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In her first public engagement since taking on the role of Ganni CEO, Laura Du Rusquec spoke about her priorities for the Danish label — its elevation strategy, its retail expansion and why retaining authenticity will remain key as the brand grows. “We are all aligned for the same objective: to be the leaders of what we call ‘progressive luxury’,” the executive said during a keynote session at the Vogue Business and Pinterest event on 30 May, held at Paris’s La Suite Girafe. “It’s a luxury that is authentic. It’s a matter of providing a great product with great values behind it, with a sentiment of community and inclusivity,” she told Vogue Business Paris correspondent Laure Guilbault.
Du Rusquec was appointed in April, joining from Balenciaga where she was deputy CEO. Prior to that, she held positions at Gucci and Kering Group. Ganni, created in 2000 by gallerist Frans Truelsen in Copenhagen, Denmark, was bought by Nicolaj Reffstrup and his wife Ditte Reffstrup in 2009; L Catterton acquired a majority stake in 2017.
At a time when luxury brands are continuously raising prices, are brands like Ganni being given more oxygen? “I think it’s naturally creating opportunity for many brands including Ganni but I believe that quality should inform prices and this will be our focus” Du Rusquec said. “Ganni is a Danish brand, the Danish roots are important. There is this principle about honesty in Danish design. There is this principle of still being accessible in terms of price, but with a great quality. I heard some people at Ganni talking about honest prices, which I really like as a wording. So elevation will go with a better product in terms of quality and all the research and development that has been worked on to find new fabrics, new materials that are more sustainable and so on. So that will naturally, potentially increase the prices, but that will come with quality.”
In sync with this elevation, Ganni is pursuing its direct-to-consumer (DTC) strategy. Today, Ganni generates 50 per cent of its revenue via its online and owned stores, and the other 50 per cent via the wholesale channel. “I think that wholesale is important, though we need to continue to develop our own channel, because this is where you have more control and where you are able to express the values of the brand.” A new Ganni post on New York’s Madison Avenue is slated to open by the end of the year. “It’s important for us because it’s quite [strategic] positioning also as a location — the US market is a very strong market for us,” Du Rusquec added.
Then, Kelly Emanuelli, head of luxury at Pinterest and Alexandra Bolten-Mercadier, global head of social and content marketing at L’Oréal, delivered closing remarks on the evolving attitudes of luxury consumers online.
Emanuelli discussed Pinterest boards — where users curate their unique wishlists — and Pinterest collages, a new feature on the platform, “which allows you to cut out products such as fashion and beauty and put them together to create a complete look”, she explained — “Gen Z love this”. The luxury audience on Pinterest is growing 31 per cent year-on-year, led by Gen Z and the thousands of micro-trends emerging on the platform. Brands notably choose Pinterest because of its young and affluent audience: 70 per cent of them are under 35, with a third earning over $100,000 per year, she said.Emanuelli cited a YSL Beauty campaign for Mother’s Day promoting their Libre perfume, which resulted in a 23 per cent sales lift — checkouts that wouldn’t have happened without the Pinterest campaign. “That shows that we really became a full funnel platform where luxury brands can reach their objective from upper funnel [shoppers in the awareness stage] to lower funnel [shoppers in the purchasing stage],” Emanuelli said. “Pinterest is transforming into a place where users not only discover and build relationships with brands but also actively engage in unique shopping experiences.”
“What we see happening in the social space and in the content space overall and the rise of the creator economy, it’s creativity. There’s a lot of creativity out there and generative AI for content, it’s a way to unleash creativity,” said Bolten-Mercadier.
L’Oréal recently unveiled its ‘Creaitech’ generative AI, beauty content lab at this year’s Vivatech conference. “We’ve designed this safe space for our brands where they can experiment with generative AI. We are setting up a safe ecosystem, where marketers, copywriters and 3D artists can use this technology and further the boundaries of creativity,” Bolten-Mercadier explained of the creation. “Thanks to this space, we are defining the guardrails for a responsible use of generative AI. It was very important to take a stance and we have decided that we will not use generative life-like face, body or skin to support or enhance our product performance in external communication.”
After the conversations, guests enjoyed champagne and canapés on the terrasse with a sprawling view of the Eiffel Tower.
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