I’ve never felt like it’s been almost 15 years being in this Maison. There’s never a moment where you think “this is not possible or it’s impossible”.

 

***

 

My name is Mayuko. My current position is Vice President for Merchandising and VM (Visual Merchandising).

 

So this means managing two departments.

The first one involves really starting from the first part of the product cycle, where we see the products in the showroom in Paris, and we work on what is best for Japan in terms of product offer, what we want to do in terms of strategy. So, of course, we receive the general strategy and what we want to do as a brand, but then we try to filter, and we digest things, we try to see what that means for our zone. And then after the buys and assortments being made in Paris, we take that back into Japan where we work also with the Visual Merchandising team to see how that will roll out in store.

 

I started my career in 2003 in the New Bond Street store in London.

I was extremely lucky to work within the Watch & Jewelry team, the Visual Merchandising team, the after-sales team and the leather goods team. So it was an extremely fulfilling challenge, and really created the base of my career within Louis Vuitton.

 

The journey has been extremely smooth, and yet full of different things happening along the way. So first starting from New Bond Street in the store, this was for about six months, and then I was in the head office in London, and I was representing the UK, Scandinavia and Ireland for Regional Products Merchandising Manager. After one year, I was in the Paris office, in the Europe zone, where I had many different experiences: first within the ready-to-wear team, and then working in the accessories team, where we built merchandising and accessories, which was not existent then, and then moving on to leather goods. That’s when I was also weighing out the fact that I’m Japanese, and I’d actually never lived in Japan before, so due to personal reasons, I wanted to be closer to my family.  

 

And what was quite amazing is that of course we are LVMH, we are Louis Vuitton, so there was this amazing chance to be able to move by mobility, which is how I moved into Louis Vuitton Japan, to become Merchandising Manager for leather goods.

And then there was an opportunity within LVMH still, but in FENDI, this time in Hong Kong, when I then moved back after a year to Tokyo, within a brand outside of LVMH.

 

However, 2½ years ago there was this wonderful opportunity to be the Vice President of Merchandising here, which I gladly took because it’s really maximizing the experiences that I’ve had so far within all product categories. So this is how I came back to Louis Vuitton in Tokyo.

 

What keeps me excited within Louis Vuitton is that you’re on a treadmill; it doesn’t stop. I’ve never felt like it’s been almost 15 years being in this Maison. I guess we go through so many changes, so many different things happening, so many new challenges coming on board, that we really do never stop.

 

There’s never a moment where you think “this is not possible or it’s impossible”, because there’s always a way to then look at something differently. There’s no set career plan in the sense that once you join the Maison you start with A and then it’s B, C, D. It depends on what happens afterwards to then determine what could be the path.

 

Obviously, when you spend more than ten years in a company or when you work extremely closely - because sometimes in the showrooms in Paris, for example during the buying sessions, we are together from 8 o’clock in the morning until midnight - it’s extremely tough mentally and physically. So that’s when you have that one moment when you’re parting, when you have your farewell goodbyes, that you really have made not only solid professional relationships, but really good friendships: a lot of trust, a lot of connections with people beyond just Louis Vuitton and merchandising.

 

Mayuko, Vice President Merchandising, Louis Vuitton Japan

When I was working with cars, if anyone had told me that one day I would be in luxury marketing at Louis Vuitton I would never have believed them.

 

***

 

I’m Fabien. I joined Louis Vuitton in 2006, and I’ve been with the Maison for 12 years now. It wasn’t my first job: I had been working in the automotive industry just before that in a role that covered every aspect of organizing production. And then I was hired by Louis Vuitton to work on better ways to organize their workshops so that we could still say “Made in France” for a long time yet. So I started my first career in processing, as a process engineer: engineering, continuous improvement.

I stayed in that role for two and a half years, and then I had an opportunity to head abroad and keep working in our workshops.

After these three years as a process engineer and my short stay abroad, the aim for a young hire like myself was to quickly take on the challenge of management. It’s possible to become a production team leader in a workshop very quickly. It’s something I was interested in because when you’re young, 25 or 26, you don’t really know if you’re made to be a manager. This is a very quick way to take on the challenge of managing a team of 35-40 staff, a team of leather workers that has maybe been there for 30 years, that has loads of experience, seen many managers come and go, and survived lots of restructuring. So you join a team with a rich past, made up of extraordinary people with an amazing track record. And when you’re there, you have to be credible! Being able to take on management responsibilities so soon in a Louis Vuitton workshop is a real test.

When I joined Louis Vuitton, I came to work in a workshop that made its products in France, which invested in French craftsmanship, but I discovered a kind of expertise that was totally new to me, and I kind of fell in love with the product. I decided to specialize in the product itself. And that’s how, after a spell as a team leader, I decided to make the move into product development.

 

Product development is a bit like being a conductor, making sure that marketing, design, and the industrial side of things – from logistics to production and material development – are all playing the same tune. The interesting thing is that I had worked as a process engineer so that I could understand how to improve workshops. Then I had been a team leader. I wanted to know why these products reached my workshop the way they do. So I stayed in that role for three years, in the Saint-Donat workshop.

 

The highlight is that the first day I spend with Vuitton, I came to Saint-Donat – the workshop was still open – for my induction day.

