Seeing How Luxury Brands Balance Business And Art From The Bankruptcy Of Luxury Brand Christian Lacroix

With the globalization of more and more luxury brands, how to avoid excessive commercialization of luxury brands has become an important issue for luxury brand managers to consider.

As an intersection of art and commerce, luxury goods are integrated.

The creation can also satisfy the needs of customers to a certain extent.

Any other side of this balance will lead to the failure of luxury brands.

 

Christian Lacroix

Christian Lacroix store appears on the left bank of Paris.

This "bad luck" luxury brand has belonged to many years.

(LVMH) the group was sold to the Falics family in 2005.

Christian Lacroix, which was unable to support in 2009, entered bankruptcy reorganization.

The excessive pursuit of art makes Christian Lacroix fail to support the brand in business.

Now, with the development of many luxury and big brands, when the exclusive luxury goods have been copied more and more into the streets and lanes of any country, how to avoid the excessive commercialization of luxury goods has become a lot.

Problems that need to be weighed again.

How can luxury brands effectively integrate commerce with art?

Rely on the decline of Art

A senior women's wear conference in autumn and winter in 1987, Christian Lacroix's southern sentiment, which was rendered with its warm color and Mediterranean style, caused a great sensation in the fashion industry, which also laid the post of "high fashion savior" after him.

After that, Christian Lacroix has kept his colorful, luxurious and magnificent design style.

Perhaps this is related to the birthplace of Christian Lacroix: Arles in southern France, Spain not far away.

The designer met his career partner in the fashion studio he worked in that year: President Louis Weedon Bernard Arnault and Jean-Jacques Picart.

The three people co founded the brand named Christian Lacroix, and Christian Lacroix is the creative director.

Noble and brilliant is the most typical design style of Christian Lacroix, and has become an indelible mark for him.

Christian Lacroix also won the medal of the French legion of honor for its contribution to the fashion industry.

But the excessive pursuit of art failed to make the Christian Lacroix brand succeed in business.

Perhaps the smart Bernard Arnault did not want to be an artistic sponsor of losing money. In 2005, he sold the brand to the US Falic family for $62 million.

Despite the efforts of the Falic family, Christian Lacroix once reached the balance of payments. But soon after the financial crisis came, its flashy style was obviously out of step with the economic difficulties of that time. In 2009, Christian Lacroix entered bankruptcy reorganization.

So far, in the 22 years since the establishment of the brand in 1987, Christian Lacroix has never made a profit and accumulated a deficit of about 150 million euros.

Olivier Saillard, a fashion historian and curator of the Paris Museum of decorative arts, commented that the Christian Lacroix brand was not widely recognized worldwide, and there was a perfume that failed in 1988.

Christian Lacroix's outstanding designer status and Louis Weedon and Falic family's heavy investment did not reverse the fate of Christian Lacroix brand.

In an interview with the first financial daily, the industry pointed out: "the reason is that the designer's creation has not been well pformed into commodities.

The extension of other product lines around core products such as perfume and accessories has not been successfully developed.

Balance between art and Commerce

The artistic characteristics of luxury goods also explain why luxury brands respect their top designers.

But it is also undeniable that designers' pursuit of artistic ideas deviates from the commercial objectives of luxury brands.

Both the integration of art and the needs of customers pose a challenge to the designers and management of luxury brands.

"If the designer only considers the aesthetic point of view and neglects the product's attributes, the product is likely to be ungrounded. If it can't be profitable for a long time, it will not support the development of the brand."

The industry insiders said.

How to make commercialization of art? How can luxury brands be compatible with top designers and business objectives? A luxury brand global operations officer once told this reporter: "we do not interfere with any design of top designers. There are loyal customers who come to work with designers.

But for most of the customers in the market, our management team will control the brand products for different market needs, for example, we will control different colors and styles in different markets.

Nowadays, many luxury brands also take some compromise measures. The chief designer of a brand usually holds a show that fully complies with their personal artistic ideas, which is a vane for the market, but at the same time, the brand will also show another show to customers and buyers.

At this point, advanced customization is usually part of the design concept of top designers.

While forming core commodities, the core luxury extension product line is also a commonly used means of commercial operation of many luxury brands nowadays.

Christian Lacroix has also lost this point.

Industry experts analysis: "many consumers may not be able to afford the core products. At this point, it is easy to form a scale by extending their product lines to create different gradients to attract different consumers."

The economic benefits of perfume and accessories can not be underestimated.

To know that the world's most acclaimed Jean Paul Gaultier, its economy relies on royalties from the perfume he named.

However, with the globalization of more and more luxury brands, how to avoid excessive commercialization of luxury brands has become an important issue for luxury brand managers to weigh the considerations.

Blindly taking the needs of consumers as the starting point and taking a large amount of volume, if the luxury brands can not stop, although the performance is particularly good, the image and positioning of the brand in the consumer's mind will gradually decline, and then lose the right to speak and the pricing power in the market.