Leaving Gucci, I'm De Solai of Tom Ford

On a Sunday in March, at 9 a.m. when most people were still lazy or enjoying breakfast, Domenico De Sole, 70, said he was going to send a work email to Tom Ford, a partner they'd worked with for 20 years. "Some people turn off the switch on the job on weekends, but I don't, and so does Tom, we always keep an eye on work." Sitting on a couch at Tom Ford's new store in Beijing's Yintai Center, de Solai, whose hair has thinned and gray, said.

In addition to the clerk, de Solle was the first person to come to the store this Sunday. He first looked at the overall decoration display in the store, then approached the shelves and asked the store manager about the specific situation. On the first day, a guest bought 24 items in one go, and de Solec asked in detail about the styles, models and colors of these items. "It's this black one, right?" He picked up a coat and looked at it, "What about the bag?" What color did she buy for that bag? ”

After learning from the store manager that the high-roller was originally the number one customer of another luxury brand, de Solai first said that he would invite her to an event two days later, and then asked the manager to make a list of his shopping lists, including styles and colors. "You give me the list as soon as possible, and I'm going to email Tom right away and tell him about it." De Solle pulled out his phone as he spoke. The shopping list is designed to give Ford across the ocean a better understanding of the preferences of Chinese customers.

That's how Tom Ford and de Solle have worked together for 20 years. Ford, a design genius in the fashion industry, is responsible for everything related to design and creativity, including every detail of the goods and stores, and de Soleil is responsible for how to make the company grow and run better. Prior to 2004, their partnership allowed Gucci to grow from a bankrupt Italian aristocrat to one of the world's premier luxury brands. Today's situation is different – Tom Ford is a brand that Ford and de Soleil built out of their own pockets, their own company.

In a 2013 interview, Ford revealed that if everything goes according to plan, the company's retail performance is expected to reach $1 billion by early 2014. In general, this is a report card that an emerging luxury brand needs to work hard for decades to get, and from scratch to become the focus of the fashion world again, Ford and de Solai have taken less than 10 years.

Gucci Savior

In a 2004 photo, Tom Ford wears a red velvet suit with the top buttons of the white shirt still maintaining a "Ford-esque" open style. With an excited expression, one hand beckoning someone to come over, the other holding his 10-year-old work partner de Soleil.

This is tom Ford and de Saulay's singing at Gucci — a photo of the two with happy expressions and people clapping in the background for their final show at Gucci. From 1994 to 2004, Tom Ford and de Saulay teamed up to build a $230 million company with sales of just $2.2 million into a $3 billion-a-year luxury empire that could compete with LVMH.

In 1994, de Soleil was appointed CEO of Gucci, and at that time Gucci's products were weak and the brand image was greatly reduced by over-authorization, and it was on the verge of bankruptcy. At this time, the company needed a creative director with the ability to turn the tide, and de Solai selected Tom Ford to take charge of all the product lines such as men's wear, women's wear, perfumes, accessories, shoes and hats.

On Tom Ford's Gucci debut in 1995, Gucci's originally old-fashioned image was replaced with a slightly decadent sensuality, which brought Gucci back to the center of the fashion industry and became the darling of the market. From 1995 to 1996, Gucci's sales increased by 90%, in 1998, the company's sales exceeded $1 billion, and in 1999, Gucci, which was only 1/4 of LV's size, had been equal to the former...

The originally European-centric fashion world began to be shaken by two Americans. The ghostly Tom Ford is solely responsible for all of the company's product ideas. De Solle's work is to make Gucci's development more benign. The Italian-American, a former lawyer, had no experience in the fashion industry before becoming CEO of Gucci Americas in 1984. De Saulet divides lawyers into two categories, one shrewd but too cautious and conservative, and the other adventurous. He believed that the former kind of lawyer would never become a businessman, while he was the latter.

"I'm a very decisive person and I've never been afraid to make decisions." At the beginning of his new CEO role, de Solec visited 50 leather manufacturers in Gucci, cut 6 of them within a few weeks, and gave the remaining manufacturers technical and equipment support, and also taught them to manage inventory. This move increased suppliers' leather output from 640,000 in 1994 to 3.5 million in 2001.

De Soleil also knows how to make a luxury brand a race to follow – to maintain a high-end brand image and keep it a little distance from its target customers. During the 1997 Asian financial crisis, he decided to get Gucci to withdraw from the DFS Global Duty Free store, and the DFS CEO who heard about the matter immediately flew to Florence to offer a $20 million a year purchase contract, but de Soleil refused. De Soleile's reason is straightforward and decisive: "Every store has to be beautiful and attractive enough to reflect our quality, when I toured Hong Kong, their store was very old and the location was not good, so I closed the store, I just wanted the perfect store." 」 ”

The operation of controlling store quality and maintaining brand image has always been in de Sole's management code. After Gucci acquired Saint Laurent, de Solé slashed most of the latter's stores with a knife, citing the proliferation of Saint Laurent's stores and sales channels. "A lot of brands can't help but want to make the last penny." This is clearly not what de Saulé did, what he did was to prove to people that high prices and less supply lead to profit growth, and after strict control of the store, Saint Laurent's profit increased from 5.6% to 8% in one year.

