What: Erwan Rambourg, author of “The Bling Dynasty” (2014) and “Future Luxe” (2020), shared his view on the current state of the Luxury inudstry with a selected group of professionals, alumni of a French business school. This allowed to have an informal yet meaningful conversation on groups, customers and strategies.

Why it is important: Luxury brands are a significant part of many IADS members’ businesses and today, questions regarding the ability to keep on collaborating with these brands are raising. IADS attended the conference to learn more about this analyst’s expectations and views on the shifts taking place in the industry.

Erwan Rambourg is Managing Director and Global Head of Consumer and Retail Equity Research at HSBC, after having started his career in LVMH and Richemont brands. He has also been a guest lecturer in many institutions (HKUST, Columbia University), columnist (Business of Fashion, Jing Daily) and has written two books on luxury, The Bling Dynasty (2014), Future Luxe (2020).

The key learnings of this conference are:

• Even though luxury as an industry is doing well so far (as in every crisis), the picture is less homogeneous at the regional level, and the situation is different in China, Europe and the US, with different dynamics with different factors,
• Female customers are empowering themselves and represent, according to Rambourg, the growth reservoir for luxury brands in the coming 10 years, especially for jewellery, cosmetics, accessories, wines and spirits,
• The negotiating power will remain in the hands of the larger brands, which are poised to become even larger and powerful, while the other option for smaller brands is to be either super specialised and good at what they do (Moncler) or totally disruptive. Days are counted for mid-sized traditional houses. None will disappear, but they will end up being eaten up by groups,
• Stores remain central in the luxury experience, even more at a moment when so many new customers are making their first purchases now. As a consequence, there is no doubt that brick & mortar business will remain a key component of the luxury groups strategies as a whole, and they will use digital to increase adherence between brands and customers, to be visible in virtual territories, as well as to ease customers journeys, but at the same time, they keep on investing in boutiques to enhance the experience,
• CSR is long, painful, costly and luxury groups are not there yet, but are under pressure to adapt, and fast.

IADS - Erwan Rambourg HEC