When I returned to this historic workshop where I spent my first day, it gave me goosebumps to be able to come back here, overhaul everything, and help this workshop keep doing what it does. And it’s a story that is still being written today, because we are currently expanding. So my second “first day” at Saint-Donat was even more exciting than the first. I got quite emotional.

 

All throughout my career, I have wanted to understand what happened before things got to me. I always said to myself that if I know what happens next, I’ll do a better job. That attitude worked out for me three times, so why not a fourth? Even though it was a real challenge to move into marketing at Louis Vuitton, given my background as a general mechanic... In any case, the Maison placed its trust in me and enabled me to move into this role as a men’s leather product manager after three years as a development project manager.

 

***

It’s no empty promise: at Louis Vuitton you really can move into any field from any other, following your own desires. All you need to do is show that you are motivated and that the role is relevant to you.

 

Fabien, Senior Product Manager

The Group really makes it possible to live many lives in a single lifetime, to try different professions and experiences, different Maisons, and it really is possible to start your career in wines and spirits, and end up working in fashion at Louis Vuitton.

 

My name’s Sara, I’m 31, and I’m currently a human resources manager at the head office of Maison Louis Vuitton.  

 

I was born in Seine-Saint-Denis, and I used to ask myself how it would be possible for me to join a Group like this one. I almost didn’t send in my CV. But I said to myself that I shouldn’t rule myself out, that in fact I needed to do the opposite and apply, and that there was no harm in trying... and that’s how the story began.

And then, the next thing I’m proud of, is that I have been able to work abroad, practicing my profession in a different language every day, living in a different country even though, once again, I wasn’t necessarily gifted at languages and I hadn’t really travelled much. Rising to this challenge was really important for me.

 

I have been working in LVMH group for almost eight years now. I joined Maison Veuve Clicquot in September 2010 as a recruitment assistant, and a few months later I had the opportunity for promotion as a human resources development manager for the Veuve Clicquot and Krug Maisons.

 

Next, I really wanted to work abroad and see a different way of doing human resources, experience new perspectives and other points of view. An opportunity came up to join Moët Hennessy, where I worked as a human resources manager, with an extremely broad scope of action in human resources.

Ultimately, after amassing almost three years of experience at Moët Hennessy UK in London, I was ready for a new challenge, and I made the move to Paris to be an HR manager at the Maison Louis Vuitton.

 

The main reason that I joined the Maison Louis Vuitton is because I wanted to discover a new world, a new industry, with new professions, to set myself that challenge. I could have chosen something else, but for me, joining Louis Vuitton was the obvious choice because it was the Maison that most piqued my curiosity. It’s an imposing brand and I wanted to see what was behind this image of excellence and success, what was behind this model, and to understand what went on behind the scenes and, especially from an HR point of view, to find out who the people were who made this success possible every day. And of course, I also wanted to play my own role in this success by bringing added value to my job.

 

When you move between Maisons, the challenge lies in the fact that they have different cultures and management styles, because the Group gives the Maison’s CEOs a lot of freedom to express their own style and leave their own mark. And what’s so fascinating about that is that, through these experiences, it has given me much more cultural versatility.

It’s not over yet, and there are still more adventures ahead and a lot more to learn when it comes to the different professions, organizations, and cultures that make up the group.

 

Sara, Human Resources Manager

You could say that I’m living proof of the opportunities offered by geographic and job mobility.

***

My name is Guillaume, I’m 37 years old, and I’ve been working at Louis Vuitton for the last 10 years. I’m currently working in the Retail Support team. In terms of experience, I learned a great deal as a student in the USA for eight years when I was younger, and that will continue to be something of a common strand running through my career.

I was trained as an engineer; an industrial engineer. I began my career in the automotive industry. I spent four years in a vehicle production plant. Then I returned to Paris as a strategy consultant. And in 2008, I joined the Louis Vuitton Product Development team. Since then, I’ve had a string of different jobs within Product Development. My wife and I had a plan to return to the USA as a family, and she had an opportunity to do that. When I talked it through with Louis Vuitton, we agreed that it offered a fantastic opportunity for me to explore the world of Retail and contribute an engineering perspective to the analytical processes involved in Retail. So I began that process as Operations Manager in the Chicago store. I spent three years in that job. 

At the time I arrived there, the products I’d help to develop were just arriving in store. And I recall that I once had a customer who asked me to sign a business card so that he could put it in his bag, because it was one of those that I’d helped to develop. From his point of view, I was the Marc Jacobs of that bag. I told him that I couldn’t, because I was just part of the product development team involved in making the dream a reality. But for him, it was important. He wanted me to sign his card.

And then, still in Chicago, I had the opportunity to take over as Store Manager, where I had a 360° overview of Retail for another three years. I’ve also worked on an assignment in Brazil. So I’ve worked for Louis Vuitton in three different countries. And more recently, I’ve come back to Paris to take up a role in Head Office.

There’s no doubt that the thing I’m most proud of is the time I spent as a Store Manager, which gave me the opportunity to develop my teams at the same time as developing the business. We grew very quickly and hired a lot of people. And that really gives you a strong feeling of building something worthwhile and substantial. It also gave me the opportunity to develop my own skills, and I found the experience absolutely unique and extremely fulfilling.

Louis Vuitton is a Maison in which we are given the resources we need to succeed the moment we want the opportunity to do so, and that makes you feel like anything is possible.

 

Guillaume, Retail Support Manager