LVMH North America CEO's insight into the Luxury Business

When Anish Melwani joined LVMH in 2016 as Chairman and CEO of LVMH North America after working for 16 years as a consultant, he knew little about the luxury industry. For this new chapter in his impressive career, he trusted his curiosity. Today, he is in charge of operations that employ over 30,000 people over 1000 retail locations and has overseen some key projects: Tiffany’s acquisition and integration, the creation of a blockchain consortium, and the pandemic response in the Americas, to name a few.

Anish shares with us his take on the luxury business and gives us valuable advice for any professional career during a conference held with The Harvard Business School Club of New York.

How do you ensure the success of luxury brands like Tiffany, for example?

Luxury brands are only successful if they are relevant. And to be relevant, you must have some cultural edge. At LVMH, our brands are successful because they have a competitive advantage: their heritage mixed with one of our best values: creativity. Tiffany was a perfect acquisition for us because it had all of the things we were looking for: longevity, incredibly rich heritage and strong DNA. But Tiffany needed to invest in communication and creativity. For example, the last campaign with Beyonce and Jay-Z showed that our team was willing to take big steps to make the brand more modern.

What did you learn during the pandemic from a company’s perspective?

The pandemic forced us to really enter the digital era. LVMH is a retail group, and we were kind of late to the digital game. Our teams showed that they could innovate and make digital experiences more differentiated and more luxurious for our customers. We thought we knew a lot about our customers because we serve them in retail, but we definitely learned even more about them when we emphasised our digital offers, especially when we connected with them through an omnichannel approach.

How are you approaching blockchain and NFTs?

We created the Aura blockchain consortium together with Prada, Richemont and Only The Brave because something we all have in common is that the physical goods we make are actually differentiated. They are made with rare and exclusive materials using techniques that are by hand. It is in our common interest to find a way to make sure that is somehow translated into this new world. Regarding NFTs, we want to make sure we can link the digital world to the physical world. For example, we are working on watches where the NFT could function as the warranty. If you want to bring your watch in for service, you can show your NFT. If you sell your watch in the secondary market, you will send this NFT-warranty to the next customer. That's obviously an early and elementary use case, but we are looking to grow our capabilities.

What is the best piece of advice you could give?

Follow the people you enjoy learning from and who you believe are committed to teaching you. I left McKinsey and came to LVMH because I knew I was going to learn from Bernard Arnault and from the leaders of the Maisons. Whatever success I may have achieved, it's entirely due to the people that I followed.

Watch the exclusive replay of the conference held in partnership with the Harvard Business School Club of New York: