Latest / The Future of Luxury Podcast with Dr Daniel Langer / #1 - Luc Rochereau: General Director of Marco Valente on How Emotional Connections Shape the Essence of Luxury

Transcript

#1 - Luc Rochereau: General Director of Marco Valente on How Emotional Connections Shape the Essence of Luxury · The Future of Luxury Podcast with Dr Daniel Langer

• 0:07
  So it's a huge honor to have,
• 0:10
  for our first Future of Luxury podcast,
• 0:13
  Luc Rocherio with me today.
• 0:16
  And, you know, before we start our discussion,
• 0:19
  I have to say that,
• 0:21
  when I thought who do I want to invite for our premiere,
• 0:25
  The first person, Luke, that came to mind, was you.
• 0:29
  And, you know, we both share an immense,
• 0:32
  I would say, passion and pleasure around the topic of luxury.
• 0:36
  I remember our very first,
• 0:38
  I think it was even a Zoom call,
• 0:40
  the very first time we had a one on one, call, which was,
• 0:43
  I think, meant to be,
• 0:46
  kind of thirty minute get to know each other.
• 0:48
  I think ended up being almost like a three hour conversation.
• 0:52
  And then I also remembered because, you know,
• 0:54
  these kind of things typically don't really happen,
• 0:56
  but when they happen, then to me,
• 0:58
  it's always an indicator that, you know,
• 1:01
  we were supposed to to meet.
• 1:03
  So Luke and I were, we met after,
• 1:07
  a master class I did,
• 1:09
  on on luxury for for the Richemont group.
• 1:12
  And, afterwards, Luc, messaged me and said,
• 1:16
  let's have a quick conversation.
• 1:17
  And so I was preparing, as I said,
• 1:19
  for this thirty minute call, and I think we talked probably,
• 1:22
  like, three hours.
• 1:24
  And after the three hours, I think you said, oh,
• 1:27
  we should meet we should meet one day.
• 1:29
  Let me know when you are in Switzerland next time.
• 1:33
  And I think this was on a Friday,
• 1:35
  and I was about to actually head to the airport to fly to Switzerland.
• 1:40
  And then I think two or three days later, we met,
• 1:43
  in in Zurich, continued our conversation.
• 1:47
  You gave me, a bit of an insight into,
• 1:51
  the IWC flagship store on Bahnhofstrasse,
• 1:55
  and then we had a wonderful dinner.
• 1:57
  And this was basically the start of not just,
• 2:00
  a professional relationship but really a friendship.
• 2:04
  And so, again, very, very,
• 2:06
  big welcome to you and I'm super happy to have you,
• 2:10
  in my podcast today.
• 2:12
  Thank you, Daniel. Yes, yes, indeed.
• 2:14
  Which was,
• 2:16
  it was a good connection on the first time, and,
• 2:20
  it lasts for for several minutes.
• 2:21
  And then the the coincidence,
• 2:24
  was that the next day or the next second day when in
• 2:27
  Switzerland and in Zurich, So, where I was,
• 2:31
  I'm based at that time and,
• 2:34
  so we had a very good meeting and,
• 2:36
  we can have a big exchange on the luxury
• 2:39
  industry and, what was specific about Zurich.
• 2:44
  Yeah.
• 2:44
  And, you know, for me, and, you know,
• 2:46
  in a moment maybe go a little bit deeper on,
• 2:49
  describing yourself.
• 2:50
  But what to me,
• 2:52
  has always been something that fascinated me on, you know,
• 2:55
  your your career and also your your life is,
• 2:59
  that you're a true citizen of the world.
• 3:01
  You know, you, lived, I think, in so many different places,
• 3:05
  including Paris, London.
• 3:07
  You lived in Moscow and Dubai, and,
• 3:10
  you know, traveled the world.
• 3:13
  And I think your entire career was was, you know,
• 3:17
  in different categories on luxury.
• 3:19
  Maybe tell us a little bit about your your career and,
• 3:23
  how you got where you get to went today.
• 3:28
  It was a pleasure.
• 3:29
  Actually, this, this enter in the luxury world is thanks to my childhood.
• 3:34
  I had a very international childhood.
• 3:36
  I was born in Africa.
• 3:37
  I grew up in the West Indies in the Caribbeans and in the South
• 3:40
  Pacific.
• 3:40
  As well as my cricket, my golf,
• 3:41
  and to chev a ship because you never in life in life what's what's going on.
• 3:43
  But, it gave me the test of, international business and,
• 3:46
  and, to meet everybody, to talk to everybody, to
• 3:55
  eat every kind of gastronomy, of course, and and and drinks.
• 3:59
  And, luxury was a an a natural
• 4:02
  choice because I have a strong appetite also for,
• 4:06
  artistic, artistic,
• 4:10
  design and and and culture.
• 4:13
  And, I did, in nineteen ninety one, the first dedicated,
• 4:18
  luxury MBA sponsored by Cartier in Paris.
• 4:20
  I was fortunate to be, to be enrolled in that MBA.
• 4:24
  And, at that time, it was, the MBA was launched by Cartier.
• 4:28
  So it was launched by mister Alain Dominique Perrin,
• 4:31
  who was the CEO of Cartier, and Michel Gutin, who was,
• 4:35
  the international chief commercial officer.
• 4:38
  And, I had the the chance to meet at that time.
• 4:41
  I'm a mister Jean Louis de Mermes,
• 4:45
  who is was the CEO of Hermes at that time.
• 4:47
  Mister Pierre Bergey was the University of Saint Laurent.
• 4:49
  Mister was the CEO of Brigitte.
• 4:51
  It was still a family owned business.
• 4:54
  And, and and many also artisans, you know,
• 4:56
  who explained us to the the value of craftsmanship in the
• 4:59
  in different field of of luxury.
• 5:01
  And then I entered my,
• 5:03
  my career in the in cosmetics and then perfumer industry.
• 5:07
  I moved on on fine jewelry on, on crystal with the,
• 5:12
  the Zworsky group for four years.
• 5:16
  And I, I traveled all around the world. As you said, hey.
• 5:19
  The fine jewelry,
• 5:20
  I was traveling three weeks per month worldwide in every market
• 5:23
  to meet distributors, agents, or big retailers.
• 5:26
  And then I, after the Zworsky Group, I even did some, private equity.
• 5:33
  I joined also after the Richemont Group for twelve
• 5:36
  years, and my last role was managing director for Europe,
• 5:40
  Middle East, India, Africa, and LatAm for IWC Schaffhausen,
• 5:44
  a fantastic autologie,
• 5:46
  brand and and and manufacturer.
• 5:48
  And recently, I joined a a high jewelry brand based in Milan
• 5:53
  called Marco Valente high jewelry, and,
• 5:57
  it's a a brand that was created in an nineteen fifty three.
• 6:00
  And, we are relaunching the brand on the high jewelry segment,
• 6:05
  around the world.
• 6:06
  And, so I did all my career in in in in luxury goods
• 6:10
  and and and different industry in this luxury goods.
• 6:14
  Mhmm. Wonderful.
• 6:15
  And this maybe, you know, leads me to my my first question.
• 6:19
  It's the question that I get, I would say, probably most often.
• 6:23
  And, I'm curious, you know,
• 6:24
  what how you would define it and what your thoughts are.
• 6:28
  But the first question is what is luxury for you?
• 6:30
  What what does the term mean?
• 6:32
  Because, you know, it's so overused.
• 6:34
  Everyone has maybe a different,
• 6:36
  different opinion on what it is.
• 6:37
  So what does it mean for you?
• 6:40
  Well, you know, since I, I, started my career,
• 6:44
  I use always the same definition,
• 6:45
  and it's always working.
• 6:47
  For me, luxury is based on on four pillars,
• 6:50
  always those four pillars.
• 6:52
  The first one is the the exceptional quality of the raw material.
• 6:56
  So you have to use the the the best gold that you can find if
• 7:01
  you're working with gold or or leather or,
• 7:07
  elements if you're working in in gastronomy.
• 7:09
  The second pillar is the craftsmanship.
• 7:12
  So, for example, in autologery,
• 7:14
  you have to to get the best watchmakers,
• 7:17
  the best goldsmiths in fine jewelry,
• 7:19
  the best the best cooker, the best chef in in in gastronomy,
• 7:23
  for example, or or in leather goods.
• 7:27
  People will shoe the the leather, you know,
• 7:29
  at the perfection, like people from Hermes are doing so well.
• 7:34
  The third pillar will be, a real history,
• 7:37
  not just a marketing concept,
• 7:39
  but a real history with strong values
• 7:42
  for the maison, the manufacturer, the brand.
• 7:46
  And, actually, it can be a old maison or a new one because,
• 7:50
  you have to remember that every old maison was new at once.
• 7:54
  So, but you need to have a very,
• 7:57
  very strong story, and you have to
• 7:59
  to to to to to to be focused on your your stories and your values.
• 8:05
  And the the fourth pillar is,
• 8:07
  an exclusivity because you're not in mass production.
• 8:12
  So because you are you have craftsmanship,
• 8:15
  you're not in mass production, so,
• 8:18
  you need a certain exclusivity.
• 8:20
  It's if you're going to mass,
• 8:21
  then you're you're competing again the the mass market and the volume.
• 8:25
  So it's for me, it's not anymore,
• 8:28
  you a definition of luxury.
• 8:30
  You may be premium, on your market,
• 8:32
  but but not totally luxury.
• 8:36
  And all those four pillars,
• 8:38
  they should they should work together to create what I call an emotional,
• 8:44
  an an an emotional key to to the client,
• 8:48
  that, will, trigger the the the willingness,
• 8:52
  to to purchase your your product or your service.
• 8:55
  By the way, this definition apply also to luxury of service like hotel
• 8:59
  industry or or hospitality industry.
• 9:02
  Yeah.
• 9:03
  I love this definition, and I love how you
• 9:07
  kind of summarize it into the idea of
• 9:10
  the emotional key.
• 9:12
  Because I think to to me, you know,
• 9:15
  when we think about luxury and creating desirability,
• 9:19
  it is not a purchase that is, that is purely rational.
• 9:23
  There can be some rational aspects to it depending on the
• 9:26
  product category and so on.
• 9:27
  But fundamentally, when we buy luxury, we buy luxury because,
• 9:31
  you know, we fall in love with a brand.
• 9:33
  And if we fall in love with a brand,
• 9:35
  then there has to be an emotional response.
• 9:37
  So I I really like this idea of the emotional key.
• 9:41
  And I also really like, you know,
• 9:43
  what you said that a brand has to have real history.
• 9:46
  But you you used the word that I think is very important when
• 9:49
  you said, you know, it can be an old history, a new history,
• 9:53
  but that there has to be a story.
• 9:55
  And maybe let's discuss this a little bit, more in detail.
• 9:59
  Because to to me, you know,
• 10:01
  as you know from all our discussions,
• 10:04
  the brand storytelling is so critical for for brands.
• 10:07
  And this is where I see in reality today many brands
• 10:12
  struggling because sometimes they just use history as
• 10:16
  something like abstract.
• 10:17
  You know, they say, oh, we have two hundred years.
• 10:20
  Or we are from, I don't know, Paris or Milan or London.
• 10:25
  And so we are now a two hundred years old company from from
• 10:28
  London.
• 10:29
  And I always like to say,
• 10:30
  this is not enough because this doesn't give us as a customer
• 10:34
  really, like, something tangible, like an emotion for it.
• 10:38
  So, let's discuss a little bit stories.
• 10:40
  What are kind of interesting stories maybe that in in in luxury?
• 10:44
  Or how how can a brand really create this this authentic story?
• 10:51
  You know, you you, most of the brands now, Maison,
• 10:56
  they they started very small through,
• 10:58
  the the the creation and the willingness of an artisan,
• 11:03
  if I'm talking about, articles.
• 11:06
  Yeah.
• 11:06
  I don't like so much the word about products because products
• 11:09
  is a it's something that you consume,
• 11:12
  and and and article is something that will last in in
• 11:15
  in your life or or your memory, very strongly.
• 11:18
  And I prefer to talk about clients and not consumers
• 11:21
  because you don't consume luxury.
• 11:23
  Luxury normally is something that you don't need to leave,
• 11:27
  to to to even to to survive.
• 11:29
  It's not,
• 11:31
  it's not something that your your your your your life is based on.
• 11:37
  But it's it's it's it's something that trigger you,
• 11:40
  that will that will, tickle your your emotions because,
• 11:44
  like, every brand has a DNA, every client has a DNA.
• 11:48
  So the the the game is for each brand and each maison,
• 11:53
  to understand the DNA of your client or your prospect or your
• 11:57
  your future client to know where to, to pull the,
• 12:02
  emotional what I call the emotional key between the two
• 12:05
  DNA.
• 12:05
  Because if a client is interested
• 12:08
  only in design and in colors,
• 12:10
  you don't need to talk to him about the quality of,
• 12:14
  you know, manufacturing and craftsmanship and,
• 12:18
  so many young sales ambassadors in different boutiques.
• 12:22
  They are so proud to give the speech of the brand on the
• 12:24
  without knowing, who are they talking
• 12:27
  to and why the client is,
• 12:29
  in your boutique boutique in front of them.
• 12:31
  So it's very important to to touch the emotion of a
• 12:35
  of a client, but you have to to know in his DNA
• 12:40
  what is very close from your own DNA.
• 12:43
  So if the client is has a different specificities of his
• 12:48
  DNA, which is common from your own DNA,
• 12:49
  then it's it's very easy.
• 12:51
  You don't have to to to to push too much to to be able to to
• 12:55
  have a a commercial relationship.
• 12:57
  But,
• 12:59
  you you need to know.
• 13:00
  It's very important for each brand and each maison before to
• 13:04
  address to the to these clients, directly.
• 13:07
  But to know your clients so you you you need a lot of time,
• 13:10
  and you need to take the time to know your client before to
• 13:14
  to to speak to them.
• 13:16
  And to to to speak to them,
• 13:18
  it's it's to have a conversation.
• 13:20
  So before you know,
• 13:21
  it's it's the same in life when you start a conversation with somebody,
• 13:25
  but you need to know the more you know the person in front of
• 13:28
  you, the more your conversation will be,
• 13:32
  richer and richer and then, then better and better.
• 13:35
  So, it's the same in a commercial relationship,
• 13:38
  especially on the on the luxury industry where at ninety
• 13:43
  nine percent, the the decision to to buy an article or a
• 13:47
  service of luxury is based on pure emotions, pure emotions.
• 13:52
  So that's where also emotional intelligence is a has
• 13:57
  a strong, stronger role to play in the in
• 14:01
  the especially in the exchange between a sales ambassador,
• 14:03
  for example, and a and a client.
• 14:05
  I remember, Luke, one of our last discussions,
• 14:09
  you told me that, the difference between
• 14:13
  a salesperson who is able to unlock this emotional key or, you know,
• 14:17
  to tap into this emotional key and a person salesperson who
• 14:22
  who doesn't have this ability is quite dramatic in terms of
• 14:26
  sales and sales result.
• 14:28
  So can you elaborate a little bit on your experience there
• 14:31
  between, let's say, top salespeople and how they do that?
• 14:34
  And, you know, maybe the average salespeople or someone who's who's maybe,
• 14:39
  you know, either not trained yet right or,
• 14:42
  is not able to to unlock.
• 14:44
  So how does unlocking this key work,
• 14:46
  and what is in your experience the difference between someone
• 14:49
  that is really excellent in this and someone who is maybe more mediocre?
• 14:53
  My, the first,
• 14:54
  I would say the the the when you want to to to give a
• 14:58
  ranking to to salespeople and, at every level, by the way,
• 15:04
  it's when you go to a to a boutique and you you you you
• 15:07
  start a conversation with the sales ambassador,
• 15:10
  and you will see immediately
• 15:12
  if a sales ambassador propose you, you know,
• 15:15
  if you go to a a watch boutique that I know very well,
• 15:18
  if you just propose you,
• 15:20
  two or three watches and just tell you describe you what you
• 15:23
  can see with your own eyes.
• 15:25
  So if they say, okay.
• 15:26
  This is a red dial with a,
• 15:29
  a blue strap and with a chronograph,
• 15:31
  but thank you very much.
• 15:32
  But I can see it with my own eyes.
• 15:34
  So there is no emotions that you can you can pass
• 15:38
  through to to your clients.
• 15:39
  So, the the the we know that in in
• 15:42
  the art of selling, the the first part,
• 15:44
  it's the discover phase of your client.
• 15:46
  You have to know why he's in the boutique,
• 15:48
  if he knows the brand.
• 15:49
  So if he knows the brand, yes or no.
• 15:51
  If he knows the brand, how do you know the brand?
• 15:54
  Maybe, you have a car. I have two watches already.
• 15:56
  You have a collection.
• 15:57
  Which which watch do you have, etcetera, etcetera,
• 16:00
  then you can explore.
• 16:01
  If he doesn't know the brand, you don't know the brand,
• 16:04
  do you know that this brand was created by blah blah blah, etcetera?
• 16:07
  You can start the the story.
• 16:08
  And, are you here on a on a on a visit?
• 16:11
  I don't know if the boutique is in in Dubai.
• 16:14
  You one of the first question you have to ask if you're in
• 16:17
  Dubai, for how long are you in Dubai?
• 16:18
  Are you in Dubai for one day or a week?
• 16:21
  So you we have time for the conversation.
• 16:23
  You have to know this this kind of information.
• 16:25
  But,
• 16:27
  you have to talk to your client and to ask a lot of question to
• 16:30
  know your client.
• 16:31
  So you have to listen to listen to your client and to ask
• 16:34
  question to know where where to go and which direction, to take.
• 16:39
  If a lady is coming with a lot of shopping,
• 16:42
  bag, you know, with different brands, but she love brands,
• 16:44
  so you will talk about the brand.
• 16:45
  You will not talk about the the the complexity of the
• 16:49
  tourbillon, of the watch, etcetera.
• 16:51
  If, if a gentleman is coming and say, oh,
• 16:54
  I visited this museum, this exhibition, it's fantastic.
• 16:58
  He's very keen on art, design, etcetera,
• 17:00
  so you will you will emphasize this part of your of your of your article.
• 17:06
  You you really have to know your client and and to to
• 17:09
  trigger the the emotion.
• 17:11
  We exchange a lot.
• 17:12
  I, told you that one of my best,
• 17:14
  expanding life was when I was,
• 17:16
  I had a a dinner with some clients and prospect,
• 17:19
  and and my team told me, yeah, Luke,
• 17:21
  a very important prospect, will will come.
• 17:23
  He's CEO of a bank.
• 17:25
  Yeah, there we had a very fine dinner, gastronomic dinner,
• 17:29
  and I said, okay.
• 17:29
  I take the challenge.
• 17:30
  Please, I would like to be sitting near him,
• 17:33
  and he came in jeans, you know,
• 17:35
  Apollo short sleeves with a plastic, watch,
• 17:38
  and I was supposed to sell him a watch,
• 17:41
  above one hundred thousand euro.
• 17:42
  And and,
• 17:44
  and it was a long night because every question I asked,
• 17:47
  he was not interested, you know.
• 17:49
  We were serving a gastronomic dinner.
• 17:51
  He asked for Coca Cola and ketchup with his,
• 17:54
  with his foie gras, so I was desperate from the beginning.
• 17:57
  I I said to myself, oh, it's gonna be a very, very long night.
• 18:00
  And after trying everything, you know, fine fine wine,
• 18:03
  fine gastronomy, fine cars, you know, travels, arts, opera,
• 18:09
  sports, everything, yachts, yachting, whatever,
• 18:12
  there was a no no interest at all at,
• 18:14
  and I was in a country where you there is a tradition at the
• 18:17
  end of the dinner.
• 18:19
  When the business is finished,
• 18:20
  you can you can talk about personal matters.
• 18:22
  And I say, oh, my my son was just born a couple of weeks in
• 18:27
  a in a country,
• 18:28
  so my relationship with the country will be forever.
• 18:30
  And suddenly, I saw sparkles in his eyes.
• 18:32
  In his eyes, he showed me pictures of all his family,
• 18:35
  you know, on his iPhone and da da da.
• 18:37
  And I understand that his only his only goal in life was his family.
• 18:42
  The only goal in life,
• 18:43
  he was working like hell or has not not many, free time.
• 18:47
  And so two weeks after,
• 18:48
  invite him and his five kids to Legoland in Germany.
• 18:52
  And then, one week after,
• 18:54
  I got a fantastic reward because he spent more than one million,
• 18:59
  dollar in buying watches for his family and the the board of
• 19:02
  his bank as gifts.
• 19:05
  And, and he told me, look,
• 19:06
  you you found the the only thing that,
• 19:08
  is important for me in life, and this is the key.
• 19:11
  We have to to find the the the the the emotion that will,
• 19:16
  that will, sparkle in the eyes of, of your your clients.
• 19:20
  And for any kind of reason,
• 19:22
  every client is is very different from one to another.
• 19:26
  Yeah.
• 19:26
  This this shows also that, you know,
• 19:28
  when we think I I use very often the the the terminology
• 19:33
  extreme value creation as a as a proxy to describe luxury.
• 19:38
  And why I like it is it almost forces you when when you really
• 19:42
  think about the term, it forces you to think what creates
• 19:46
  extreme value for a specific person,
• 19:49
  for a specific human.
• 19:51
  You know, because sometimes when we define luxury too much on the
• 19:54
  object, you know,
• 19:55
  it's and it's so easy because the object is tangible,
• 19:57
  you know, if you take the watch,
• 20:00
  then there is, like, hours,
• 20:02
  sometimes weeks, months,
• 20:04
  years of craftsmanship that goes that goes in producing that.
• 20:08
  So it's kind of, you know, sweat and tears.
• 20:10
  And this is what we as humans it's it's very kind of tangible
• 20:14
  in what we are gravitating to.
• 20:15
  So so many, I would say, in in sales, as you said,
• 20:20
  there is the almost natural tendency to want to describe
• 20:24
  what we already see as as as you you said.
• 20:27
  But fundamentally,
• 20:27
  then we we waste the time of people because they can see it
• 20:30
  with their own eyes.
• 20:32
  And sometimes somehow it's also not that important.
• 20:35
  This is also I think what was to me very important from what
• 20:37
  you just, just said.
• 20:38
  You know, when you said okay maybe if someone goes,
• 20:42
  let's take a watch example, to buy a watch,
• 20:44
  and for this person it's all about the design,
• 20:47
  then it doesn't really matter how many complications, are there.
• 20:51
  You know it's a nice additional information,
• 20:53
  but it's not going to be what what creates this emotional bond.
• 20:56
  But I love this example that you just gave of your client,
• 21:00
  where something completely different triggered the emotion.
• 21:04
  And it was the connection with family and the connection
• 21:08
  probably also with seeing you.
• 21:10
  And I use maybe the word now,
• 21:12
  but seeing you almost as a friend because you were able
• 21:15
  to, you know, connect with him,
• 21:17
  maybe discover something that maybe for the rest of his
• 21:22
  life when he went to other brands and to other stores no
• 21:25
  one actually, you know,
• 21:27
  connected on that level with him or maybe showed him the
• 21:30
  appreciation to what is really important to him.
• 21:33
  And then he said, okay, this is now where I want to connect.
• 21:36
  This is, I think,
• 21:37
  what is so fascinating to me in luxury that it's that the human
• 21:40
  factor is so critical and so important.
• 21:43
  And, you know, we we often focus a lot on the product.
• 21:47
  And, you know, you put it in your definition also.
• 21:49
  You have to have exceptional quality of raw material.
• 21:51
  You have to have great craftsmanship.
• 21:53
  So there's, of course, product components.
• 21:56
  But if this emotional component is not there,
• 22:00
  then basically all the other things are they they I don't
• 22:03
  want to say they fall apart,
• 22:04
  but they don't matter so much anymore.
• 22:07
  No. No. I totally agree with you.
• 22:09
  I I I I am totally convinced, and more and more,
• 22:13
  by the way, that the technology is coming.
• 22:16
  We are in a connection business.
• 22:17
  We are not in a traffic business.
• 22:19
  So the connection with your between the client and and the
• 22:23
  brand, so it means it's representative.
• 22:25
  It can be a sales ambassador.
• 22:27
  It can be, you know, I don't know, the c of the brand.
• 22:30
  It can be,
• 22:32
  an an ambassador,
• 22:34
  a role model.
• 22:35
  It can be an actor.
• 22:37
  It can be a sportsman.
• 22:40
  It it's very important.
• 22:41
  So the the we are in a relationship
• 22:44
  business model.
• 22:45
  So I think that more and more we go,
• 22:48
  the more and more AI and the machines are power
• 22:53
  are powerful, sorry,
• 22:54
  the more and more the relationship the human
• 22:57
  relationship will be important because you can be you can be
• 23:01
  in, for a product, for example.
• 23:03
  You can have the best location for a boutique.
• 23:06
  You can have the best brand, the biggest marketing spending,
• 23:11
  everything.
• 23:12
  If the relationship
• 23:14
  between, human being and the client is a disaster,
• 23:19
  every everything that you have done,
• 23:21
  all your investment that you have done as a as a as a
• 23:26
  shareholder is, is falling apart
• 23:30
  because you have to always remember so that in this human relationship,
• 23:34
  the part of the service is so important so important.
• 23:38
  I I love this quote from Warren Buffet.
• 23:41
  If you remember,
• 23:43
  he bought a tie, fifteen year ten or fifteen years ago.
• 23:46
  He doesn't even remember the tie or the price of the tie,
• 23:49
  but he remembered the exquisite quality of service that he
• 23:53
  received at that time.
• 23:54
  So the emotion due to the service that he received,
• 23:58
  it's outstanding and will stay, by the way.
• 24:01
  The the service is the the emotion that will stay,
• 24:05
  the the the more longer.
• 24:07
  So for forever,
• 24:10
  I I quote you,
• 24:12
  I explained with you an amazing story that I had a few days ago in Air France.
• 24:17
  I didn't fly Air France for for seven years for different
• 24:20
  reason, and then I I flew again, last month.
• 24:25
  I took two flights in in one day in Europe and on my seat
• 24:28
  and I was not in business, and I was in coach.
• 24:30
  So on my seat, I had a card, mister Rochefort,
• 24:33
  we're very happy to welcome you back, blah blah blah, etcetera,
• 24:37
  etcetera, because I had a I had a great great car,
• 24:40
  but I was flying so much at once that I had a great car.
• 24:43
  And they still have this, so I found this this,
• 24:46
  this little, gesture where I was,
• 24:49
  I was overwhelmed, you know. I was, I was nobody.
• 24:52
  The the chef, the cabin came. You know? I was in coach.
• 24:54
  They have a mini glass of champagne.
• 24:56
  Everybody saw that I was a superstar. I'm not at all.
• 24:59
  So but but the quality the quality of service at that
• 25:03
  time was was fantastic.
• 25:04
  And, of course, I was super touched and something that I will always
• 25:08
  remember, and I can tell you that I I work in very,
• 25:11
  very different industries.
• 25:12
  Every time you give that kind of level of service unexpected
• 25:17
  to your client, It's so important.
• 25:19
  You know, in so many industries, we believe,
• 25:22
  and it's a a big mistake that a lot of lot of companies are are
• 25:26
  doing and still now.
• 25:28
  They believe that the the client is a client when he's
• 25:31
  entered the boutique,
• 25:31
  and and after he left the boutique and he paid and he passed the door.
• 25:35
  And then after, we forgot about the client.
• 25:37
  We we don't know the client before,
• 25:38
  and sometimes in many industries,
• 25:41
  we know the client before,
• 25:42
  especially in the hotel industry.
• 25:44
  We exchange about that.
• 25:46
  You know that somebody is doing a booking,
• 25:48
  so you know the profile.
• 25:50
  It's it's a fantastic, luck.
• 25:52
  You know the profile of your client who is coming to your hotel.
• 25:56
  So you can you can have a touch point,
• 25:58
  and we're talking about touch point now.
• 26:00
  So you can have a touch point before,
• 26:03
  your client coming to the hotel.
• 26:05
  So before the arrival, at the check-in, during the stay, after the stay.
• 26:09
  So you can, you can enhance and increase
• 26:13
  the emotional relationship with your client as a as a level
• 26:16
  that, that I can tell you, not a lot of people,
• 26:20
  not a lot of companies are are doing at the moment.
• 26:23
  And this is this is the where you have to invest,
• 26:27
  some resources and some human capacity because when you have
• 26:31
  this kind of relationship with your clients, we follow you,
• 26:35
  for forever, for sure.
• 26:37
  Represent.
• 26:39
  It's fascinating that you that you, you know,
• 26:41
  bring up now also hospitality.
• 26:43
  And we just did a study,
• 26:45
  recently where we could show that,
• 26:48
  you know, when how how,
• 26:52
  which word should I use?
• 26:53
  Maybe how tough it is, so to speak, to build up loyalty,
• 26:57
  especially in the luxury sector.
• 26:59
  And I think this also has to do with what you said before with
• 27:01
  the emotion because, you know, we may also as humans,
• 27:04
  we have to kind of trust that emotion also is repetitive.
• 27:08
  So in in non luxury
• 27:11
  purchases or experiences,
• 27:15
  you actually build loyalty relatively fast.
• 27:17
  You need just a few interaction points and people get used to this.
• 27:20
  But when it comes to luxury,
• 27:22
  to really that someone really feels loyal,
• 27:25
  you need about twenty percent more effort to and more
• 27:30
  interaction points to bring up someone who is loyal.
• 27:34
  But now to lose the loyalty is dramatically faster.
• 27:39
  It's like one point about one point seven interactions
• 27:43
  that are below expectations and you lose the person.
• 27:48
  And I think this is what, to your point,
• 27:51
  when companies maybe don't emphasize enough on
• 27:56
  service where they put themselves under a huge vulnerability.
• 28:00
  Because for the customer
• 28:04
  and a service that is underwhelming
• 28:07
  doesn't mean that it's a bad service, so to speak.
• 28:10
  It's just on the level.
• 28:11
  And for example, I I just, you know,
• 28:13
  I just came back two days ago from a long
• 28:17
  flight, from from Cape Town.
• 28:18
  So I was, twenty four hours in the air.
• 28:21
  It's one one very, very long flight, almost seventeen hours.
• 28:24
  And, for example, I was in in business class on one of
• 28:28
  the three largest American airlines.
• 28:32
  And the the, I would describe the
• 28:36
  service as okay.
• 28:39
  So everything was more or less as expected.
• 28:41
  They were friendly, they were smiling,
• 28:45
  there was food, you know.
• 28:47
  If I wanted to to get a drink,
• 28:49
  then they they served me a drink.
• 28:51
  So fundamentally, I don't have
• 28:54
  anything to complain.
• 28:55
  Yeah. I was not beaten up, so to speak.
• 28:57
  There was not no one was rude. So I have nothing to complain.
• 29:02
  But nothing was luxury.
• 29:04
  Nothing was personalized.
• 29:05
  Nothing was where I felt an emotion towards me.
• 29:09
  And I remember for example walking in the, you know,
• 29:12
  on the aisle towards my seat and then sitting down in my seat.
• 29:17
  I took my jacket off, and then there was a flight attendant,
• 29:20
  you know, a little bit further away.
• 29:21
  And I I kind of waved and said, okay. You know?
• 29:24
  Can you take care of my my jacket?
• 29:27
  And then the flight attendant said oh I can do this after the
• 29:29
  boarding process is over.
• 29:32
  And you know this was for me like one of those moments where
• 29:36
  they were friendly, they were not not unfriendly.
• 29:38
  But in this moment, it was, you know,
• 29:40
  when you just want to get settled,
• 29:42
  you want to maybe get changed, will get get rid of the jacket,
• 29:45
  I felt like I'm not important.
• 29:48
  I have to wait now until everything is over.
• 29:50
  And I think this is also what where where,
• 29:53
  maybe to build on what you were saying,
• 29:55
  what in my observation happens very often in so many
• 29:59
  so called luxury experiences, that it's kind of all about
• 30:04
  the the, how should I say, maybe the,
• 30:07
  the process that a company puts in place.
• 30:10
  So in this case, the airline has a process that, okay,
• 30:13
  let's have first people boarding,
• 30:15
  and then we take the jackets, and then we serve the drinks.
• 30:18
  But then you don't get a personalized experience.
• 30:21
  Because maybe for sixty percent of the travelers or eighty
• 30:25
  percent of the travelers, this may be okay.
• 30:27
  But maybe for two or three or four or ten other travelers
• 30:30
  that are in the same in the same area.
• 30:33
  This is not okay.
• 30:34
  And in normal experiences, we we are okay with averages.
• 30:38
  But in luxury, I always feel we it's always about us.
• 30:42
  I I totally agree with you.
• 30:43
  And where these, airlines will, will,
• 30:47
  fail is that other airlines are moving,
• 30:52
  quite rapidly and improving their service.
• 30:55
  So I would I would suggest to these people from this
• 30:59
  airlines, if you cannot talk to them,
• 31:00
  go to Asia and and and see the quality of service that you
• 31:05
  can or you can have in business class in Asian company,
• 31:09
  because even on very short flight, you have a a full,
• 31:12
  warm meal, very,
• 31:16
  very nice.
• 31:16
  They're taking care of you immediately when you're
• 31:18
  boarding the plane.
• 31:20
  So competition also is very good.
• 31:23
  And, and, unfortunately,
• 31:26
  when clients are experiencing, that's why you you said,
• 31:30
  earlier that loyalty is very difficult because when you find a new,
• 31:35
  when you experience a new quality of service but then you
• 31:38
  go to this you move to this quality of service and you
• 31:40
  don't want to come back to a a a a lower
• 31:44
  quality, it's it's I can tell you at the
• 31:47
  so I I as I told you,
• 31:48
  I joined a a high a new high jewelry company called Marco
• 31:52
  Valente based in Milan.
• 31:53
  And then and, we we we are very successful at the moment because we bring
• 31:58
  something new on the market of high jewelry.
• 32:01
  Because for for multi brand retailers,
• 32:03
  a lot of high jewelry brand, they left this,
• 32:06
  commercial network to open their own boutique.
• 32:10
  And so,
• 32:12
  now we are we are bringing this,
• 32:14
  this brand, this, high jewelry brand to the retailers,
• 32:17
  and we are able also because we have,
• 32:20
  we have this mindset to be very flexible what the the final
• 32:24
  plan side because we are talking about high jewelry.
• 32:26
  We're not talking about entry price or or low,
• 32:30
  or or volume,
• 32:32
  but high jewelry.
• 32:34
  So the art of our market is
• 32:36
  between twenty and and five hundred
• 32:39
  thousand dollars,
• 32:42
  for for a piece of of of high jewelry.
• 32:44
  And two weeks ago, I can tell you, I had the experience in,
• 32:47
  I was in in Qatar in in Doha,
• 32:50
  and a a client wanted the, the sewing ring that we had,
• 32:53
  but with a a three carat diamond in servo, two point five.
• 32:57
  And in in forty eight hours, we're able to show us the ring,
• 33:01
  the ring, the size with the stone,
• 33:03
  the all the new rendering of the of the, of the ring,
• 33:07
  and she was, she was, overwhelmed.
• 33:09
  And because normally in the big brand, it takes time.
• 33:12
  Yes, madame. We will send you an email, etcetera, etcetera.
• 33:15
  And, and first, we think that if you want to to be at that level of high
• 33:19
  jewelry, of of quality, of selling diamonds, you know,
• 33:24
  it's it's very important.
• 33:25
  And, also that we see that a lot of new generation,
• 33:29
  the millennials the millennials are, by the way,
• 33:31
  up to forty five years old now.
• 33:33
  And, generation zed, and when they they want to buy diamonds,
• 33:36
  they don't have a lot of knowledge,
• 33:38
  but they want to have they want to have full transparency.
• 33:41
  They want to have full traceability,
• 33:44
  now, and they can have it, with,
• 33:46
  all the the social media tools.
• 33:48
  And so that's why we provide a GIA certificate for every stone
• 33:52
  below zero point four, and we deliver only the best quality
• 33:56
  of diamond, meanings, only the the color DEF,
• 34:00
  with with the the the the the the
• 34:04
  best cut proportion and and and and polishing.
• 34:07
  So, we really want to to to go,
• 34:12
  where all the big brands are too big now,
• 34:15
  too big to give this high quality of service for for
• 34:19
  final clients all over the world.
• 34:23
  And here again, I think with the example that you showed is
• 34:28
  it's re it's it's also in in the product, of course,
• 34:31
  but again, it's the service.
• 34:32
  It's, you know, the speed. It's about the convenience.
• 34:35
  It's about the personalization.
• 34:37
  It's about, you know,
• 34:38
  to kind of make a step towards the client and not force the
• 34:42
  client in into that.
• 34:45
  And, it's fascinating because if you look into where brands
• 34:51
  also invest very often, They often invest, let's say,
• 34:55
  in if you take the total p and l of a brand.
• 34:57
  Of course there's a lot of marketing,
• 34:59
  but then there's also let's say the real estate.
• 35:01
  You know, the the we spoke about hospitality, you know,
• 35:04
  how a hotel looks like, the airplane interiors.
• 35:08
  Or maybe in the case of your business in high jewelry,
• 35:12
  it's the store, the storefront, and so on,
• 35:15
  that everything looks good.
• 35:16
  And often there is investments like millions and millions of dollars.
• 35:22
  And all of this, you know,
• 35:23
  can can mean nothing in the end if the if the service
• 35:27
  component is not there.
• 35:28
  If the emotional key is not unlocked, then, you know,
• 35:32
  all the investments there basically are evaporating.
• 35:37
  So it's so important to, you know,
• 35:40
  I would say strategize
• 35:42
  as a company about, you know, how do you,
• 35:44
  how can you deliver this exceptional service?
• 35:48
  But then also enable the the staff the staff on that?
• 35:52
  Exactly. Yeah. It's a very good question.
• 35:53
  You know, when,
• 35:55
  the luxury business completely explode in the last,
• 35:58
  thirty years in nineteen ninety one when I did my MBA,
• 36:01
  there was no luxury goods company listed at any stock
• 36:05
  exchange in the world.
• 36:06
  Now LVMH is the biggest, value,
• 36:09
  but they lost it recently for in front of a pharmaceutical company.
• 36:12
  But in Europe, it's the the biggest value,
• 36:15
  at least in France, it's the biggest value.
• 36:16
  Hermes is number two, by the way.
• 36:18
  And L'Oreal, which is comp now considered at the luxury value by the
• 36:22
  financial guys because more than fifty percent of its
• 36:25
  turnover is done with luxury perfume.
• 36:28
  Those three companies are are number number three at the
• 36:30
  store kitchen in France.
• 36:31
  This is, this is unbelievable.
• 36:33
  And, so throughout those years,
• 36:36
  there there were many years where the business was booming.
• 36:39
  You know, people were queuing queuing for to buy luxury goods.
• 36:43
  So, you you didn't have to sell.
• 36:46
  And and and one crisis, happened, that's where you see,
• 36:51
  people were able to sell or just were distributors.
• 36:56
  And, and to sell is a different mindset.
• 36:58
  You have to to to be a hunter in a in a good way, of course,
• 37:03
  but you have to know.
• 37:04
  And and, and people and clients are are willingness to they are they are sorry.
• 37:10
  They are they are ready to to spend a a a certain budget if
• 37:14
  they are very interested and they are if their emotional key
• 37:17
  is, is,
• 37:20
  is, trigger.
• 37:21
  And, and for because for some
• 37:24
  clients those clients,
• 37:26
  the the crisis is not the same that for for middle class people.
• 37:29
  So and
• 37:31
  so, when you have very,
• 37:33
  very good salespeople, first of all, you know, first of all,
• 37:36
  you have to identify them.
• 37:38
  You have to keep them, and you have to motivate them.
• 37:41
  And I think one of the the best motivation, of course,
• 37:44
  is is a is a visibility of vision or how you
• 37:48
  can progress within a company because you're not going to do
• 37:51
  the same job of your life or it depends if they want to stay on the floor and,
• 37:55
  to be there to have this relationship with the clients.
• 37:57
  You have certain people that are very good at that And that
• 38:00
  just want to be, just want to to to to to stay at that level
• 38:05
  of relationship with the clients.
• 38:06
  But you have to be,
• 38:08
  you have to be ready to give them a very good package
• 38:11
  because those people will bring you the turnover of your company.
• 38:15
  And I always, say to a lot of, board people and, and,
• 38:20
  top management people, those people should be,
• 38:23
  the most rewarded because they can they can change your
• 38:26
  turnover, and so it should be an and it's a viable cost.
• 38:30
  You just have to have a a percentage of your of your of
• 38:35
  your of your turnover based on the on the the bonuses of of
• 38:39
  the sweeper, and you can give them just the sky as the limit.
• 38:43
  So it's very important to have in a for me, in a team,
• 38:46
  I I put the scheme very often in team called one plus one equals three.
• 38:51
  One is an individual target,
• 38:52
  so the other one is a is a team target.
• 38:55
  So a team bonus.
• 38:56
  And if if you fulfill the two,
• 38:58
  then your bonus should be three, not two.
• 39:02
  And you need you need a individual target because like
• 39:04
  in every fantastic team, you have,
• 39:07
  you have fantast fantastic players,
• 39:08
  and you just have a few in in in soccer in, in in Europe.
• 39:12
  You had, ones in Edenzida,
• 39:14
  and you you didn't have eleven in a team.
• 39:17
  In basketball, you have one LeBron James.
• 39:20
  You don't have five in a team.
• 39:21
  So, this guy, the the the the star of the team,
• 39:24
  should have a fantastic reward because he will bring the whole
• 39:28
  team to another level also.
• 39:29
  So it's very important to reward in a team the best,
• 39:33
  the best players of the team and to have a but but the best
• 39:37
  players of the team also should should,
• 39:39
  carry the team at the at the reverse.
• 39:42
  That's why you should have individual target and and team target.
• 39:45
  And if both are fulfilled,
• 39:47
  then the bonus should be three and not two.
• 39:50
  And this is very important to to to for for these people to
• 39:54
  to receive very well package because for a lot of people,
• 39:56
  you know, if you say, what do you do?
• 39:58
  I'm a sales consultant in a in a store.
• 40:01
  It's not very socially.
• 40:03
  So, especially in Europe, it's not very, not very positive,
• 40:06
  but it should be the opposite in the luxury brands.
• 40:09
  Those people are key people in the business model of a of a of
• 40:13
  a luxury brand.
• 40:15
  Yeah.
• 40:16
  I remember conversation with a good friend of mine who runs a
• 40:19
  very successful hospitality,
• 40:22
  company, and he always tells me that in his point of view,
• 40:26
  you almost have to reverse the ox chart of a company and
• 40:30
  say the salespeople are on top and everyone else is below.
• 40:35
  And he always says, I as the CEO, I'm on the rock bottom, so to speak,
• 40:40
  because I don't have really the customer contacts every day,
• 40:43
  but the sales people have.
• 40:44
  And then also enabling them, empowering them.
• 40:47
  Because a lot of companies speak about empowerment and
• 40:50
  enabling, but then on the day to day is
• 40:54
  actually not the case.
• 40:56
  And, you know, the example that you that you shared before where, you know,
• 41:01
  you you had the client and you were able to find the emotional key,
• 41:05
  and then you took a decision to invite the person for a family
• 41:09
  trip to, you know, to to a theme park.
• 41:13
  If let's let's assume,
• 41:15
  and I think in that role you were already, let's say,
• 41:17
  leading leading the team or, you know,
• 41:19
  the the the the managing director for the region.
• 41:22
  So naturally you had more decision power.
• 41:25
  But let's assume now, you have someone in the store,
• 41:30
  and this person now finds an emotional trigger.
• 41:34
  And let's say during a conversation,
• 41:36
  and feels this customer could be the million dollar customer.
• 41:41
  And then in this case, because now they have an interaction,
• 41:45
  now this person on the store floor takes the decision
• 41:49
  and invites the person to the theme park.
• 41:52
  And now goes to the boss and says, you know,
• 41:54
  I have this post the person just walked in, you know,
• 41:57
  in jeans and a plastic watch.
• 41:59
  What did you describe?
• 42:00
  And I think that this person could be,
• 42:03
  an important prospect.
• 42:04
  So I invited him, with his family to a theme park.
• 42:08
  If you now have in the, if I take now this example,
• 42:11
  and you now have in the organization,
• 42:14
  a superior
• 42:16
  that that basically criticizes this decision and said,
• 42:20
  you know, couldn't didn't why didn't you speak with me before?
• 42:23
  Or, you know, are you really sure?
• 42:25
  And, you know, this this is a cost, seen as a cost.
• 42:29
  Then I can almost guarantee that in this particular organization,
• 42:34
  no one ever in the future is going to take the word
• 42:38
  empowerment serious.
• 42:40
  And I think this is also something that as an organization,
• 42:44
  organizations have to have to work on is it's so easy to say
• 42:48
  we empower our sales people.
• 42:49
  It's so easy to say you know our sales people they have
• 42:52
  carte blanche they should do and so on.
• 42:56
  Because if then as an organization the foundation is
• 42:59
  not there or there is just one bad apple somewhere that says
• 43:03
  you should not have done this,
• 43:04
  then it becomes immediately like a myth within the
• 43:07
  organization and people will say okay you know what
• 43:10
  if they tell you you're empowered forget because there
• 43:13
  was this example that happened five years ago and this person
• 43:16
  was reprimanded, you know, think twice before you do something.
• 43:19
  So this is I think something that where,
• 43:23
  the role of the leadership within an organization is so critical.
• 43:26
  And I I see this often in service related,
• 43:31
  industries like hospitality.
• 43:32
  If you take my single hotel, the in my experience,
• 43:36
  the quality of service lives and dies with the general manager.
• 43:40
  Not that the general manager is going to be the person that the
• 43:43
  guest would see all the time,
• 43:45
  but if the general manager is truly,
• 43:49
  how to say, is truly caring about the customer,
• 43:51
  the customer experience, the client experience,
• 43:54
  the client experience will be great.
• 43:56
  And if the cost the the general manager, let's say,
• 43:58
  doesn't care at all or is not basically all over it,
• 44:02
  then the client experience will will fall apart immediately.
• 44:07
  But I I totally agree with you.
• 44:08
  It's the it's the big issue with a very,
• 44:12
  top down management,
• 44:15
  which is,
• 44:18
  which I see a lot of time in many,
• 44:20
  which I saw a lot of time in in many organization,
• 44:24
  especially in luxury.
• 44:25
  People think that at the head office,
• 44:26
  they understood everything about everything.
• 44:28
  So but the the the key is the
• 44:31
  relationship with the client on the market, in,
• 44:35
  where you are at five thousand kilometer when you are from, the head office.
• 44:39
  You don't understand the relationship with your client.
• 44:41
  It's a different culture, different client.
• 44:43
  You don't know why your client is in the boutique.
• 44:45
  You don't understand.
• 44:47
  Mhmm.
• 44:47
  And,
• 44:49
  it's it's it's a it's a key point that
• 44:51
  you say, especially in the hospitality industry.
• 44:54
  It shouldn't be a culture coming from one manager,
• 44:58
  but should be the culture of the whole,
• 45:02
  brand, the whole hotel by itself.
• 45:04
  And, and every day, by the way, as a manager,
• 45:07
  and I and I I did some mistakes also in my career,
• 45:10
  so I I learned a lot.
• 45:13
  Now I ask a lot to the people who are in contact with the
• 45:16
  client, what can I do to help you?
• 45:19
  What, and and okay. If you have ideas, what are your ideas?
• 45:24
  Shoot.
• 45:24
  There's no no no stupid ideas because you you will be
• 45:29
  responsible for the ideas,
• 45:30
  and you will manage your contact with the client.
• 45:32
  So if you have a lot of experience and you're telling
• 45:34
  me that this work, this work, then let's do it,
• 45:37
  and then we'll see the result.
• 45:39
  It's not a question of, yes.
• 45:41
  I think it's good or it's not good.
• 45:42
  You have to respect every ideas, every capture,
• 45:47
  and I've I will give you a a fantastic story,
• 45:50
  because I always try to illustrate, you know,
• 45:54
  principle by stories.
• 45:56
  I remember very famous jewelry brand, in Tokyo.
• 45:59
  They hired a new, new sales guy and, you know,
• 46:03
  they say, okay, the selling process in our brand is this, this, this.
• 46:07
  You have to do step one, step two, step three, step four,
• 46:11
  step five, and if you do that, it's good.
• 46:13
  And the guy said okay. He went to the training. He said okay.
• 46:16
  And then three weeks after,
• 46:19
  the guy sold the most expensive necklace
• 46:22
  of the boutique that they never sold for six years.
• 46:26
  Six years they were trying to in three weeks, he sold it.
• 46:30
  So everybody was astonished.
• 46:32
  And, and, I remember it it it was a colleague of mine who was in
• 46:36
  charge of a Japan market, and he said, okay.
• 46:39
  I have to tell you this story because it's a fantastic it's a
• 46:42
  fantastic lesson.
• 46:42
  And he he went to the guy and say, okay.
• 46:44
  What what did you do to to sell this necklace?
• 46:47
  Okay. What, what part of the process of selling?
• 46:50
  Which step was the best in your and the guy said, oh, no. No.
• 46:54
  No. No.
• 46:54
  I didn't respect at all the process of selling that you you taught me.
• 46:59
  And, so but how did you do?
• 47:00
  But I say if I if I want to have a chance to increase
• 47:03
  really my bonus, I have to sell this necklace.
• 47:06
  And if I have to sell this necklace,
• 47:08
  I have to propose it to everybody.
• 47:11
  Everybody will enter the boutique.
• 47:14
  And act actually,
• 47:16
  the all the team who was respecting the old presenter
• 47:19
  was doing the opposite because it was the most expensive one.
• 47:22
  They thought that ninety nine percent of the people who are
• 47:25
  entering the boutique had no power purchase to buy the necklace.
• 47:29
  But for him, he he was no. No.
• 47:30
  He was new in the company, new in that, business field.
• 47:33
  He say, yeah. I have nothing to lose. So every time Yeah.
• 47:38
  Every request from a client, he say, oh, by the way,
• 47:41
  I show you, ta da da, the this necklace,
• 47:45
  which is exquisite,
• 47:47
  a resume of the know how and the culture of our brand and blah blah blah.
• 47:51
  And then one guy in the three weeks,
• 47:53
  I I thought he proposed it to to five hundred people,
• 47:57
  and one guy say, ah, fantastic.
• 47:59
  I buy it.
• 48:01
  And it's a great lesson.
• 48:02
  Listen to, to your, salespeople because everybody also has a different style.
• 48:09
  Maybe you want to have in place a a selling process and, of course,
• 48:13
  you know you know you know have to have the discovery phase.
• 48:15
  You know to you need to know your clients.
• 48:17
  You need to but you have to be open minded to new ideas and and why not.
• 48:22
  And, and this is, this is a fantastic story.
• 48:26
  Yeah.
• 48:26
  And I think here, it's also a great story where, again,
• 48:30
  the emotional key comes comes out.
• 48:33
  Because if you for example,
• 48:34
  I had recently a discussion
• 48:37
  during a training that I did, on on, you know,
• 48:40
  how to sell luxury.
• 48:42
  And within that organization or
• 48:45
  within that, you know,
• 48:46
  that framework where this operation organization, operated,
• 48:49
  so they had they were basically also in multi brand stores.
• 48:53
  And in these multi brand stores,
• 48:55
  there were different level of prices.
• 48:57
  So they had typically in this kind of environment,
• 49:00
  there would be even some items or some brands that would not
• 49:03
  be considered luxury.
• 49:05
  So let's say entry level items, and mid level items.
• 49:08
  And then you had one or two brands at the extreme if you
• 49:12
  take price points.
• 49:13
  So what was the the typical way how a
• 49:17
  salesperson would approach that?
• 49:18
  Because now the salesperson wants to get all the traffic in
• 49:22
  the store, and they somehow,
• 49:24
  maybe also with sometimes not the right incentives,
• 49:27
  basically was saying, okay, I make now a quick sale.
• 49:30
  So what did they do?
• 49:31
  People walked walked in the store,
• 49:33
  and then they asked them, what is your budget?
• 49:36
  I always like to say this is the this is the killer question
• 49:39
  of all questions because I also it's the it's the excel sheet
• 49:42
  question, so to speak.
• 49:43
  Because when someone says, what is your budget?
• 49:46
  You immediately go from emotion to rational.
• 49:50
  And then the other thing you you do is you put a number in your head.
• 49:55
  And if you put a number in your head,
• 49:56
  this number is now your baseline.
• 49:59
  Every every decision you will do afterwards,
• 50:01
  internally you will compare with with the numbers.
• 50:04
  So if you walk in the store and, you know,
• 50:07
  let's say I want to to buy a watch and the the person asked
• 50:10
  me, you know, how much do you want to spend on a watch today?
• 50:14
  I say, let's say, three thousand dollars,
• 50:17
  then good luck selling me a thirty thousand dollar watch,
• 50:20
  if basically I prime myself now into into that category.
• 50:24
  But I think in in the moment when someone, you know,
• 50:27
  when someone, as you just said,
• 50:30
  comes in and there is, you know,
• 50:33
  he he shows him the necklace and then shows another person,
• 50:36
  look this is the brand.
• 50:38
  For some person, suddenly it will trigger an emotion and
• 50:43
  a desirability to to buy.
• 50:45
  I love the example.
• 50:46
  I think it's so powerful to see that,
• 50:49
  you know, when we I think it also shows mindset.
• 50:52
  If we basically convince ourself
• 50:55
  that a specific product is only for a specific clientele,
• 51:00
  We already approach the world almost with a negativity and
• 51:03
  always think, you know,
• 51:06
  if we say it's for the top one percent then we always say, okay,
• 51:09
  the likelihood that the next person comes in and wants that is zero.
• 51:12
  So we don't even make an effort.
• 51:15
  While if we program ourselves to say to say, you know, let's inspire.
• 51:18
  Let's let's inspire.
• 51:20
  Let's inspire, then then we get to a different result.
• 51:24
  Yeah.
• 51:24
  To to to to you right,
• 51:25
  I can give you another example that happened not too long ago
• 51:27
  in a in a find your store.
• 51:29
  It's one of our client.
• 51:31
  And, we received a very nice order from this store,
• 51:34
  and we were very, amazed.
• 51:35
  So we asked the retailer,
• 51:37
  can you tell us a little bit about the Swiss?
• 51:38
  Yeah.
• 51:39
  It's a very funny story because a gentleman came,
• 51:41
  and as we had a good relationship, a good exchange,
• 51:44
  we showed him a very nice,
• 51:46
  bracelet.
• 51:47
  We understood it was for his daughter.
• 51:49
  So, for birthday.
• 51:51
  So there was, we didn't talk about budget, etcetera.
• 51:54
  They said they show different bracelet, and the guy choose,
• 51:57
  has chosen one of our bracelets.
• 51:59
  So the the the sales ambassador was, was, very happy.
• 52:04
  He said, okay. Can I, this bracelet?
• 52:06
  Can I, can I prepare a gift box, etcetera?
• 52:09
  And and the client say, yes, but I want two more.
• 52:13
  So the salesman said I was a was a little bit surprised.
• 52:17
  He said, yeah.
• 52:17
  I want I want I want three three of the same bracelets.
• 52:22
  I told you it was for my daughters,
• 52:24
  and he didn't understand the s of daughters.
• 52:28
  He just under understood daughter.
• 52:30
  And, I and, actually, it was a gift for one for each of his daughter.
• 52:36
  So, the the sale was three bracelet instead of one.
• 52:40
  And we and when you have a bracelet of one hundred
• 52:42
  thousand dollars,
• 52:43
  so it's a it's a nicer so it's a nice sellout.
• 52:46
  And, actually, another also example of,
• 52:50
  what you mentioned is when you have multi brand of stores or
• 52:54
  multi brand store, when you have different level,
• 52:56
  you have to go to ground floor, first floor, second floor.
• 53:00
  A lot of time,
• 53:02
  retailers, they put their their big brands on the ground floor,
• 53:05
  and then they put on first floor and second floor,
• 53:08
  what what they'll be the the the which is not really a top priority.
• 53:12
  And and, of course, ninety nine percent of the time,
• 53:15
  the sales ambassador on the ground floor,
• 53:17
  they will never never put some efforts to bring your car
• 53:22
  into the first floor or your second floor.
• 53:24
  And for me, it's a big mistake because you are renting a space
• 53:28
  with with three floors, and, basically,
• 53:31
  you base your business on one floor.
• 53:32
  And you could have a fantastic business if you if you are
• 53:36
  spreading your top brands on three floors,
• 53:38
  especially the top one.
• 53:39
  You could put it on the third floor people will go.
• 53:43
  And, you know that in the
• 53:45
  supermarket business,
• 53:46
  if you put a a water at the end of your supermarket,
• 53:49
  people will cross the whole supermarket to buy the water.
• 53:52
  So the same in the luxury,
• 53:54
  if you put top brands on the third floor, people will go.
• 53:56
  And then you will give them a chance to see also the other
• 53:59
  brands and the rest of, of, of of of your business because, otherwise,
• 54:04
  you just do distribution of big brands on the ground floor,
• 54:07
  and then the rest,
• 54:07
  it's a it's a it's a big loss for for your p and l.
• 54:11
  It's a wonderful example.
• 54:12
  And, you know, it reminds me just of something that happened to me,
• 54:16
  a few weeks ago.
• 54:17
  So I was in Hong Kong, and the trolley that I had, broke.
• 54:23
  And, you know, it was a bit of a sad story, so to speak,
• 54:26
  because it was a trolley that I was really in love with.
• 54:29
  Also, a beautiful luxury trolley, but,
• 54:32
  probably after six seven years of heavy use in thousands of
• 54:36
  flights, there was the time to say goodbye.
• 54:39
  And then,
• 54:41
  I went in this case to a Louis Vuitton store,
• 54:43
  and I was I thought to buy,
• 54:47
  you know, I don't even want to call it the basic,
• 54:49
  but you know their beautiful canvas, canvas
• 54:53
  horizon trolley.
• 54:55
  And I was just going to the store
• 54:58
  to see which color combination should I get.
• 55:02
  And then while I was in the store and they were about to
• 55:06
  hot stamp my initials in the, you know, in the name tag,
• 55:11
  and said, okay, just browse around a little bit.
• 55:14
  And then I was walking around, and then I see I said, well, wait a minute.
• 55:17
  And then I saw the same, the same trolley,
• 55:21
  but in a limited edition, the first collection of, of Feral.
• 55:25
  And it was just gorgeous beyond imagination.
• 55:28
  And so I run back and said stop the hot pot stamping process.
• 55:32
  And it was just, like, last second, I said okay,
• 55:34
  we cancel this, I get the the other one.
• 55:37
  And of course, you can imagine the other one was significantly more
• 55:40
  expensive, But in this moment, my emotional trigger was,
• 55:46
  was activated, so to speak.
• 55:47
  And where before, I I thought it was more like a bit of a
• 55:51
  more rational, I don't want to say rational purchase,
• 55:53
  but it was like I needed a trolley.
• 55:55
  And so I thought more a little bit more practical.
• 55:58
  But the moment I saw the other one,
• 56:00
  and I thought this is what I really what I really want.
• 56:03
  And then, I don't want to say the price doesn't play a role anymore,
• 56:06
  but but, in this case it's much more the
• 56:10
  desirability of and and maybe the I would
• 56:13
  say even the the artistry of this.
• 56:16
  And then you also understand that, you know,
• 56:18
  it's the first collection,
• 56:19
  so there there will never be another first collection.
• 56:22
  Then you also start to understand that there is it's
• 56:25
  extremely limited.
• 56:26
  And you also know if I don't and in the store,
• 56:28
  they told me that they only had one that they got for,
• 56:32
  you know, for Hong Kong.
• 56:33
  And then I I thought, okay.
• 56:35
  Then maybe they had one or two in mainland China,
• 56:38
  and then maybe another few in the US.
• 56:40
  So I also understood that if I don't make this purchase now,
• 56:44
  even maybe wait another day, or another hour,
• 56:47
  then probably it's gone forever.
• 56:49
  And so suddenly the and it goes back to also what you said
• 56:52
  before, the exclusivity.
• 56:54
  And that it's basically also marking an interesting moment of time.
• 56:58
  And then also I was on on this trip to Hong Kong,
• 57:01
  and then also thought, okay,
• 57:02
  it will always be a memory to buy it exactly in the store.
• 57:04
  So there were so many kind of stories that were overlapping
• 57:07
  and suddenly my willingness to pay from a price point
• 57:11
  basically doubled in in that moment.
• 57:13
  And I think this is again a great lesson on, you know,
• 57:16
  that the value is often somewhere completely different.
• 57:19
  And, also often unexpected from
• 57:22
  from, you know, a customer perspective.
• 57:24
  And there, we bring again the idea of surprise and and, yeah,
• 57:28
  emotionally inspiring people.
• 57:31
  Exactly. It's what we say. It's it's purely emotional.
• 57:33
  It's not rational at all because you you pay maybe four
• 57:36
  or five times the price of the first story.
• 57:38
  But now your emotion,
• 57:39
  you're at your your emotion level is at is at the top,
• 57:42
  and you will remember that.
• 57:43
  And this is and this is what luxury should be about,
• 57:46
  is to to have, you know,
• 57:48
  this special moment in life that you find something is
• 57:51
  which is just for you.
• 57:52
  You you're falling in love for for different kind of reason,
• 57:56
  and, and, and, this is,
• 57:59
  this is fantastic.
• 58:01
  And and and you found it because you move it yourself in the boutiques.
• 58:06
  They didn't didn't propose you.
• 58:09
  So it's always also something that I I like to do when I
• 58:12
  drive on holiday.
• 58:13
  I like to take small roads instead in instead of motorways
• 58:17
  because I love, of course, I'm French,
• 58:20
  so I love my gastronomy.
• 58:22
  So I love to to discover, you know, a new restaurant.
• 58:26
  I do a a step even with my kids.
• 58:28
  My kids are very young,
• 58:29
  but they love to to eat oysters or foie gras.
• 58:32
  They love to discover the the real food with quality.
• 58:35
  And I have numerous, example on going on a small
• 58:39
  road, stopping, you know, not knowing very well the
• 58:43
  restaurant, just see one or two review and and getting
• 58:47
  an amazing surprise,
• 58:50
  in Dordogne, for example, the the the the country of,
• 58:53
  black truffle in, in France.
• 58:56
  We stopped with my my wife
• 58:59
  on on the road, and she jumped off the car.
• 59:02
  It was the end of the service, but they accepted service.
• 59:05
  And and we had a fantastic,
• 59:07
  four course meal in a a one star Michelin restaurant for
• 59:11
  below one hundred euro per person with a glass of wine for each meal.
• 59:15
  So we had to we had to be careful on on on on on the
• 59:19
  driving after, but,
• 59:22
  it was, it was a fantastic experience.
• 59:24
  And then and then on top, which was,
• 59:27
  even it it also trigger my emotion because I,
• 59:31
  I discovered fantastic white wine,
• 59:33
  and I asked the the the restaurant there, you know, Oh,
• 59:37
  I love this wine. It's fantastic. I didn't know.
• 59:40
  Can I can I buy you a a bottle?
• 59:44
  I would be, you know,
• 59:45
  I would be very very pleased and honored. He said, yeah.
• 59:47
  With with no problem.
• 59:48
  So I said, you know, I want the beer arrived.
• 59:51
  I said, okay. You're gonna charge me. It's normal.
• 59:53
  You know? But it's so it was okay.
• 59:54
  You know? It was the holidays.
• 59:56
  I had a very nice moment with my wife,
• 59:58
  and I discovered this wine, which was fantastic.
• 1:00:01
  And it just charged me the cost price of the restaurant.
• 1:00:03
  I was completely shocked. He came to me and said, sorry.
• 1:00:06
  I wanted to give you, three butters,
• 1:00:09
  but I have only two left.
• 1:00:10
  So in my cellar, I give you one, and,
• 1:00:13
  and it it did charge me just the cost of the butter for the restaurant.
• 1:00:17
  So sorry.
• 1:00:20
  So now my emotion with this restaurant and this region is
• 1:00:22
  is is triggered for forever, and and this is, all,
• 1:00:26
  what we are looking about in life is to have emotions.
• 1:00:30
  So you have emotions with family moments, with culture,
• 1:00:34
  cinema, singing,
• 1:00:38
  museum arts, and luxury should, should look for this,
• 1:00:42
  emotional key also for for their their clients,
• 1:00:46
  and they are they have a lot of lot of opportunities.
• 1:00:51
  And I think it's fantastic for you as a as a consultant to
• 1:00:54
  help them because I can tell you,
• 1:00:56
  you have a you have a open field to help a lot of lot of
• 1:01:00
  companies because they can they can improve much,
• 1:01:03
  much more to to to to get connected with this,
• 1:01:08
  with, their clients on their on their emotional level.
• 1:01:11
  And at every moment of the process of before,
• 1:01:17
  welcoming them, welcoming them during the the transaction,
• 1:01:20
  after the transaction.
• 1:01:21
  Because, of course,
• 1:01:22
  you want to to have loyal clients and to want to when you
• 1:01:26
  hook them, you want them to come back.
• 1:01:28
  So how to make, how to to make them, coming back,
• 1:01:32
  but it's to to entertain the conversation, like,
• 1:01:35
  with a friend or or a family.
• 1:01:36
  You you have a house.
• 1:01:37
  You have to invite them. You have to take care about them.
• 1:01:41
  And not only, you know,
• 1:01:42
  you didn't you did purchase this last year,
• 1:01:45
  but you didn't purchase that.
• 1:01:46
  So your level of, VIP is going down.
• 1:01:49
  And,
• 1:01:52
  this is what happened to one of my friend, two months ago.
• 1:01:55
  He he didn't buy a watch, for for three years.
• 1:01:59
  So so now he's not considered anymore as a as a VIP,
• 1:02:02
  as a and and in the past, he was,
• 1:02:05
  he was buying a lot of watches to to to a very nice brand.
• 1:02:09
  And, and this is a this is a pity because in a lot of,
• 1:02:13
  companies, CRM is managed now by Excel sheet and by cohorts.
• 1:02:18
  You know?
• 1:02:19
  So, they want to give priority only on the people who bought the
• 1:02:22
  year before, six months before, the year before,
• 1:02:24
  and two years before.
• 1:02:25
  And you forgot about the history about your your clients.
• 1:02:30
  And it's often, the history about your clients is often,
• 1:02:34
  known by your sales ambassador much more than,
• 1:02:37
  your your database
• 1:02:42
  tools linked to to AI or Internet.
• 1:02:47
  And I think you said something with with this example that is
• 1:02:51
  so critical is it's about the relationship.
• 1:02:54
  And if I think for example now,
• 1:02:56
  if I take the the example of the of the trolley purchase,
• 1:03:00
  you know, why didn't I buy another trolley before?
• 1:03:05
  It was not that I, you know,
• 1:03:07
  could not afford buying another trolley.
• 1:03:09
  It's just I loved the trolley that I had before so much that
• 1:03:13
  I, you know, there was no reason for me to exchange it.
• 1:03:16
  There were so many memories that were connected with so
• 1:03:18
  many flights, so many trips, and so on.
• 1:03:21
  So it would have been something that I,
• 1:03:24
  and maybe I would never have replaced this trolley if the
• 1:03:26
  trolley would not have broken.
• 1:03:29
  But for the company that was the you know manufacturer of my first trolley,
• 1:03:35
  and they will never know it,
• 1:03:37
  I was probably one of their best sales ambassadors.
• 1:03:39
  Because you can imagine almost any important meeting that I had,
• 1:03:43
  because I often come from the airport into the meeting room,
• 1:03:46
  I was rolling in with that trolley.
• 1:03:48
  And people say, wow, this thing looks so cool, and and so on.
• 1:03:52
  So I probably sold for for,
• 1:03:55
  that other brand probably thirty, forty, fifty trolleys, so to speak,
• 1:04:00
  without me being the person because I don't I don't need a second one.
• 1:04:04
  But I was always so, you know,
• 1:04:06
  it made me always proud when people said, oh, you know,
• 1:04:09
  this is so cool.
• 1:04:10
  And, and I think this is what also brands underestimate when they
• 1:04:14
  what you as you just say, when they look at the short term,
• 1:04:17
  what is happening right now?
• 1:04:19
  Or, you know you you mentioned your your examples in air
• 1:04:23
  force that you were not flying them very often.
• 1:04:25
  And I think also probably because maybe just the
• 1:04:27
  geography where you were you were living.
• 1:04:30
  So most likely this is the case.
• 1:04:32
  And, you know, I have examples myself where, you know, when,
• 1:04:34
  you know, as you know, I lived in in Japan for many years,
• 1:04:37
  then I lived in Europe, then in the US.
• 1:04:39
  So of course, you change preferences, for example,
• 1:04:42
  on the airline, not because you don't like the airline,
• 1:04:44
  but sometimes it's convenient.
• 1:04:46
  You know, or the airline's not flying to,
• 1:04:48
  that often to the place where you live right now,
• 1:04:51
  that doesn't mean that anything changed emotionally to that airline.
• 1:04:54
  You would probably be willing to reactivate immediately
• 1:04:58
  when it's convenient.
• 1:04:59
  But if now,
• 1:05:02
  you know, after you gave, let's take an airline example,
• 1:05:05
  you gave maybe the airline for many many years loyalty.
• 1:05:08
  So take your Air France example,
• 1:05:10
  now you don't fly with them.
• 1:05:12
  And if you had come back and they had downgraded you
• 1:05:17
  and didn't take you any more serious so to speak as a client,
• 1:05:22
  then you know maybe you would not have any motivation to come back.
• 1:05:24
  But instead, you know, they write a nice handwritten note.
• 1:05:27
  They say welcome back after all these years.
• 1:05:30
  They greet you again.
• 1:05:31
  They bring take you back into the family.
• 1:05:33
  Now the loyalty that you already had before is going to
• 1:05:37
  go significantly up.
• 1:05:39
  While in most cases in in today's world,
• 1:05:43
  the brand actually will do exactly the opposite.
• 1:05:45
  It will try to kind of, you know, downgrade you.
• 1:05:47
  And then what happens emotionally?
• 1:05:49
  Because we as we spoke spoke about emotion.
• 1:05:51
  If I'm VIP for five years and now the brand says,
• 1:05:56
  you know, Luke or Daniel, you guys are not VIPs anymore.
• 1:06:01
  How does it feel? It's going to hurt our emotions.
• 1:06:04
  And then, of course,
• 1:06:05
  why would we be loyal to a brand that does this?
• 1:06:08
  This is, I think, also that we're in luxury and, you know,
• 1:06:12
  in hospitality, of course, it's it's huge.
• 1:06:15
  And it's not only in hospitality, you know.
• 1:06:17
  So many retailers have loyalty programs.
• 1:06:19
  Malls have loyalty programs.
• 1:06:21
  Where they, you know,
• 1:06:22
  give very special treatments to their top customers.
• 1:06:25
  But opportunity and risk are so close here.
• 1:06:30
  And I would actually want to see one day a study to show how
• 1:06:34
  many top customers brands actually lost because of
• 1:06:39
  ill designed loyalty programs.
• 1:06:41
  And,
• 1:06:43
  of of, you know, as you said,
• 1:06:45
  loyalty programs may maybe even managed in different departments.
• 1:06:48
  You have the person who has the emotional connection,
• 1:06:52
  if if the brand has that to the top client.
• 1:06:54
  But then you have a maybe second department that manages
• 1:06:57
  the loyalty program.
• 1:06:58
  They are disconnected.
• 1:06:59
  And then one doesn't know what the other is doing,
• 1:07:02
  and then you create, like, complete chaos.
• 1:07:05
  Yeah.
• 1:07:05
  I don't know if you know this story, but,
• 1:07:08
  in Cartier, the brand Cartier, they have a VIP,
• 1:07:14
  a sales ambassador dedicated to the,
• 1:07:17
  they call they are called grand vendeurs.
• 1:07:19
  So it means they're not attached to a boutique.
• 1:07:22
  They follow their clients, you know, all over the world.
• 1:07:24
  And one of the best grand vendeurs of Cartier,
• 1:07:27
  even he was the best now.
• 1:07:29
  I think he he he's retired,
• 1:07:32
  Was a a normal guy who was working originally
• 1:07:36
  after at the after sales repair service
• 1:07:40
  in the back, you know, in the back of the boutique,
• 1:07:44
  of of Cartier,
• 1:07:47
  Place Vendome, and, a long time ago.
• 1:07:50
  And then once he received a client who came,
• 1:07:53
  I don't remember if it was for a pen or a lighter. You know?
• 1:07:56
  It was not working.
• 1:07:57
  And, you know, on the on on the on the on
• 1:08:01
  the noble floor with the salespeople, they say, no.
• 1:08:04
  You have to go.
• 1:08:05
  It's so they they didn't understand who was the client,
• 1:08:09
  and she just had a repair to do.
• 1:08:10
  And so she didn't want to buy anything,
• 1:08:13
  so it was not interesting, you know, for the salespeople.
• 1:08:15
  And so she sent her to the to the back of the the the
• 1:08:19
  boutique, really, at the back,
• 1:08:20
  and the guy the poor guy was doing the after sales service,
• 1:08:23
  and he and he gave an an exceptional service to the lady.
• 1:08:27
  And then the lady came back to the the,
• 1:08:30
  I don't know, a little bit after for same thing.
• 1:08:33
  Another after sales service, you know, I don't know.
• 1:08:36
  Or yeah.
• 1:08:36
  And the the the service she received from this guy was outstanding.
• 1:08:41
  So, then she came back in the boutique another time,
• 1:08:44
  now to buy, and she say, no.
• 1:08:46
  No. But, guys, I want only to be served by this guy.
• 1:08:51
  And she was, one of the top princess of Middle East.
• 1:08:54
  I don't know if it was a sheikh of of Qatar or Kuwait.
• 1:08:57
  I don't remember.
• 1:08:58
  But she spent a fortune,
• 1:09:00
  but this is the guy she wanted to be served.
• 1:09:03
  And this guy became one of the grand vendor of Cartier,
• 1:09:07
  because he gave exceptional service to a lady that
• 1:09:12
  normally she was not coming to.
• 1:09:14
  She was not
• 1:09:16
  identified as a top buyer or whatever by by the people, and this is,
• 1:09:21
  this is also a big mistake that a lot of people are are doing
• 1:09:25
  in in sales organization.
• 1:09:27
  A client is a client,
• 1:09:28
  and you have to take care about
• 1:09:31
  about this client,
• 1:09:33
  whatever they are coming from for information,
• 1:09:36
  for maybe some time just to use your bathroom.
• 1:09:40
  You should be,
• 1:09:42
  you should give the service.
• 1:09:45
  You you have to you have to you you have to give
• 1:09:49
  the level of service that the luxury brand should give.
• 1:09:53
  That you you don't have to think that, should I do it?
• 1:09:56
  You have to give the luxury service that the luxury brand should give.
• 1:10:00
  Otherwise, you are to the you're going to the post office or a
• 1:10:04
  supermarket or whatever, it will get the same.
• 1:10:07
  So if you are not able to give, the luxury service,
• 1:10:12
  you you you are you will lose a lot of lot of clients.
• 1:10:18
  This example also to me shows
• 1:10:20
  that, you know, empathy and even, you know,
• 1:10:24
  I use the word now on purpose,
• 1:10:26
  being humble as a brand and as a salesperson is so important.
• 1:10:30
  And I I feel very often, you know,
• 1:10:32
  when I audit experiences or when I go myself to a store,
• 1:10:36
  a restaurant, or hotel, it's so often that I feel like the
• 1:10:40
  people on the other side, so to speak,
• 1:10:43
  that they, you know,
• 1:10:44
  sometimes are a bit arrogant because they believe now their
• 1:10:47
  brand is fantastic.
• 1:10:48
  And so you almost come sometimes from a pedestal,
• 1:10:52
  and then the client as a client you come in and you feel
• 1:10:56
  or they try to almost make you feel inferior.
• 1:11:00
  And I think this is also so critical what you said, this approach.
• 1:11:04
  And I think this Grand Vendeur example really shows how how
• 1:11:09
  powerful it is to be humble and to take the the human,
• 1:11:13
  in in, you know, and to respect the human, but also to
• 1:11:20
  to not have an agenda, so to speak.
• 1:11:22
  So if the agenda was, okay,
• 1:11:24
  we only service this person if they sell,
• 1:11:27
  if they buy something,
• 1:11:29
  And it's almost a bit like what we just discussed in the
• 1:11:31
  loyalty programs.
• 1:11:32
  It feels not authentic.
• 1:11:33
  It feels very transactional.
• 1:11:35
  And actually we don't like transactions.
• 1:11:37
  We like to be, you know, we like emotional things.
• 1:11:40
  And these emotional things then lead to a transaction.
• 1:11:43
  But, you know, while in mass market transactions are normal
• 1:11:46
  because, you know,
• 1:11:47
  the the product doesn't give us a lot of emotions,
• 1:11:49
  so it's all about efficiency and so on.
• 1:11:51
  Actually, it's about, you know,
• 1:11:53
  if the transaction comes automatically,
• 1:11:55
  if the emotion is first.
• 1:11:57
  So we have to basically look into into the emotional
• 1:12:00
  emotional triggers.
• 1:12:02
  So but I wanted to to,
• 1:12:04
  to ask you maybe two two more two more, things.
• 1:12:07
  The first is now in your current role as you start as
• 1:12:11
  you took over the role,
• 1:12:13
  what do you see now also with your experience that you bring
• 1:12:16
  from all the other assignments that you had in
• 1:12:19
  during your life?
• 1:12:20
  What are for you now the kind of key priorities to
• 1:12:25
  take your brand from where it is today to maybe even a
• 1:12:29
  different level of luxury and luxury experiences?
• 1:12:33
  So we have we have two key challenge challenges.
• 1:12:36
  Sorry.
• 1:12:37
  The the the first key is to,
• 1:12:39
  to really found find the retailers that understand our business model.
• 1:12:44
  Because now a lot of multi brand retailers,
• 1:12:46
  they only sell,
• 1:12:48
  they're they're used to brand wars to sell watch brand,
• 1:12:51
  and they are only distributors.
• 1:12:53
  You know?
• 1:12:54
  What depends of the popularity of the disability of one watch
• 1:12:58
  brand or another.
• 1:12:59
  And then clients are coming, and they say, okay.
• 1:13:01
  I want the red or the the blue, and, no.
• 1:13:03
  You have to wait.
• 1:13:04
  You have to be on the waiting list, etcetera, etcetera.
• 1:13:07
  And, what we see that,
• 1:13:11
  because all the high jewelry Maisons left this,
• 1:13:13
  this network, now they have some jewelry, but what they do,
• 1:13:18
  they say, Okay, my client is buying a ten thousand watch,
• 1:13:21
  a ten thousand dollar watch.
• 1:13:23
  Maybe I will present him a three thousand, jewelry,
• 1:13:26
  because then he can buy immediately for his wife,
• 1:13:29
  or his fiancee, you know, as
• 1:13:33
  a gift,
• 1:13:36
  not to be so guilty to buy a ten thousand dollar watch, etc.
• 1:13:40
  Instead of thinking,
• 1:13:41
  if he has the purchase power to buy a ten thousand dollar watch,
• 1:13:45
  he has the purchase power to buy a ten thousand dollar gift
• 1:13:48
  for his wife, for his fiancee.
• 1:13:50
  And, and, and we see a lot of retailers who have a sales team,
• 1:13:55
  who are very that they don't want to make a little effort,
• 1:13:58
  and they but the opportunity of of business is is really there,
• 1:14:02
  especially with the offer that we give with outstanding
• 1:14:05
  quality of diamonds and craftsmanship from from Italy.
• 1:14:09
  And, and, so the second challenge is that we we need to support our growth.
• 1:14:13
  We are we are very successful.
• 1:14:15
  We are very good sellout figures with our our partners at the moment.
• 1:14:19
  And to support our growth,
• 1:14:20
  we we we decided to to invest and we bought the latest
• 1:14:25
  and the oldest manufacturer, jewelry manufacturer
• 1:14:29
  in Milan, based in Milan.
• 1:14:30
  Because in Italy, most of the manufacturers are in Valencia.
• 1:14:33
  It's an hour,
• 1:14:35
  an hour and a fifteen minute drive from from Milan.
• 1:14:39
  But we bought the latest to the oldest manufacturer of Milan
• 1:14:43
  inside Milan, and we will enlarge this manufacturer,
• 1:14:47
  and we will also link it to,
• 1:14:50
  link this manufacturer to a jewelry school,
• 1:14:54
  to be able to guarantee, to maintain this level,
• 1:14:57
  and this tradition of craftsmanship,
• 1:15:00
  at the highest level,
• 1:15:01
  starting from the youngest age from a goldsmith.
• 1:15:04
  And, because the the the Milanese tradition and the Milanese
• 1:15:09
  style is very specific,
• 1:15:12
  It's very, centered around the stone, the diamond,
• 1:15:15
  not so much about the mounting and the gold around.
• 1:15:18
  We because we want to,
• 1:15:20
  our aim is to to to enhance the diamond and and the refraction
• 1:15:24
  of the light of the diamond.
• 1:15:25
  So this is the centerpiece of of every piece of jewel,
• 1:15:28
  a necklace, a bracelet,
• 1:15:32
  a nice ring or pair of earring.
• 1:15:34
  And, and we want to have that level of excellence.
• 1:15:38
  So we want to have our own manufacturer.
• 1:15:40
  We are having our own manufacturer.
• 1:15:42
  We're gonna link to to a school,
• 1:15:44
  and then we can support the growth and to supply the the
• 1:15:47
  the the highest quality of of of of diamond jewelry
• 1:15:51
  because we are only focused on diamonds.
• 1:15:53
  We don't do semi precious stone.
• 1:15:55
  We do only diamonds jewelry.
• 1:15:58
  And, and this is our two key challenge.
• 1:16:01
  So to find the right partner,
• 1:16:03
  we really understand our business model and we
• 1:16:06
  understand that there is a market opportunity
• 1:16:08
  to to to to reach some wealthy client,
• 1:16:13
  And, the our actual partners who are, for example,
• 1:16:16
  in Europe, and we are going to
• 1:16:19
  expand the network or Paris and and other that that will come
• 1:16:23
  soon because we we we're in the process to sign new contract.
• 1:16:28
  We want to support also this growth by investing and and to
• 1:16:33
  guarantee the level of know how and the level of,
• 1:16:37
  exquisite quality of the craftsmanship with the with the
• 1:16:40
  best raw material that,
• 1:16:42
  that we can provide for for this jewelry.
• 1:16:45
  Oh, wonderful. Wonderful.
• 1:16:47
  So it's it's basically a challenge that is about,
• 1:16:50
  you know, bringing the the artistry that
• 1:16:55
  you're already creating to another level,
• 1:16:58
  but also to enhance the,
• 1:17:01
  as we also discussed during during the podcast today,
• 1:17:04
  the the level of service, the level of personalization,
• 1:17:08
  to the customers.
• 1:17:09
  Exactly. Exactly.
• 1:17:10
  We we like to we like to say that we are the the Italian
• 1:17:13
  tailor of high jewelry.
• 1:17:15
  It means that we can provide also we pro of course,
• 1:17:18
  we have collection that we we propose to our to our business
• 1:17:22
  partner, But we can provide also a tailor made approach of
• 1:17:25
  high jewelry, and we have several requests from clients,
• 1:17:29
  you know, they want to have their one of a kind piece, unique piece.
• 1:17:32
  And we do that.
• 1:17:34
  We sit with them, we design, we design them, and,
• 1:17:37
  we do it only for them, and, with, with,
• 1:17:41
  the highest quality of diamond that we can find on the market.
• 1:17:45
  And, and, this is really important.
• 1:17:48
  We welcome them, even if they can come to Milan,
• 1:17:51
  in our own our own showroom, near the Duomo.
• 1:17:54
  It's a very nice, a place that, of course,
• 1:17:56
  you you will be the most welcome on your next visit to to Milan.
• 1:18:00
  And, and,
• 1:18:02
  and I encourage any of you, your listeners,
• 1:18:05
  by to to visit us here in Milan.
• 1:18:07
  They want to see our showroom and our
• 1:18:10
  collection, or to go to our website, marcovalante,
• 1:18:14
  ijewellery dot com, or our Instagram
• 1:18:17
  account equally.
• 1:18:19
  Wonderful.
• 1:18:20
  And we will we will put the links to,
• 1:18:23
  your brand and also how to contact you.
• 1:18:25
  We'll put them in the show notes.
• 1:18:27
  So and, as as Luke said,
• 1:18:30
  all of you who watch this and want to get in touch,
• 1:18:32
  want to learn more about the brand,
• 1:18:34
  then feel free to reach out.
• 1:18:36
  And then, Luke, maybe last question for me is where do you see the the future of luxury?
• 1:18:42
  Where do you see the the industry heading?
• 1:18:45
  Where do you see trends?
• 1:18:47
  And what do you think will be for, you know,
• 1:18:51
  managers of luxury that are listening now to to, this podcast?
• 1:18:56
  What will be critical success factors
• 1:18:59
  to, you know, lead the change that we are all experiencing?
• 1:19:04
  The the critical factor,
• 1:19:07
  the critical factor is the human relationship.
• 1:19:11
  So the human relationship that you have with your clients.
• 1:19:14
  Because as as we said earlier,
• 1:19:18
  this is the key factor of success.
• 1:19:21
  You can, you can fell in love with a brand for the design,
• 1:19:25
  for for the articles, the products.
• 1:19:29
  If the relationship is a disaster,
• 1:19:31
  it's killing everything.
• 1:19:33
  So if you if you can imagine,
• 1:19:35
  if you are the owner of a brand or or the shareholder of a group,
• 1:19:39
  you you invest a lot of money to hire super high designers.
• 1:19:44
  You you open the best boutique in the world in the best location,
• 1:19:48
  but your your your your the human relationship with the
• 1:19:51
  client is a disaster,
• 1:19:53
  but you your investment are worth nothing at the end of the day.
• 1:19:57
  So you're losing everything.
• 1:19:58
  So the more and more it will become automatic
• 1:20:02
  with, you know, CRM management tools through,
• 1:20:07
  through AI or other system,
• 1:20:10
  the more and more the human relationship will be a key
• 1:20:14
  factor of success.
• 1:20:15
  So you need to invest in this human relationship
• 1:20:19
  with, everybody from your team, by the way,
• 1:20:22
  not only the front people,
• 1:20:24
  who are talking to your clients,
• 1:20:26
  but the back office people who are normally here to support
• 1:20:30
  them, by the way.
• 1:20:30
  I like what you said about, you know,
• 1:20:32
  to reverse the org chart and to put the CEO at the at
• 1:20:37
  the at the bottom.
• 1:20:38
  It's exactly,
• 1:20:41
  what we should do.
• 1:20:42
  We are the we are the support team for the the front people
• 1:20:45
  in in connection with the clients,
• 1:20:47
  but you have also to know about the clients.
• 1:20:50
  So first, it should be compulsory for everybody from the back office
• 1:20:54
  to go in the boutique and to,
• 1:20:57
  to to have a retail experience because we are in the retail,
• 1:21:01
  business model retail business model.
• 1:21:04
  We are not, even if you do b two b,
• 1:21:07
  at the end of the day, you sell to a final client.
• 1:21:10
  So you need to know about retail.
• 1:21:14
  In, most of the case in business school,
• 1:21:17
  people forgot that I forgot,
• 1:21:19
  I forgotten that retail is retail.
• 1:21:21
  You have to be in a boutique and to talk to clients.
• 1:21:25
  This is really important,
• 1:21:26
  and that your relationship with the client can make a huge difference.
• 1:21:30
  You you can increase, you know,
• 1:21:34
  I always say is that a very good sales ambassador can do
• 1:21:37
  plus twenty plus thirty percent,
• 1:21:39
  and a very bad can do minus twenty, minus thirty.
• 1:21:42
  So the gap between two two sales ambassador is sixty percent.
• 1:21:47
  This is a killing this is a killing,
• 1:21:50
  effect on your retail business model.
• 1:21:53
  If you have this this gap between two salespeople,
• 1:21:56
  plus thirty, minus thirty,
• 1:21:58
  it's a financial disaster at the end of the day.
• 1:22:01
  So you you have to have the the
• 1:22:06
  the the best ambassadors.
• 1:22:07
  And, so the for me,
• 1:22:09
  the the the future apps the absolute future is the human
• 1:22:13
  relationship between the brand and and the the clients.
• 1:22:19
  Wonderful.
• 1:22:19
  And I think this is a great kind of circle that we were
• 1:22:23
  going from since the beginning of of our conversation.
• 1:22:27
  You know, I remember when I asked you the question, what is luxury?
• 1:22:30
  You spoke about the exceptional quality of the materials,
• 1:22:33
  the craftsmanship, the real history,
• 1:22:35
  and the exclusivity.
• 1:22:37
  But then you said all of this has to translate
• 1:22:41
  into the emotional key of the client.
• 1:22:45
  And then we discussed, I think,
• 1:22:46
  in the one and a half hours of our conversation,
• 1:22:49
  all kind of aspects, of it, you know,
• 1:22:51
  from the DNA of the brand that has to match the client DNA.
• 1:22:55
  So we have also here, again, the human the human effector.
• 1:22:59
  Or, you know, you mentioned that very often in in our
• 1:23:03
  reality today, salespeople describe what is the obvious,
• 1:23:07
  but then they maybe forget the human experience.
• 1:23:09
  You know, we also said, I love what you said, for example,
• 1:23:12
  in incentive system, one plus one is three.
• 1:23:15
  Because, again, the the human factor that you bring in
• 1:23:19
  is so valuable.
• 1:23:20
  And it's maybe I don't wanna say more valuable,
• 1:23:22
  but at least as valuable as all the other aspects in the,
• 1:23:26
  in in the, in in the entire customer experience.
• 1:23:30
  You know?
• 1:23:30
  And then we spoke about the the,
• 1:23:34
  now in in your summary or in where you see the future is heading,
• 1:23:38
  that the human relationship becomes
• 1:23:41
  the really the mission critical.
• 1:23:42
  And I totally agree with you.
• 1:23:44
  I think that in the world in which we're heading in,
• 1:23:48
  there's not so much, let's say,
• 1:23:49
  we know for sure what's going to be in five years,
• 1:23:52
  in ten years, in twenty years.
• 1:23:54
  No one has the crystal ball.
• 1:23:56
  But I would, if we basically say that the
• 1:23:59
  past is a bit of a predictor of the future,
• 1:24:02
  we can probably assume that our world is going to be more
• 1:24:06
  interconnected digitally.
• 1:24:09
  We will probably not use dramatically less social
• 1:24:12
  networks, but probably more.
• 1:24:15
  And we will have a much more integrated life
• 1:24:19
  between the digital and the physical.
• 1:24:22
  And this means that the pure physical experiences
• 1:24:29
  will probably be less than what we have today.
• 1:24:31
  So if our world becomes more digital almost automatically
• 1:24:35
  there's less and less space for physical experiences.
