Gucci CEO in conversation with Benioff

Another interesting session that I attended at Dreamforce was a fireside chat with Marc Benioff and Gucci CEO Marco Bizzari. Just to set the context, Bizzari become CEO of Gucci in 2015 when the company was in a crisis, turned it around and grow the sales 3 times in 4 years !! 

Here are some excerpts from the talk

(a) Italy is the hub of creativity simply because there is so much talent. That is also why Italy is the hub of luxury fashion

(b) Fast fashion can work based on data points. Luxury fashion cannot. Luxury fashion works basis instincts of people. Thus great talent is very critical to luxury fashion business

(c) Diversity fosters creativity. Ethnic diversity, gender diversity, cultural diversity...thus Gucci believes very strongly in diversity

(d) For a luxury fashion, differentiation is the key. They day you are not able to create differentiation, your reason for existence is over

(e) When he took over Gucci it was a time of crisis. In the first few months, he focused very strongly in internal communication. Flew to almost every office of Gucci, spoke to people, shared his vision, got their buy-in. Did not bother about external communication at that point of time. As a result he did lose any member of his executive core committee.

(f) In internal communication, authenticity is most important. More important that vision, more important than business plan. People need to trust someone

(g) Success comes via ideas not via business plan. Business plans are just a way to execute ideas. 

(h) Fashion business does NOT work via customer surveys. Customer does not understand future trends. Hence Internal talent is so important...people who can spot trends and create fashion that can ride on the same

(i) Fashion industry is the second most polluting industry (after oil and gas). Yet it will survive only if its addresses the issue of sustainability. for example Gucci is already working a new technology that will ensure that leather tanning can happen without creating any pollution

(j) When people talk of sustainability, they talk in terms of making the planet carbon neutral by 2030. In my opinion, in practice that won't happen. It will take us at least another 30 years to get to carbon neutrality. So we need to "buy"some time from the planet. The easiest way to buy time is to plant a trillion trees. If we plant a trillion trees, we can take 210 Gigabits of carbon from the atomosphere. And planting these many trees will cost just USD 20Bn which is like loose change when you compared at the amount of money the world spends on wars every year

(k) Performance is the consequence of values. If you values are strong, your will have a robust performance