AMEX, FT and IHT Luxury Summits

Ed Kelly, president and CEO, American Express Publishing addressing attendees of the 2010 American Express Publishing Luxury Summit.

A handful of publishing companies have been successful at creating conferences that focus on current issues in the luxury industry. These events attract an international audience of professionals who deal with the creation and marketing of luxury products and brands—from jewelry to space travel—and result in unparallel networking opportunities. 

In the past few years, these conferences have changed from a celebration of the expansion of the good life to dealing with the turmoil from events that have unfolded in recent years—from the worldwide economic collapse to the democracy movement in the Middle East to the tragedy in Japan. This has given these conferences an increased importance in today’s worldwide marketplace. Below is quick rundown of three of the more successful luxury summits that will be hosting their events this year.

American Express Publishing Luxury Summit

Since 1999, this event, held exclusively in the U.S., has attracted top marketers from the world’s leading purveyors of luxury goods and services to analyze critical issues and trends, share best practices, and examine the evolving needs of the affluent consumer, as well as the effects of the current economic, social, and political climate on today’s luxury companies.

This year’s summit, being held April 10-12 at Montage Deer Valley, Park City, Utah, will focus on current issues and international news professionals are among the speakers. Christopher Dickey, Newsweek Paris bureau chief and Middle East regional editor, will discuss, “How a Global Youthquake is Turning The World (and Luxury) Upside Down.” Chrystia Freeland, Reuters global editor at large, will speak on the topic, “The Rise of the Global Super Elite.”

Other areas of interest will be the rise of digital technology in the luxury world, emerging economies, design and advertising. And, of course, the editing staffs of American Express Publishing, which produce the magazines Food + Wine, Travel + Leisure, Departures, Executive Travel and Black Ink, will be featured throughout the summit.

For more information or to register, visit the American Express Publishing Luxury Summit Website. 

2010 Financial Times Business of Luxury Summit Black Tie Reception at Paramount Studios in Los Angeles.

FT Business of Luxury Summit

In its seventh year, this summit, hosted by the Financial Times, brings together senior luxury executives, corporate decision makers and financiers from around the world. Held at locations throughout the world, this year’s summit will be held June 5-7 at the Beau-Rivage Palace, Lausanne, Switzerland. More details will be announced in the coming months, however, speakers and contributors who are confirmed include:

* Thierry Andretta, CEO, Lanvin

* Bernd Beetz, CEO, Coty Inc

* Jean-Claude Biver, CEO, Hublot SA

* Lionel Breton, chairman & CEO, Martell Mumm Perrier-Jouėt

* Gian Giacomo Ferraris, chief executive, Gianni Versace SpA

* Bill Glenn, president, Global Merchant Services, American Express

* Isabelle Guichot, president & CEO, Balenciaga

* Peter Kriemler, global president, Akris

* Frederick Lukoff, president & CEO, Stella McCartney

* Philippe Léopold-Metzger, CEO, Piaget SA

* Jim O'Neill, chairman, asset management & former chief economist, Goldman Sachs

* Marc Puig, chairman & CEO, Puig

* Martin Wolf, CBE, chief economics commentator, Financial Times

For more information or to register, visit the FT Business of Luxury Summit Website.

International Herald Tribune's Luxury Business Conference

“Hot Luxury” is the theme of this year’s conference, being held November 10-11 at Hotel Unique, São Paulo, Brazil. Since 2001, the conference has served as a forum for the discussion and exchange of ideas for the fashion and luxury industry. It is hosted each year by Suzy Menkes, IHT's fashion editor. The conference attracts keynote speakers from the commercial and creative sides of the business, and an annual international audience of more than 450 delegates from more than 35 countries.

The program is still being developed. However, the keynote speaker is renowned fashion photographer, Mario Testino.

For more information or to register visit the International Herald Tribune's Luxury Business Conference.

FT Luxury Summit Dates, Location Announced

A scene from the 2010 FT Business of Luxury Summit in Los Angeles.

Economic issues will be the focus of the next FT Business of Luxury Summit, which will be held on 5-7 June 2011 at the Beau Rivage Palace in Lausanne, Switzerland.

