a single decade! While it was very well written, it was not what I was looking for (due to no fault than my own), and I finished it out of principle. It was still enjoyable to learn about the company's beginnings, Bernard Arnault's personality, strengths and weaknesses.

[Kane · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am trying to buy a copy! Friend me if you have a copy to sell :)

[Sahil · Rating 3 out of 5]

Worth $200 billion, Bernard Arnault is the richest man in the world today. Knowing virtually nothing of his ascent, I was inspired to pick this one up. Overall, not a bad book - definitely a slow burn that never reaches a crescendo, but maybe that's because we all know how this story really ends.

LVMH is a consumer goods empire masquerading as a luxury products company. Other than Moët-Hennessy & Louis Vuitton, the conglomerate claims leading brands like Tiffany, Sephora, Givenchy, Dior, Fendi (& Rihanna's Fenty which I always mix up), Tag Heuer, Dom Perignon, and Veuve Clicquot as part of its 75+ deep roster. Hardly any of these companies were actually founded by Arnault. Instead, through ruthless determination and masterful financial engineering— not to mention hostile takeover after hostile takeover— he used connections, influence, and above all, leverage to assemble this portfolio. Lots of people call Arnault a shark, wolf, gambler and worse. It's possible he is all of those things. But he is also incredibly focused. Amidst carvouts and investments and lawsuits and failures, his process of identification, action, decision to result proved to be successfully repeatable.

Parallels to the TV show Succession abound— one of the characters certainly isn't the first person to go back on their word at a board meeting— but it all seemed very Roman Roy-style. Arnault has set up a real-life succession story of his own - his domain is divided equally between his 5 children.

Between word after French word I only hoped to pronounce correctly and working my way through 50 pages of detailed equity warrant bond proceedings, I'm not sure that I learned much about Arnault other than the fact that he is extremely private and infinitely calculating. This book does go into some very detailed financial ploddery for those into the whole '5% of A, 25% of B' thing.

[Barack Liu · Rating 5 out of 5]

523-Bernard Arnault and the Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton Story- Nadege Forestier-Biography-1993

Barack
2024/06/16

Bernard Arnault and the Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton Story, first published in 1993. It is a biography of Bernard Arnault, tracing his rise from humble beginnings to the helm of Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessy, France's largest luxury goods empire, with champagne, cognac, and haute couture brands.

Bernard Arnault was born in Roubaix, France in 1949. He studied at École Polytechnique. He is a French businessman, investor, and art collector. He is the founder, chairman, and CEO of LVMH, the world's largest luxury goods company. According to Forbes, as of June 8, 2024, Arnault is the second richest person in the world with an estimated net worth of $208 billion.

He began his career at his father's company, Ferret-Savinel, and later shifted his focus to real estate, which laid the foundation for his future career in the luxury goods industry. Arnault's foray into the luxury goods market began in 1984 with his strategic acquisition of the financially troubled textile and retail group Boussac Saint-Frères, which included the famous fashion brand Christian Dior. His aggressive business strategy earned him the nickname "The Terminator" as he revived Dior and sold other assets for a profit. In 1987, he merged Louis Vuitton with Moët Hennessy, playing a key role in the creation of the luxury global company LVMH (Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy ). Through a series of strategic acquisitions and investments, Arnault built LVMH into a major company in the luxury goods industry and achieved significant growth and expansion in various fields such as fashion, jewelry, watches, and wine.

Nadege Forestier is a journalist and international correspondent for Le Figaro, where she has worked for nearly 40 years and played a key role in founding Le Figaro's economic edition, Les Vie Economies (also known as Le Sumatra). Since 2005, Ms. Forestier has worked as an independent journalist for publications such as Paris Match, Management, Les Echos, and Femmes.

Table of Contents
1. Child of the North
2. A Burning Ambition
3. The Taste for Luxury: Dior and Lacroix
4. A Strategy of Attack
5. An Initial Dream: Parfums Dior and Moet-Hennessy
6. The Ambitions of a Model Pensioner
21. Victory
22. The Great Families
23. The New Arnault

Recently, I have suddenly become interested in biographies, especially those of entrepreneurs who have achieved great success in business and are widely recognized by the public. The author's description starts with Arnault's novels. Basically, when we examine a person's life, we always follow this order. So, the key question is actually how to make such a description. The author writes as if he witnessed Arnault's growth trajectory as a child, describing in detail what he did, and his likes and dislikes. From an engineering perspective, my first question is, what is the basis for these imaginations about his childhood details? Are these descriptions the author's self-understanding, or are they from the narration of Arnault himself or his relatives? When a person succeeds, looking back at his early words and deeds, we can always find signs that prove that he is different. People always seem to tend to explain the past through success.

