Frédéric Arnault: The Newest Power Player of Luxury’s First Family


PARIS — TAG Heuer’s 26-year-old CEO, Frédéric Arnault, may be the youngest CEO of a luxury watch brand in the world. He may be the fourth child of Bernard Arnault, the third richest man in the world and the world’s largest luxury conglomerate, LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton (owner of TAG Heuer as well as Dior, Givenchy, Bulgari and more). 70 other brands).

He may also be the fourth child to join this family business. They may have very big ideas about how big their watch brand can be. And his 72-year-old father, known for his father aggressive buying tacticsmay have famous dynastic intentions when it comes to the group he founded.

But don’t mention the word “Sequence” within earshot. (Well, not unless you want to invite a lot of eye-rolling and annoyance.)

Frédéric is the latest Arnault to enter the spotlight thanks to a public partnership with actor Ryan Gosling, who was introduced at a celebrity-filled party in Beverly Hills earlier this month – his first major in-person event since Mr. Arnault took command from TAG Heuer last year. The family wants to be very clear that this is not the story of Kendall Roy, Roman Roy, or someone remotely like Roy.

Not possible. Ah-uh. No matter how much the outside world wants it. That’s why the newest power player in the first family of luxury is finally ready to open up.

A kind of.

Sitting in a conference room at 22 Avenue Montaigne, LVMH’s arts-filled headquarters, Mr. Arnault wears a navy blue suit and white shirt, an open collar and a redesigned TAG Heuer Aquaracer Night Diver, with thick brown hair more or more at the end. little. (A piano maestro has hair, and so does he.). He’s really moving as he discusses how he came to TAG Heuer and how he changed the brand.

Can produce statistics and models as fluently as he can speak English, Italian and German; lyric wax about the watch factory La Chaux-de-Fonds 150 steps taken in Switzerland and to create a dial; discuss the virtues of mechanical and connected (smart) watches; Excite over 500,000 members of the TAG Heuer golf app connected with. the company’s golf smartwatch with great enthusiasm.

In fact, he is much happier talking about his job than he or his family. Although the two are quite inseparable.

Frédéric Arnault’s first watch was a TAG Heuer Aquaracer given to him by his father on his 11th birthday. Old Mr. Arnault TAG acquired Heuer It was founded in 1999 (initials stands for Techniques d’Avant-Garde) and is the largest watch brand in the LVMH portfolio. LVMH revenue is not by brand, last quarter resultsThe watch and jewelery industry reported revenue of €6.16 billion ($7.1 billion) in the first nine months of the year.

Like his half-brothers from his father’s first marriage, Antoine (general manager of Berluti, head of image and environment of the group, LVMH board member) and Delphine (vice president at Louis Vuitton, LVMH board member) and his older brother, Alexandre Frédéric (vice president of product and communications at Tiffany) and his younger brother Jean (who works on Louis Vuitton watches) grew up with the company.

Yet as a child he wanted to be an architect; Around 15, he settled into the entrepreneur. When asked why, he seemed surprised and said, “This is a very personal question.”

After school – Frédéric attended the École Polytechnique, France’s leading university of science and technology (as his father did) – and after running a mobile payments venture with a friend (sold to French investment firm BNP 18 months later) and the same He joined the brand full-time as moonlight, strategy and digital director at TAG Heuer at the time-bound hour.

While she says she doesn’t feel parental pressure, the scope of her rebel period seems to prefer to start with watches rather than fashion and leather goods. He consulted with his brothers about what to expect.

Frédéric was trained from the very beginning to become CEO of TAG Heuer. “Report when you think it’s ready,” said his father, Stéphane Bianchi, who soon became CEO of TAG Heuer and head of the watch business. partly to train his successor. “And if you think she’ll never be ready, come to me.” Mr. Bianchi agreed that this was not the easiest transition.

“We fought everywhere,” he said. “You can have a big brain and not be a leader. We’re laughing about it now.” He handed over the reins to the 25-year-old in June 2020. (Mr. Bianchi became head of the watch and jewelery division.) Frédéric became the second youngest Arnault to become CEO, after Alexandre, who took over when LVMH bought Rimowa at the age of 24.

“He changed a lot when Frédéric became CEO,” said Mr. Bianchi. “In the beginning he had no doubts. But he’s listening. Now he can admit he was wrong.”

Beyond focusing on the connected watch, which currently accounts for around 15 percent of all watch sales, Mr. Arnault shifted TAG Heuer’s retail-wholesale balance to its predecessor, doubling e-commerce, which grew 329 percent last year. It is predicted to grow 87 percent more in 2020 and 2021.

It also changed where the company puts its money. When Mr. Arnault arrived, TAG Heuer’s biggest promotional investment was in football, but it turns out that almost no real consumer thought of TAG Heuer as connected to football; they thought of it in connection with Formula 1. Mr Arnault said he was pursuing a partnership with Porsche.

“He writes a letter to the president and gets no response,” said Mr. Bianchi. “She writes to the VP of Marketing: no response. He invites them to see the company. He had refused three or four times before they agreed to come and listen.” The deal was announced last April.