Hosted by the Financial Times, the summit will bring together senior luxury executives, corporate decision makers and financiers from around the world. This exclusive event, now in its seventh year, attracts some 400 attendees and is regarded by the luxury industry as one of the premier thought-leadership forums for business leaders. Speakers will include:

* Jean-Claude Biver, CEO, Hublot SA
* Gavyn Davies, chairman, Fulcrum Asset Management
* Isabelle Guichot, president & CEO, Balenciaga
* Frederick Lukoff, president & CEO, Stella McCartney
* Marigay McKee, Fashion & Beauty director, Harrods Ltd
* Marc Puig, chairman & CEO, Puig
* Martin Wolf, CBE, chief economics commentator, Financial Times

The 2011 Summit will focus on the key economic issues facing the luxury industry today, including managing currency movements, costs, pricing and anti-counterfeiting—plus an assessment of the revival of mergers and acquisitions.

Attendees will have an opportunity to gain incisive market intelligence from industry peers, join debates and hear the results of specially commissioned consumer spending research.

For more information and to register, visit www.ftbusinessofluxury.com. There’s a discount of €300 for registrations received before March 11.

Luxury Consumption Index Stalls, Responding to Mixed Market Signals

Unity Marketing's Luxury Consumption Index stalled at 78.3 points in July 2010 as affluent consumers display uncertainty about prospects for the economy in the next three months. The survey’s founder says this apparent lull in the luxury economy “is reason for concern.”

Significantly more luxury consumers (36 percent) say the country as a whole is worse off now as compared with three months ago—a 5 percent rise, according to the survey of 1,349 luxury consumers was conducted July 3-8, 2010 (Average income $306,700 and net worth $15.2 million; 44.8 years; 45 percent male and 55 percent female).

Value positioning is key for luxury success through third and fourth quarters 2010, says Pam Danziger, president of Unity Marketing, a marketing consulting firm.

“Without a doubt the luxury consumer market is in a much better place today than it was a year or so ago, but the latest survey warns marketers not to ease up or be over-confident that the recession's effect on the luxury market are over,” Danziger said. “Nearly three out of four luxury consumers surveyed believe that the recession continues, which in turn impacts spending on luxury goods and services. Marketers are advised to continue to position luxury as a value proposition, by keeping luxury connotations and image up front in advertising, packaging and service, but communicating in a very subtle, almost one-on-one way, affordable pricing.”

Survey findings in the quarterly survey, include:

* Spending on luxury rose a modest 7.7 percent quarter-to-quarter. Luxury consumer spending, however, rose dramatically year-over-year, up nearly 60 percent from $19,952 on average to $31,665. Unity expects the same trends toward modest quarter-to-quarter spending increases to continue throughout 2010.

* Categories that attracted higher levels of spending among luxury consumers in the second quarter included luxury beauty and cosmetics, high-end cooking tools, men’s luxury clothing and apparel, men’s luxury fashion accessories, home electronics and travel.

* Aspirational affluents (incomes $100,000-$249,999) started to trade up once again to luxury, according to the survey. They increased luxury spending by nearly 30 percent in the quarter, their highest levels of spending seen throughout 2009. High-end clothing, fashion accessories, personal electronics, wine and spirits, and beauty products were the most popular items.

The pace of growth in luxury consumer spending will remain modest over the next two quarters, according to Tom Bodenberg, Unity Marketing's chief consumer economist.

“Affluents still have a lot of uncertainty about the economy which dictates caution when it comes to spending on luxuries,” he said. “We don't expect to see moderation on this cautious attitude until the beginning of 2011.”

Diane von Furstenberg: ‘Our headquarters is really on the Web’

Caption: Diane von Furstenberg (right) answers a question during a panel discussion at the FT Business of Luxury Summit. From left are Gillian de Bono, editor of the Financial Times How to Spend It section; Deepak Ohri, CEO of Lebuna Hotels & Resorts; Marissa Mayer, VP, Search Products & User Experience, Google Inc; and Edgar Huber, CEO of Juicy Couture.

You could say that fashion icon Diane von Furstenberg was into social media before it was cool. In fact she was into communicating with her customers in an open, honest and organic way before there was an Internet, much less Web 2.0. So while many luxury and fashion companies are struggling to take advantage of social media tools, for von Furstenberg, it was just another way of doing what she has always done. In other words, she gets it, because she always understood the value of open communications with her customers.

“I started when I was very, very young,” the 63-year-old owner of DVF fashion house said during a panel discussion titled, “Communicating Strategies,” at the recently held FT Business of Luxury Summit. “For whatever reason, I established a relationship with women. And it was very caring, it was very real. And people have a personal relationship with me… And the reason why it works is because it’s real, it’s authentic, it’s harmless. My mission in life is to empower women. It’s more important for me that she feels empowered and then I sell her a dress. The dress is afterward. It’s a consequence that if she wears it she will be happy with it.”