Fortunately for Gucci's investors, the tension between managers and designers that often occurs in the fashion industry does not appear in the "Dom & Tom" duo. During their nearly 20 years together, de Saulay had the utmost respect for Tom Ford. "It's hard to get designers to think about business issues, but Tom is not only very good at creating, but also understands the management and management of the company."

De Solai told Weekend Pictorial that he saw Tom Ford as not only a design genius, but also looked at financial statements and discussed the cost of opening a store and the pricing of products. Ford also gave de Saulay enough trust, saying that he "can entrust his life to de Saulay." In 1994, it was de Soleil who rejected Gucci's third-generation successor, Maurizio Gucci, to lay off Ford, and he has been protecting Ford in management ever since.

Yet Gucci, which is at its peak, faces a hostile takeover. In 1999, the LVMH Group quietly bought 34% of Gucci's shares, and then demanded three directors in Gucci as a majority shareholder, which caught de Soleil by surprise. In order to avoid being controlled by a fierce rival, Gucci sought PPR (Kering Group) to buy a 40% stake in the company at a critical moment, successfully suppressing the intention of LVMH Holdings.

The stake battle between Gucci, LVMH and PPR is considered to be the most dramatic business battle of the late 20th century, which laid the foundations of today's luxury industry, but also laid the groundwork for the departure of de Saulay and Tom Ford. After PPR took the shares, LVMH withdrew knowing that the trend had gone, and PPR acquired all of the shares of Gucci held by LVMH, which allowed it to fully control Gucci.

This move touched the bottom line of de Sauley and Ford – the ability to bring Gucci back to life within a few years was due to Dom & Tom's complete control over the company, a "privilege" that PPR wanted to give. In 2004, after a failed battle for control of the company, both de Sauley and Tom Ford left the Gucci empire they had built.

Start from scratch

After leaving Europe and returning to the United States, 60-year-old de Soleile intended to retire, while Tom Ford was depressed. "I'm not sure what I should do". Ford even told the media that he had no intention of returning to the fashion world. But this "unintentionality" did not last long.

That summer, de Soley visited Tom Ford's home in New Mexico, and Ford told him he wanted to start a new brand. "He asked me to do it with him, but I was all going to retire," de Solle recalled to Weekend Pictorial, "but then again I love to work, so I thought I'd want to."

Work, it is better to do it with Tom. ”

In 2005, de Saulay and Tom Ford founded Tom Ford International (TFI) out of their own pockets, with De Saulet as chairman, of which Ford is CEO and creative director. Yet the price behind freedom and absolute control is that the brand new brand has no positioning, no core products, no production lines and no sales channels, and this time, "Dom & Tom" is going to start from scratch.

In the early days of a brand without the support of a large consortium and with little money, Tom Ford was a master of borrowing. In 2005, Ford announced that it would license its eyewear business to Marcolin, an Italian manufacturer of high-end eyewear, and to Estée Lauder. This is an outlier in the luxury industry, a luxury product usually starts with a ready-to-wear collection, but it means a huge upfront investment. By teaming up with Marcolin and Estée Laud, Tom Ford earned enough exposure with less investment and attracted his first followers.

In 2007, Tom Ford launched its first product line in the true sense of the word, high-end menswear. "Tom felt that before that, there was no real top luxury menswear brand on the market." de Solai said. He wears a dark blue-gray ties on his chest and is made from suits to shirts, to leather shoes to briefcases on his feet, all made by Tom Ford. A tom Ford ready-to-wear will start at $3,500, meaning it's even more expensive than the full-knit version of London's Savile Row, which is known worldwide for top-of-the-line hand-sewn suits.

For Tom Ford, menswear is an area where details prevail, meaning the highest-end fabrics, fine cuts, tightly controlled buttons and lapels, and Made in Italy, which still represents the top quality of luxury to this day. "We upgraded all the fabrics, and customers don't want to spend $5,000 on a suit for me and find the same fabric in another store."

With the launch of menswear, Tom Ford opened its first flagship store on Madison Avenue in New York. Tom Ford thinks the ideal first location would be on London's most fashionable Bond Street or Sloane Street, but such a good location would mean bidding with LVMH, Richemont and his own Gucci, and the young Tom Ford clearly lacked the financial resources.

The New York flagship store's décor is imbued with Ford's personal touch, with brown velvet sofas, light gray carpets, chrome and glass used as embellishments. Young luxury brands often struggle with not being able to find the right store, and because of Ford's previous reputation in the fashion industry and the partnership that "Dom & Tom" has accumulated in the Gucci era, several owners and retailers have expressed their intention to cooperate with Tom Ford before the first flagship store is built.

However, shortly after the opening of the first store, Tom Ford and de Soleille had one of the toughest times since the company was founded. The 2008 financial crisis caused a rapid downturn in the luxury goods industry, and Tom Ford, which had just announced plans for global expansion, was also affected. De Soleil had many discussions with Ford, and finally decided to postpone the original store opening plan and fully maintain the only New York flagship store. "We stopped all brands and waited for the economy to improve." In his decades of business career, one of the most common phrases de Saul has said to those around him is that "the situation may be bad, but it is not so serious." This calmness also allowed him and Ford to survive the financial crisis.

After the storm, the high-end menswear market has seen rapid growth, according to Bain Consulting, this segment has been growing at a rate of 12% to 16% per year since 2010, even faster than women's clothing. In the men's fashion stream, Tom Ford became the object of the rich, and some even spent millions of dollars on Tom Ford in the past year. Karen Katz, CEO of N.M. Marcus, a high-end U.S. department store, said customers who come to buy Tom Ford are often "confident and strong."

The Future Top 5 ?

Tom Ford did not shy away from revealing his ambitions. In a 2013 interview, he said Tom Ford would be among the top five brands in the luxury world within the next decade, with LV, Gucci, Armani and Chanel in the same camp, with Ford arguing that he would even be able to surpass Prada by then.

"Of course I think so too." When asked if he was equally confident in the goal of "top five in the world", de Sauré was sure. "If it's about quality, I think we've done it, but the financial numbers may take some time, after all, the brand is still very young."

What takes time is the scale of Tom Ford. The brand, which opened its first store in 2007 and was looking for investment before entering women's wear products, is indeed temporarily difficult to match the luxury brands that have long been formed in the retail network.

Funding was a top priority for de Saulay and Tom Ford. Dom & Tom "wanted to make every store the ultimate in luxury, which meant it had to be located in the best commercial location, the best business location, and be a neighbor to the big luxury brands." The beautiful shop was expensive to build and very expensive, but this small company was running with Tom and me from the very beginning. De Solai explains Tom Ford's slow pace of opening stores at the beginning.

Since 2010, the fledgling Tom Ford has accelerated its store openings, and now the company has nearly 100 stores in Milan, Tokyo, Las Vegas, Hong Kong and other places, including self-operated, franchised and store-in-store stores, while Tom Ford and de Soleile carefully control the details of the sales network to a potted plant in the store in the desire to expand.

Even for high-end department stores with big names, it's not easy to get Tom Ford in. Mixed sale of goods of various brands is a common pattern in foreign department stores, and "Dom & Tom" requires department stores to open another store-in-shop for Tom Ford, and the various furnishings in it should be consistent with self-operated stores." What we have to consider is to limit the product to the top luxury places, the location must be unique, in the United States we (department store-in-store) only choose Goodman and Neman Marcus, in London only harold. De Solec talked about controlling sales channels, which was one of the most recognizable moves in the industry during his time at Gucci.

The Chinese market is seen by Tom Ford and de Soleile as a key place to conquer if they want to have a place in the luxury industry, so Ford is willing to sell treasures. In May 2010, Ford sold his self-portrait of Pop artist Andy Warhol for $32.6 million, which was used to build Tom Ford's stores in Beijing, Shanghai, and Hong Kong.

The brand opened five new stores in China at the end of last year and early this year, bringing its number of stores in China (including Hong Kong and Macau) to 9. If all goes well, Tom Ford will open 106 stores worldwide by the end of 2014.

In order to increase the exposure of the nascent brand, and to accept the Internet that the entire luxury industry is embracing, Tom Ford began to hold large fashion shows and invite fashion bloggers in 2013, and in March this year, the company also launched an e-commerce website. In the past, Tom Ford would never expose its products online in advance, and in any case, on the road to the world's luxury top 5, the once-unruly Tom Ford is changing.

Tom Ford now has a new problem, and another shareholder in addition to Tom Ford and de Solet, the Portuguese cork stopper manufacturer Américo Amorim Group, who holds a 25% stake, is considering selling its stake in Tom Ford because of a shift in investment strategy. Ford himself has said that the company does not need new investors, because the addition of new shareholders means that Dom & Tom may have less freedom and control, which is so highly valued.

Tom Ford and de Saulay still work tirelessly. Ford usually wakes up early and takes care of his son, who is less than two years old, before starting work, while de Solei eats breakfast with his wife every day and walks into his home office at 8 a.m. – he even has a habit of not eating out at noon, just to concentrate on work for 12 hours in a row.

Some employees have complained online that working for Tom Ford means that the phone is on call 24 hours a day. I don't know if he knows that in order to achieve the goal of making a comeback and then becoming a top luxury brand, his two bosses have influenced the fashion industry for 20 years "Dom & Tom", and there are still many things to do.