“He is very resilient,” said Mr. Bianchi. (Mr. Arnault himself is not interested in race cars. He owns a BMW Series 1.)

Mr. Arnault took the same approach for Mr. Gosling, whom he wanted in part because of the movie “Drive,” although the actor wasn’t an obvious celebrity ambassador: he was 40, had never endorsed a product, and had no social media. presence.

“This is unusual,” said Mr. Arnault, “but that means there is a mystery around him.”

The deal with Mr Gosling took about a year and a half to be negotiated and included not just a confirmation, but an agreement that Mr Gosling would help the art run the campaigns and design his own watch (not for sale, but for himself). That’s what impressed him, Mr. Gosling said.

“He told me he wasn’t looking for a new ‘influencer,'” she said. Although it’s a two-year deal, both men said they’re thinking long-term.

Mr. Arnault describes his brand as: “This is intent achieve success. not people Have achieved success. People are always looking for the next success.”

Sounds like the way people describe it.

Like most of the Arnault children and their father, Frédéric is a tennis player. He also loves playing golf, running and kitesurfing. He and one of his brothers often play doubles against their father and a professional. His son said that although Mr. Arnault Sr. used to win, it is now generally the other way around. Mr. Bianchi prefers squash, so the two had a match.

“He was killing himself at every point,” said Mr. Bianchi, but did not say who won on the record. He admitted that Mr Arnault had said their next game should be tennis.

“Competitive” is a word that comes up a lot in relation to Frédéric. So are “calm” and “calm”. “He’s like his father in that way,” said Mr. Bianchi. Alex and Antoine are often categorized as outgoing.

“He hates losing,” said his schoolmate Gregoire Genest, with whom he co-founded his new venture. “We usually bet on a match, like the loser has to do 50 pushups. But he’s generous when he wins about not doing pushups, especially if we went out late the night before. That makes him very good at negotiating. He knows how far he can push people.”

Ask Mr. Arnault what he does for fun and he says, “Work is fun!” says. despite laughing while saying it. He likes to play chess and backgammon. He likes math.

Also the piano that runs in the family. His mother, Hélène Mercier, is a concert pianist; her father and most of her siblings are playing. (The word Frédéric may be the best, but he will admit that he played the most.) He is fond of Russian composers and Liszt. Before becoming CEO of TAG Heuer, he would give concerts once a year and play with TAG Heuer. Moscow Philharmonic. Now, “It’s hard to practice enough,” he said.

Mr. Bianchi said that when they worked together, they would hold meetings in La Chaux-de-Fonds all day, and then, at 9 or 10 p.m., everyone would go to their families and Mr. Arnault would go. to practice. “It’s like in a different world,” he said, watching her play. “Her face is different. She’s very into the music.”

Mr. Arnault said: “Music is like meditation. It allows me to focus on something else.”

Mr. Arnault has dinner with his family about once a week, although he spends four days a week in Geneva (where he lives in a hotel) and three days in Paris (where he has a “very basic” flat in the Seventh District). and all siblings meet for big family events. At Alex’s last wedding to Géraldine Guyot in Venice, they were all the best guys (Beyoncé and Jay-Z came; Kanye West did and also performed.)

“Ninety-five percent of the time we talk about work,” Mr. Arnault said. “It was always like that. Growing up, we talked a lot about lessons, sports, music, politics, but business was still the main topic of discussion.”

Like his brothers and father, he prefers dark suits from Dior and often turtleneck or open-collar shirts and sneakers. Plus a TAG Heuer. He rarely wears a tie. Dior Men’s artistic director, Kim Jones, is one of his closest friends in the group. Mr. Jones said that often, Mr. Arnault and his sons came in groups to see the collection and place their orders.

Every month, or a month and a half, all five children have formal business lunches with their father. They limit meetings to two hours because otherwise they could go on all day.

Unlike his parents and older siblings, Mr. Arnault does not yet collect art – “I am too young,” he said – yet he collects mentors. Mr. Bianchi was one; Thierry Breton, former CEO of France Télécom and current commissioner of the European Union in charge of the internal market, is another; and Tony Fadell, director of investment firm Future Shape and co-founder and former CEO of Nest Labs (and inventor of the iPod and co-inventor of the iPhone).

Mr. Fadell and Mr. Arnault had met when Frédéric was a teenager while his father was on a tour of Silicon Valley. Mr. Fadell, who moved to Paris a few years ago, said they were in touch and still spoke regularly.

“I’ve had my share of people trying to prove how great they are,” said Mr Fadell. “He has the opposite problem: He has to prove he can be humble.”

This is something that perhaps no one understands better than their brethren; It is part of the connective tissues as it moves through the group. No one expects TAG Heuer to be Frédéric’s last outpost in the LVMH kingdom.

He said he was watching Netflix sometimes when he wanted to unzip it. He liked “The Queen’s Gambit,” which featured a TAG Heuer chess clock that the company was considering bringing back. But recently, she watched a documentary drama that she loved. What was this?

“Roman Empire,” he said.



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