Luxury Talent Management Leading and Managing a Luxury Brand

by Gutsatz, Michel; Auguste, Gilles

• ISBN13: 9781137270665
• ISBN10: 1137270667
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2013-04-25
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

When people wish to enter a specific industry they are rarely given the opportunity to understand how it functions, what sort of critical competencies are looked for, and how to build a career within this industry. The luxury industry is quite unique and has major differences with other brandcentered industries that one has to understand and master: family business heritage, role of creation, and existence of key populations. This book introduces us to the specific challenges faced by those working in the luxury industry and what it takes to succeed, as well as what luxury brands must do to ensure they are retaining and recruiting the right people who will go on to shape their companies in the future. It provides a concrete and comprehensive framework of luxury competencies, and gives real life examples and cases studies that allow the reader to understand what are the key requirements to work in this industry.It also explores the leadership challenges that this industry now faces: to replicate and cultivate talents, update customer service in a rapidly changing digital marketplace, hire Asian managers, and understand the intricacies of family businesses. To this day, such people change issues have been tackled intuitively, on an experience-basis most of the time: many executives act upon previous experiences they have gone through mostly in marketing, finance, or distribution. They often lack expertise in what the future is about: creation, retail, internet, customer experience. This book will lead us to suggest new career tracks and competencies for the coming generation of luxury leaders.Luxury brand executives will also often rely on the external expertise of luxury experts and headhunters, who do have experience in the industry, but lack two essential dimensions: these issues are change management issues with a very strong HR dimension and most of the time HR and change management are treated separately by different agents. This book is about both, treated as interdependent. They lack a conceptual vision of what luxury is about, its unique business model and the very specific competencies and behaviors that are needed to grow within it. All luxury brands are full of both success stories and extraordinary failures due to the insufficient personal adaptation of a very talented executive that did not adapt to the industry. This book is about how these stories can help us understand the intricacies of the luxury industry.

Author Biography

MICHEL GUTSATZ is an Advisor at The Scriptorium Company, a leading Brand Strategy Agency. He is currently Director of MBA Programs at Euromed Management, responsible for leading and developing their MBA programs (World Med MBA, MBA Shanghai, Executive MBA Shanghai, DBA Beijing). Prior to that Michel was Managing Director at White Spirit, an Image Strategy Agency, and Human Resources and Internal Communication Director of the Bally Group in Switzerland. Michel also created and developed the MBA in International Luxury Brand Management at ESSEC business school. He is a leading expert and commentator in brand management and strategy and runs a highly successful industry blog, BrandWatch at www.michelgutsatz.com, which is a key resource for branding professionals.

GILLES AUGUSTE is an international consultant working on strategic Human Resources issues for a wide range of luxury brands. He is currently VP at Sociovision, a consulting firm whose mission is to understand and anticipate international socio-cultural change. Prior to that Gilles was responsible for leadership consulting practice at A.T. Kearney search consultants and served as International Human Resources Director at Cartier (Compagnie Financière Richemont). Gilles started his career in the consulting industry at Bossard Consultants, then Gemini Consulting. Gilles is a graduate from IGS, France, holds a Masters in Human Resources, and is a graduate from ADP – Executive Education Program from the London Business School.

Table of Contents

PART I: UNDERSTANDING THE FUNDAMENTALS OF THE LUXURY INDUSTRY AND WHAT IT MEANS FOR HR
The 4 Major Specificities of the Luxury Industry
Unique Factor 1: the Family Business Heritage
Unique Factor 2 : the Essence of Creation
The 4 Luxury Corporate Culture and Leadership Styles
The 4 Key Populations to Manage
PART II: INTERNATIONAL KEY PERSONAL GROWTH STORIES - HIGHLIGHTING THE ROLE, SKILLS, BEHAVIOUR AND EXPERIENCE REQUIRED TO WORK IN THE LUXURY INDUSTRY
Executive Profiles
Retail Profiles
Creators/ Designers Profiles
The Workshop & Manufacturing Jobs
PART III: FOUR CASE STUDIES ON EXPERIENCE, SKILLS, COMPETENCIES - LEARNING THE SPECIFICITIES OF THE LUXURY INDUSTRY Case Study 1: A Luxury Family Business Succession that Failed
Case Study 2: From Marketing to Creation (Creative Recruitment Case Study)
Case Study 3: 'a Modern Gipsy at Gucci ' (The Polet Case Study)
Case Study 4: A Successful Leadership Duo ( Luxury Brand Case Study)
PART IV: LOOKING FORWARD – THE PEOPLE CHALLENGES AHEAD
A Luxury Competency Model to Replicate Talent
Managing the New Retail and Marketer Profiles
Leading Creative Teams & Designers
Be Ready for the Asian Market
The Luxury Leadership House where People can Share & Learn
Conclusion: Principles for Luxury Change Management
Bibliography
About the Authors