You will find that the friends a person makes early in life, or to be more precise, before the age of 30, often have a profound impact on his future career. I used to have a negative view of nepotism, but later I found that the trust a person has in the people he chooses sometimes even exceeds the other person's ability. And it takes time to build this trust. People who know themselves better not only know their strengths, but also their weaknesses, and know how loyal they are to themselves, so that they can better dispatch these people. In addition, sometimes it takes time and opportunity to determine whether a person can grow, and the growth of anyone. Sometimes, an opportunity does not necessarily mean that only one person can do it and others cannot, but two people can complete the task, so whoever gets this opportunity has the possibility of great growth. When the candidates have similar abilities and it is difficult to choose, those who have a deeper personal relationship with us will stand out. Therefore, I often hear people talk about connection, and Americans also pay attention to personal relationships.

When we read biographies, no matter how great the person is, there must be some important people who played a decisive role in his success. These people may not be comparable to our protagonists individually, but without them, the protagonists may not be able to achieve these achievements or may encounter major setbacks and challenges on the way to these achievements. As the saying goes, one hero needs three helpers. When we read novels, comics, and movies, we will also find that the word "protagonist" is inappropriate. It should be more accurate to say "protagonist group". The protagonist is the core that brings the team together, but the protagonist alone cannot achieve anything. It takes time to gather such a group of right-hand men, and trust is built on the basis of common experience. If there is not enough common experience, trust is difficult to maintain. The younger we are, the easier it is to establish this trust, and as we get older, this difficulty will gradually increase. Therefore, we should consciously interact with people in our early life. Of course, this does not mean that we should be very utilitarian, but we should have such awareness. If both parties get along well, we should exchange our sincerity for the other party's sincerity. I used to have a very wrong view that as long as I am excellent, it is enough. This is actually very short-sighted, and it is a behavior that is unwilling to take the initiative to spend time to establish emotional connections with others. Even when others take the initiative to extend an olive branch to me, I reject the other party's kindness in order to save time. This is a typical wrong idea. After all, how can one succeed by relying on only one person?

When I was chatting with a friend recently, he mentioned an experience his mother had. He is from Shenzhen. In the 1990s, his mother had the opportunity to buy a piece of wasteland for tens of thousands of RMB, but she did not make this choice because she could not see the value of this matter. I found this story very interesting, so I asked him what he thought was the main reason why his mother did not seize this opportunity. He thought about it and said that he thought it was a lack of ambition. In his opinion, the reason why his mother gave up this opportunity was because she lacked vision. I then asked if vision was related to a natural keen sense of smell. Apart from these, can vision be cultivated after birth? He said that it was a question of ambition. With ambition, vision will naturally follow, because ambition is the driving force that drives people to discover and create opportunities. I asked, then which is more important, ability or ambition? He said both are important. If you have the ability and ambition, you are a loser if you fail in the end, but you are still worthy of respect; if you have the ability and ambition, you succeed in the end and you are a winner. But if you have ambition but no ability, you are a waste; if you have ability but no ambition, you will not be able to seize opportunities. Through reading biographies, I increasingly find that these people have taken huge risks to make some choices at certain moments in their lives. Of course, if these choices are successful, they will move up to a higher level; if they fail, they risk falling into the abyss. It is not only the successful who make such choices, but also the losers. It is just that due to the survivor bias, we cannot see those losers. Therefore, we must think clearly about the risks and rewards of each choice.

of Boussac can be said to be a milestone victory for Arnault in his early years. The power confrontation and balance between companies, countries, and nations are not static. They may change over time, sometimes even dramatically. The longer a person lives and the more things he sees happen in reality, the more he realizes the possibilities in life. The more a person reads and the more he knows about history, the more he finds that life is sometimes more unexpected than novels. Arnault always appears as a typical gentleman under the public spotlight. However, I never believed that those who can climb all the way to a high position and sit in a high position for decades will be as kind and friendly as they seem on the surface. The truly terrible people are not necessarily those who look ferocious, but those who can make decisions that others cannot make.

reading Arnault's biography was that I wanted to see how the world's richest people grew up. I majored in computer science, and my past and future work experience will probably focus on this direction. Therefore, I was not surprised that people in the technology field ranked at the top of the Forbes list. However, I knew very little about the luxury goods field. Arnault initially took over the family's real estate business, successfully entered the textile industry through acquisitions, and later further involved in the luxury goods industry, and finally built his luxury goods empire LVMH step by step. This process is not as simple as imagined, and all roads lead to Rome. This morning, when I was video chatting with a classmate, he mentioned that he should pay attention to the path he wants to take and find the path that suits him. He works as an investment manager in an investment institution and has contact with many entrepreneurs. He found that the core figures of these founding teams have their own growth trajectories. Due to limited resources, people often choose the path that has been proven to be successful, but at the same time, because there are more people walking on this path, the competition on this path is particularly fierce. We often suppress our own personality and devote ourselves to a universal competition. Is this really the best choice?