• 1:24:38
  Which also means that the physical experiences,
• 1:24:41
  when we experience them,
• 1:24:44
  become so much more valuable because they become almost exclusive.
• 1:24:48
  And I think this is to me where also today a lot of brands are
• 1:24:52
  failing already and then maybe even we're going to be failing
• 1:24:55
  more in the future is that if they provide today only a
• 1:24:59
  mediocre experience,
• 1:25:02
  then they're already kind of wasting the time of the of the customers.
• 1:25:07
  And also I wanted to kind of
• 1:25:10
  go to one of the things you said before that, you know,
• 1:25:13
  once we experience something much better,
• 1:25:15
  we don't want to go go back.
• 1:25:17
  And I think what also a lot of companies underestimate is
• 1:25:22
  the the individual human has all kind of experiences in
• 1:25:26
  different categories.
• 1:25:28
  So, let's say
• 1:25:31
  and if I if I take a for example, let's say,
• 1:25:35
  we would be in automotive.
• 1:25:37
  Then almost naturally,
• 1:25:40
  what what we would do is we would benchmark ourselves with
• 1:25:43
  our competitors in automotive.
• 1:25:44
  And we would look into, you know, what is brand a doing,
• 1:25:47
  b doing, c doing.
• 1:25:49
  And we would make sure that we are at least on par with them.
• 1:25:52
  But I always want my clients across the different categories
• 1:25:55
  and say this is not enough anymore in the world today.
• 1:25:58
  Because if they buy a piece of jewelry or they go to a
• 1:26:03
  fancy restaurant or you know have a lot of other experiences,
• 1:26:07
  now they will compare the experience in that particular
• 1:26:11
  category with all other experiences.
• 1:26:13
  And if then the brand in a particular
• 1:26:16
  category or the brands as a collective in that category
• 1:26:19
  fall behind because in that category that category
• 1:26:23
  is maybe a little bit more traditional,
• 1:26:25
  suddenly you can get irrelevant as an entire category.
• 1:26:28
  So I think the the,
• 1:26:31
  my feeling is also just want also to maybe get your feel on
• 1:26:35
  that is since the change is accelerating so much,
• 1:26:40
  and the chain it looks like things are changing faster and faster.
• 1:26:43
  And even if you see adaptation rates of key technologies,
• 1:26:46
  you know, you mentioned AI.
• 1:26:48
  It's the fastest adaptive technology ever in human history.
• 1:26:51
  And if you think about generative AI,
• 1:26:54
  it's not so long that we saw the first applications,
• 1:26:57
  and now every company is is trying to see how can they apply it.
• 1:27:01
  So we can assume that these kind of changes are going to be
• 1:27:04
  even more steep, more drastic, and faster.
• 1:27:08
  And I think, here, the the the as you said,
• 1:27:11
  the human relationship is is is critical.
• 1:27:14
  But what do you feel like in this
• 1:27:18
  faster acceleration of change?
• 1:27:23
  Anything else that companies have to to focus on to kind
• 1:27:27
  of lead this change?
• 1:27:29
  By
• 1:27:31
  training, for me, is a is a is a is a key factor.
• 1:27:35
  You have to train to train to train again to train to train.
• 1:27:38
  And, again, I think the hospitality industry is is quite good at
• 1:27:42
  that, training people.
• 1:27:44
  They do that.
• 1:27:45
  You just have to be careful not to train them on the same
• 1:27:48
  mistakes always always because it's like when I receive a
• 1:27:51
  resume and and people are saying to me, oh, yeah.
• 1:27:54
  Fifteen years of experience in this field.
• 1:27:56
  I say, yeah, but I don't know the quality of your experience.
• 1:27:58
  So, no offense.
• 1:28:00
  But, I I'm gonna check that first.
• 1:28:03
  It's the same,
• 1:28:06
  so so train training, you have to you know, it's like sport.
• 1:28:09
  If you want to be the best, you have to train.
• 1:28:11
  You have to train. You have to, always.
• 1:28:13
  So never never stop training to to to perform.
• 1:28:19
  Second, I think you have to be open also to creativity,
• 1:28:23
  with your team.
• 1:28:24
  We we talk about empower people.
• 1:28:26
  You have to be open to creativity from your team.
• 1:28:29
  Because more and more now,
• 1:28:31
  luxury maison belongs to big corporate group, and it's,
• 1:28:35
  you know, it's coming with management process,
• 1:28:38
  top down approach.
• 1:28:39
  You have to do this to be successful, etcetera, etcetera.
• 1:28:42
  And there is no more,
• 1:28:44
  room for creativity
• 1:28:47
  from, from everybody at each level,
• 1:28:51
  from the team, and and we have to be, open mind.
• 1:28:55
  And you have to respect sometimes the the the the style.
• 1:28:59
  Sometimes the style of salespeople are different than
• 1:29:02
  the stereotype that you were thinking of,
• 1:29:04
  and they are successful.
• 1:29:05
  You know, the the I love that financial proverb,
• 1:29:08
  which say the market is is always right.
• 1:29:10
  So if your client is buying,
• 1:29:11
  the client is buying the style of the sales ambassador.
• 1:29:15
  They respect the guidelines of of the brand,
• 1:29:19
  has to be, respected also.
• 1:29:21
  You know, it's like in a in a if you go, for me,
• 1:29:25
  a fine gastronomic restaurant,
• 1:29:26
  always the the the killer question for me at the end is,
• 1:29:31
  do you want a dessert?
• 1:29:33
  I mean, guys, you are in a business model,
• 1:29:39
  Everybody around the table, of course,
• 1:29:41
  will say no because everybody's taking care about, you know,
• 1:29:44
  his health, and they say, okay.
• 1:29:46
  It's the evening. We don't yeah.
• 1:29:47
  Now you are you are asked not to eat sugar anymore in the
• 1:29:50
  evening, etcetera etcetera.
• 1:29:52
  So, of course, everybody will say no.
• 1:29:54
  But, if you ask, if you come and you
• 1:29:57
  say, oh, you know, today, we have a very special dessert,
• 1:30:01
  made of blah blah blah.
• 1:30:02
  It's coming with this special chocolat that,
• 1:30:06
  coming from Ivory Coast.
• 1:30:07
  It was roasted at a certain temperature.
• 1:30:10
  It's an exquisite. It's a one of a kind.
• 1:30:13
  There is always one guy or lady around the table who will say yes.
• 1:30:17
  And then if you have one yes, then you will have two, three,
• 1:30:20
  then, a lady will say yes,
• 1:30:21
  and all the ladies will say yes also.
• 1:30:23
  And then it's plus thirty percent or twenty five percent
• 1:30:26
  of of the bill, of turnover.
• 1:30:29
  It's why also if you go to really,
• 1:30:31
  really high level gastronomic restaurant,
• 1:30:34
  they bring you a of this area because you see all of them and
• 1:30:38
  you cannot resist.
• 1:30:39
  It's the same with the cheese, you know,
• 1:30:41
  from the three star meshed.
• 1:30:43
  You always ask why they're coming with everything a bit.
• 1:30:46
  Because if they put that you the show in front of you,
• 1:30:49
  you cannot resist.
• 1:30:51
  It's the same, so it's very good.
• 1:30:53
  So when in the restaurant, the the waiter is coming and ask,
• 1:30:56
  does everybody want a dessert?
• 1:30:58
  It's a disaster for for for for the restaurant.
• 1:31:01
  So in the human relationship,
• 1:31:03
  you have always also to train them in the in the right way
• 1:31:06
  and to to the the the training should be focused on
• 1:31:11
  emotions, how to pass a passion,
• 1:31:15
  how to pass the passion, and how to trigger emotion.
• 1:31:19
  At each step of the relationship with your client
• 1:31:22
  is how you can trigger the emotion.
• 1:31:24
  This should be the main target, the main goal of a training.
• 1:31:28
  The the goal is not to say,
• 1:31:30
  you have to sell twenty percent more,
• 1:31:32
  twenty percent more to sell.
• 1:31:34
  This is how you can trigger the emotion.
• 1:31:37
  If you do that,
• 1:31:38
  your client will follow you and then will be loyal to you
• 1:31:41
  because then you will be able to to sell much more than an article.
• 1:31:46
  You will sell the level of service,
• 1:31:48
  and they are expecting that level of service.
• 1:31:51
  And then they will say, wow.
• 1:31:53
  And on top of that,
• 1:31:54
  the the good
• 1:31:58
  word-of-mouth will be a fantastic advertising
• 1:32:01
  for the for the company.
• 1:32:03
  And and you know, by the way, that the opposite is, is worse.
• 1:32:07
  And when you have a bad negative word-of-mouth,
• 1:32:09
  this is a killer.
• 1:32:11
  So to to to regain it, it's a it's a it's a nightmare.
• 1:32:14
  But,
• 1:32:16
  everybody, if you ask around you,
• 1:32:18
  everybody complain about their dentist,
• 1:32:21
  but everybody knows a good one.
• 1:32:25
  Yeah.
• 1:32:25
  So back because everybody likes to say to somebody else
• 1:32:30
  that they know somebody who's good or some that that human
• 1:32:33
  being love to do that.
• 1:32:35
  I know this. I know this.
• 1:32:36
  I know this.
• 1:32:37
  And the best model business model, by the way,
• 1:32:40
  to sell is to have,
• 1:32:41
  what I call the luxury to pair ware strategy,
• 1:32:44
  is to have a smaller gathering with client and prospect
• 1:32:47
  because your client will sell,
• 1:32:50
  instead of you, you don't have to sell.
• 1:32:52
  Your clients will sell for you.
• 1:32:53
  So,
• 1:32:55
  I think the because the clients,
• 1:32:58
  they know they will pass their emotions and their passions to
• 1:33:01
  to others much more than selling people.
• 1:33:04
  So, I think it's,
• 1:33:07
  the the the the, of course,
• 1:33:09
  the key factor of success in in training will be how to trigger emotions.
• 1:33:16
  Wonderful.
• 1:33:17
  And then, this I think is a amazing closing for our first podcast.
• 1:33:22
  First of all, thank you, Luc, for, you know,
• 1:33:24
  I think we said we'd probably chat for an hour,
• 1:33:27
  and I think we are now probably almost about one hour forty
• 1:33:30
  five or so.
• 1:33:32
  But, you know, and I'm pretty sure if,
• 1:33:36
  if, we would not look at the watch,
• 1:33:38
  we could talk forever and,
• 1:33:40
  and go deeper and deeper in this direction.
• 1:33:42
  But what I really loved about our conversation was that, you know,
• 1:33:46
  we can really see that fundamentally when when when we
• 1:33:49
  create luxury, we have to create something very human,
• 1:33:53
  something very, you know, that is that is,
• 1:33:57
  that that is basically ingrained in passion.
• 1:33:59
  So passion, emotion, and this human factor, you know,
• 1:34:03
  being empathetic also to the other side is is great.
• 1:34:07
  And what what I what I love this is that there's so many
• 1:34:10
  many misconceptions about about luxury, you know,
• 1:34:13
  and about the sometimes arrogant behavior.
• 1:34:16
  And so what we see fundamentally is very down to earth.
• 1:34:18
  It's trying to understand another person and then trying to
• 1:34:24
  inspire them, give them something that they truly love,
• 1:34:27
  that they fall in love for,
• 1:34:29
  and then nurture that relationship that that builds.
• 1:34:32
  And I think the companies that can do this and the individuals
• 1:34:36
  that can do this, right, and then, you know,
• 1:34:39
  if you take a company level when you can do this at scale,
• 1:34:42
  then I don't think that there's anything that can stop them.
• 1:34:45
  And very often when we see brands that are underperforming,
• 1:34:50
  then there's the passion is missing,
• 1:34:52
  the human factor is missing,
• 1:34:53
  the sales process is often broken,
• 1:34:55
  The stories are not really told well, and so on.
• 1:34:57
  It always kind of goes back to the same root cause.
• 1:34:59
  So,
• 1:35:01
  I thought it was a fascinating discussion.
• 1:35:04
  As always, when we talk about luxuries,
• 1:35:06
  there's so many things that I'm that I'm taking myself as a
• 1:35:09
  learning from, you know,
• 1:35:10
  your your rich background and your experiences that you had.
• 1:35:14
  I thought the examples that you shared were incredible.
• 1:35:18
  And I wish you best of luck for, you know,
• 1:35:21
  in your new role, with your company.
• 1:35:23
  And as we said in the show in the show notes,
• 1:35:26
  you know, we're going to to share the the contacts and so
• 1:35:29
  on, and take on Luke's invitation to Milan.
• 1:35:32
  And I can wait.
• 1:35:34
  I would surely be this year in Milan at least once or twice.
• 1:35:37
  So next time I'm there, I'll let you know,
• 1:35:39
  and then I will will experience your brand yourself.
• 1:35:42
  And, you know, until then, thank you so much for coming.
• 1:35:45
  It was really a true pleasure.
• 1:35:48
  Thank you, Daniel.
• 1:35:48
  I wish you a very nice end of the day, and,
• 1:35:51
  I look forward to receiving you and to welcoming you in in
• 1:35:55
  Milan to have a a proper Milanese experience.
• 1:35:59
  Wonderful. Super. Thank you so much.