Von Furstenberg told the audience of luxury professionals that she loves to use Twitter but she will never use it to tell people to buy DVF products. She spoke about a time when one of her employees tried to use the social media tool to recruit 60,000 followers.

“I got so upset. I don’t want to force people to do that. It has to happen organically. In my work and how I run my business, it’s organic, it’s real. And that is part of having a reputation and that’s how people believe in you,” she said. “So I feel that it can’t be forced. Not everything starts with marketing. For me it’s making the best product for the best price, the best design to make women happy, and therefore the sale is the consequence of a good product, the marketing is a consequence of the demand. But if everything you do is market driven then it’s no longer real and somehow the consumers will know that and they will not believe you anymore.”

The creator of the wrap dress also told the audience of a revelation she had six months ago when it came to how she views her company’s Web site.

“I always thought that our headquarters was in the (New York) meat packing district,” von Furstenberg said. “We were having a meeting with everybody and I said, ‘You know what? Our headquarters is really on the Web.’ So, we are now in the process of changing our Web site—which is very successful in both editorial and e-commerce—because you forget about it, but anybody who wants to know about anything: whether they want a job with your company, or have to do a paper on you, or they want to buy something, or whatever it is, they go on the Web and therefore the Web site is you image to the universe.”



Under the questioning of Gillian de Bono, editor of the Financial Times How to Spend It luxury magazine, who was the most probing of the FT editors who led panel discussions, von Furstenberg discussed how she views her own boutiques and department stores.

“Boutiques offer a way to control your destiny, a way to control your brand,” she said. “How you sell it, how you show the experience of a woman. My goal in my shops is to make sure that a woman who walks in leaves happier than she was when she came in. It’s not about how much I will sell her. It’s how happier I can make her. And that works for bricks and mortar and it also works for the Net. It’s an environment where I want a woman to come in and I want to make her happier.

On department stores: “Department stores also are a brand and they are larger brand and they do some editing for you, I mean for the consumer. Department stores are like editors, they edit, they buy, they choose, they decide who goes next to whom so I think they are important, too. And if you don’t think they do a good job, you pull out.”



Von Furstenberg even talked about an increased need for editors in this new communications age.

“I think that now we live in a world where everyone has access to everything,” she said. “You can reach everything, reach everyone, know everything. And strangely enough, I think that makes the need for editors even more important. Because we have access to everything, because we can reach everything, I believe that editors should not be afraid. The value of editors will increase. Some of them start are bloggers, they call themselves bloggers, but their dream is to be editors. And the editors now start to blog, so there are all kinds of merges … and therefore you have to respect those editors who say, ‘I like it because.’ I think that editors should absolutely not be afraid of what’s going on in this huge revolution.”

The von Furstenberg brand remains as popular as when she burst onto the fashion scene in the early 1970s, particularly with a younger clientele. She claims to be somewhat mystified with her appeal to young people but, no doubt a part of the reason for this is her ability to talk directly with her customers using modern communications tools.

“I really don’t know how it happens, but the older I am, the younger my consumer base is.”

The FT Business of Luxury Summit, hosted by the Financial Times, was held June 14 and 15 at the Beverly Hills Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif.

FT Business of Luxury Summit: Boucheron Leads the Way Online as Most Luxury Companies Lag

At the podium Vanessa Friedman, FT Fashion Editor. From left: Luca Solca, senior analyst luxury goods and general retail of Sanford C. Bernstein, Fabio d’Angelantonio,. executive vice president and luxury retail and chief marketing officer of Luxottica Group, William Powers, author of Hamlet’s Blackberry; Reggie Bradford, chief executive officer of Vitrue, and Jean-Christophe Bédos, president and CEO of Boucheron.

The Internet was the main topic of conversation during the FT Business of Luxury Summit. It was refreshing to see that the luxury industry was finally waking up to online marketing and e-commerce opportunities. However, the questions raised at the two-day conference show that the industry as a whole is still behind the times when it comes to understanding and using the medium.

The frustration over the questions being raised during the summit at the Beverly Hills Hotel was summed up by a marketing director from Paris who said the following during the black tie gala outside Paramount Studios: “They are asking the questions that were answered two years ago,” he said. “They keep asking whether luxury companies should get on the Internet. That question has been answered. The question they should be asking is how we should do it.”