There is a view in traditional Chinese thought that a person must rely on a noble person in the process of development and growth. This noble person does not have to be powerful, it can also be our family, friends, or significant other. The core is that a person's success must be good at finding external forces, borrowing external forces, and giving back external forces so that positive feedback can be formed. In the process of his success, Arnault not only successfully borrowed forces that were more powerful than him but also dug down to find talents that could be used by him. People's eyes cannot only look up at those who have more resources than themselves, but also look at people at the same level as themselves, and learn to look down at those who are temporarily different from themselves. Looking back, some of my previous practices overemphasized personal paper strength, such as whether I could get high scores on exams and whether I could complete the work assigned by the manager independently. This is certainly very important, but after overemphasizing these things, there is a risk of ignoring other aspects. The best way is of course to find such people as role models in real life. But if there is no opportunity to contact them in real life, then look for them from history through reading, although it is not direct, it is also very important.

[Kalani Scarrott · Rating 3 out of 5]

very dry

[ND · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you enjoyed “Barbarians at the Gate”, i believe you will enjoy this book as well.

[Joel Gray · Rating 4 out of 5]

SELECT THE RIGHT TARGET, ATTACK THE ENEMY AT THE RIGHT TIME AND IN HIS WEAKEST SPOT, AND LEAVE NOTHING TO CHANGE IN THE ENSUING BATTLE.

He does not have friends, only loyal followers.

If Arnault’s ego grew at the same rate as his meteoric rise, his anxieties also followed the same path.

Instead of having the majority, that is 51% of the capital in company A, it is better to have 51% in a purely financial company B, which itself holds 51% of the company. One therefore has control of capital A but with half the capital outlay. This technique is called cascades, or Russian dolls and is old as the world itself.

The stockmarket crash of 10/87 attracted him to LVMH

Arnault owned 40% of LVMH (44% once warrants were converted) and relied on support of Moet-Hennessey and Guinness family shareholder to support him in feud with Vuitton Chairman Henry Racamier, who owned 20%.

Arnault always believed that to solve a problem it was enough to concentrate one’s resources, to work harder than the others and to find the weakness pointing to the solution.

He was moderate – he never smoked (unless stressed), never drank too much and avoided excess. But when he was agitated he let himself go, within reason.

There was no such thing as LVMH culture, instead, there was a host of individual cultures.

He was never wholly to trust anyone, apart from his father. He kept his sorrows to himself, He was impassive, whatever the circumstances.

What will people think of me? Was Arnault’s constant preoccupation. He was hurt by criticism in the press, he needed recognition, affection.

In France at the time operators could take a controlling stake by stealth, which was not condemned by the law. They didn’t have to make a takeover. After Arnault built his stake the laws changed in France, which required a takeover bid for stakes of more than 33%. This would have acted as a break on Arnault but now he had his stake it made him immovable – as anyone who wanted to make a raid had to bid for the company.

He relies on no one but himself and does not want to be anyones debt. Above all, he has to be in control of events.

[Mingyin · Rating 4 out of 5]

You can feel that the book is not written in English, from time to time there are some difficult sentences or words that are not so frequently used in other business books. But the book helps me understand how an outsider like Bernard can take over LVMH and make himself he richest man in the world. The most fatal decision for the LV family is that they decided to take the family business to public. After that, given the loose regulation for stock market in the 80s, it is only a matter of time for the family to lose their control over the legacy created by their ancestor and leapforwarded by Henry Racamier. In that sense, Henry had made biggest contribution and long-term harm to the LV business.

[Cristobal · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting account of Bernard Arnault’s rise and conquering of LVMH. Unfortunately it stops in 1991, a long time before the company’s exponential global ascendancy. Written in the vein of “Barbarians at the Gate,” it goes into the detail of the financial maneouvres that resulted in the creation of the group.

[Jason Orthman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting read. Incredibly rapid rise for Bernard driven by a determination to do well. Lot of corporate manoeuvring.

[Mariane Edoloverio]

I'm looking to buy a copy! Reach out to me if you have any copy available.