Are you ready to dive into the Luxury World? Go through “New Luxury Management. Creating and Managing Sustainable Value Across the Organization” to learn about the “new luxury” concept and to discover how a luxury company works. In three hundred pages, the editors Fabrizio Maria Pini and Emmanuelle Rigaud-Lacresse, International Master in Luxury Management Directors, will give you an overview of the luxury management.
Would you like to know more about the book and its ins and outs? Keep reading, we interviewed for you both professors!
Let’s start with Professor Pini, who, inquired about the genesis of this book, explained:
“Luxury as a managerial topic has seen a growing interest over the past decade, both from researchers and practitioners, that has generated a large amount of literature on these subjects, covering various aspects and offering different perspectives and interpretations. Despite this large amount of literature available, we felt there was significant room for a book that could present a comprehensive, value-based vision of how a luxury company works. In this regard, this book presents the different aspects that make luxury companies rather a unique combination of competencies and assets and provides a “luxury-specific” understanding of how value is created in the luxury markets.”
Professor Pini gave us a general idea of the content of the book, but it’s Professor Rigaud-Lacresse who goes into detail, defining the “New Luxury” concept and presenting the key points of the book.
Indeed, she explains: “New luxury could be defined as a contemporary and comprehensive description of what creates value in luxury markets. More precisely in the current dynamic context (with digitalisation and new organisational models), it takes into account a comprehensive view of the whole value chain and the value-creating process in luxury firms. In particular, this book describes the unique combination of skills and assets that make luxury products and services so special in the eyes of customers, as well as the patterns and strategies for growth adopted by luxury companies. Among the key resources for luxury value creation, it is crucial to have a clear understanding of the unique blend of know-how and skills and strong and deeply evocative brand narratives. The way luxury companies manage their growth affects their uniqueness in terms of assets and key processes and exhibits distinctive features. These features contribute to the definition of growth options through the exploitation of assets or mergers and acquisitions that call for a specific organisational culture to preserve assets after mergers have taken place.”
As they are the Directors of the International Master in Luxury Management, asking about the link between the book and the Master was unmissable.
Actually, a connection exists, as Professor Pini explains: The book was designed and written having in mind the same structure as forms the backbone of our master programme. Moreover, the authors are all members of the IMLUX faculty, which has developed an integrated and unique approach to luxury management. All the authors, as well as all our professors, have a strong research and professional background in luxury-related managerial topics.
To conclude, we’d like to share Rigaud-Lacresse’s tips to young graduates who would like to work in the Luxury sector.
 Apart from attending the IMLUX programme – says Professor Rigaud-Lacresse – I might suggest developing a clear understanding of the peculiarities and differences that characterise luxury firms: namely the pivotal role of creativity at the core of the product creation process, the uniqueness of brand as an intangible asset, as well as the manufacturing challenges of working on small scale lots with the support of highly-qualified people with human skills which are hard to replace. The way in which luxury firms create compelling customer experiences through stores and boutiques as well as digital touchpoints is radically redesigning the shopping experience in luxury markets and, I might say, needs to be thoroughly understood by people who want to work in this industry.
Young managers have to know that in luxury, we have to work with lot of passion and a perfect understanding of their brands’ values in order to continuously innovate in order to maintain the brand identity.
Thank you both for your time and for your interesting contribution.
