When Kering chief Luca de Meo gathered his executives last September for a three-day deep dive into the roots of the luxury group’s problems, he invited some unexpected guests: its star designers. Kering’s creatives, who call the tune at brands including Gucci, Saint Laurent and Bottega Veneta, had long occupied “another planet” far removed from the comparatively humdrum operational machine, according to one insider. On top of that, de Meo’s summit coincided with their preparations for Paris Fashion Week, which began just days later.
The former Renault boss’s decision to summon some of the biggest names in fashion provided an early glimpse of an iconoclastic streak that is ruffling feathers at one of the largest and most troubled companies in the gilded luxury industry. Informed by decades spent in Europe’s car industry, de Meo is working to fuse the operations of Kering’s independently managed brands into a more integrated industrial machine by standardising production and centralising decision-making. His goal is to create a more efficient company where 70 per cent of production is handled centrally, with the rest handled by brands independently.
The initiative, carried out in de Meo’s trademark direct style, is “putting a lot of tension in the system”, according to one person close to the company. De Meo also forced a new tempo at Renault after arriving at the struggling carmaker from Seat in 2020. Bringing elements of a blueprint honed in car plants into the atelier is turning into a closely watched experiment in the luxury industry, which has long professed a commitment to artisanal craftsmanship as a way of justifying the hefty price tags of its products.
A former Kering employee described de Meo’s “penchant for operational optimisation” as a “fairly novel” approach in the luxury industry. “No one knows if he’s going to pull it off, but everyone is watching,” the person said. De Meo arrived at Kering a year ago with a mandate to shake things up. A protracted downturn in luxury spending has shone a harsh light on the group’s problems, particularly at key brand Gucci, where revenues had fallen by over a fifth in a single year due to weak demand in China and mishandled creative transitions.
Under the long-term leadership of the billionaire Pinault family, Kering’s market value soared from around €20bn in 2013 to almost €100bn at its 2021 peak before tumbling back to a low of €20bn last year. But de Meo’s belief was that Kering’s longstanding structure — a holding company that sits above independently managed brands — was inefficient and in need of an overhaul. De Meo has repurposed his office in Kering’s Paris headquarters as a meeting room dominated by a large black table where he works with a rotating cast of employees and advisers.
When asked which executive car he wished to be chauffeured around in, the Italian opted for an electric van on the basis that a larger vehicle would give him and his team more space to work on the road. In February, de Meo declared that “the level of bullshit has diminished enormously” within the company. “We say things as they are and we attack them one after the other,” he said. De Meo also forced a new tempo at Renault after arriving at the struggling carmaker from Seat in 2020.
He tried to turbocharge its electric car development by forming a new unit squarely focused on the technology. It succeeded in turning out some hit models, though a slated public listing of the division was abandoned. “Luca moves fast,” said one former Renault colleague, who credits de Meo with re-energising the company after a period of scandal and financial stress. “He set some sort of event or deadline every six months to force the company to move [forward].