Indeed, panel after panel, often led by editors of the Financial Times (which hosts the annual event), focused on whether companies, whose main selling point is their exclusivity, should be online promoting and selling their products to the mass market online. The answer, by and large, is yes. That promoting and selling their products and services online doesn’t delude the exclusivity of the brand or cannibalize sales. That if done correctly, this medium can increase awareness, aspiration and sales for a company’s product the same way that advertising and event marketing has done for years. Not that it will work for every company that wants to attract and service wealthy clientele, but for the vast majority, a sophisticated online strategy will be a benefit to the brand.

It’s refreshing to know that a luxury jeweler is one of those taking a leadership position online. Jean-Christophe Bédos, president and CEO of Boucheron, talked about the venerable Paris-based company’s decision to start selling products online in September 2007, before many others and how they use social media sites, such as Facebook, as a marketing tool.

“We realized through surveys that the majority of our clients are affluent people who were buying online already,” he told the audience of luxury professionals. “The studies are still showing that the highest spenders online are the most affluent people. At the same time our objective and our decision was if these people are online we have to meet them where they like to be. They like to come to our stores. They like to have a retail experience. But increasingly affluent people also want to meet wherever they decide. And the internet is one of those places where they like to be. So consequently we like to be there. There were no real metrics behind it. No real sales pitches. We built our site like a service to our clients. And we decided on a learning approach because we are learning as we go.”

So if you go to the Boucheron Web site (which like many luxury Web sites is a bit flash heavy, thus, a little slow for an online medium), you will be able to buy a $10,000 watch, a $9,800 diamond and platinum pendant or a $4,800 diamond and gold ring. And if you go to the company’s official Facebook page you will find the latest product releases and stories written about the company. There are also two Facebook sites that appear to have been started by fans of the company.

Bédos stresses the importance of being on social network sites in order to become part of the online conversation. He says on the Web you do lose control of at least some of your message. However, if you are not part of the discussion about your company, then you have no control over your message online.

This might be old hat for most industries but for many traditional luxury brands it is a sea change in how they do business. Bédos recognizes this but he says it’s more important to a luxury brand’s future to embrace the change rather than fight it.

“At the end of the day, who people trust is very important and I believe that in recent years, increasingly, people trust their friends and their family rather than institutions, rather than media, rather than politicians, rather than brands. So how can brands address people without being mistrusted? I think the issue for me is to see where the people go, where consumers go in order to meet those who they trust and Facebook is a very good example. When something is recommended by a friend it has more value than by the brand that sits in its ivory tower and doesn’t talk to people. By tradition, especially luxury brands, tends to talk at people. There is a very huge shift at the way luxury brands have to market themselves and have to try to meet people because the consumers of today, they don’t want to just be taught. They want to share. They want to give their opinion. And they want to tell us, the brand, what they think about us. Therefore, the Web is definitely a marketing vehicle that will trigger viral marketing. It’s very efficient from that point of view and the question for me is not whether we should be marketing on the Web or not—whether we like it or not. I know the hard luxury goods industry is extremely cautious about the Web. They fear it might destroy their brand image. They fear it might destroy the control they have on their distribution network. But you have to accept today that to a certain extent that you lose a little bit of control.”

Vanessa Friedman, FT Fashion Editor who moderated the panel discussion, asked whether it is a good business or marketing strategy to be reactive to the Web, in the sense that you have to be on it just because everyone else is or because someone will take that space even if it isn’t the right thing to do for a company. 

“Sometimes you have to be reactive. Sometimes you have to be proactive if you’re a brand manager,” Bédos said. “One of those preconceived ideas I think is that we consider the Web as being a mass market vehicle. We should question this. It’s not more mass market than the street is mass market. Yet, specialty brands have directly operated stores on streets. The web to me … is like a street. You have the best. You have the worst. You have dirty streets. You have clean streets. You have affluent streets. You have down market streets. And when as much as a street could be, you can find everything. The question is not whether you should be on the street or not. The question is not whether you should be on the Web or not. The question is how you want to be there and how you want to be perceived there. This is still under your control. If you decide not to be there, you are totally losing what can be said about you and therefore I think you’re not facing your responsibilities as a brand manager to monitor what is being said about you on this space.”

In addition to Bédos and Friedman, participants for the panel titled, “Do 600,000 Facebook Friends Equal one Sale,” were Reggie Bradford, chief executive officer of Vitrue, a social media management company; Fabio d’Angelantonio. executive vice president and luxury retail and chief marketing officer of Luxottica Group, a luxury eyewear company, Luca Solca, senior analyst luxury goods and general retail of Sanford C. Bernstein, a wealth management company; and William Powers, author of Hamlet’s Blackberry.

The FT Business of Luxury Summit was held June 14 and 15 at the Beverly Hills Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif.