Branding - Louis Vuitton - How was it done?

The History of LV

The designer and entrepreneur Louis Vutton was born on the 4th of August 1821 in a small region of France called Anchay. Louis Vutton came from a hard working, working class family which consisted of joiners, carpenters, farmers and milliners. Vutton's mother sadly passed away when he was 10 years old and his father quickly re-married. legend has it that Louis Vutton’s step mother played up to the stereotype of the ‘wicket step-mother’ and was unfortunately a cruel woman who was very unkind to Louis Vutton. This led the stubborn and driven young boy to run away from his family home at the age of 13 (in 1835) and head for the capital city - on foot! It took Louis Vutton over 2 years to reach Paris, making brief stops along the way for work, food and shelter. At the age of 16 Louis Vutton had reached Paris and was ready to start his new life. He was taken on as an apprentice in a workshop making and packaging boxes. Vutton became very good at his job and the trade was a highly respected, urban skill which meant that after a couple of years LV started to gain a reputation for his work. In 1854, Vutton married and a few months after his marriage he opened his own workshop, selling and manufacturing boxes to hold valuable and delicate items. Louis Vuttons business continued to expand - even though civil wars destroyed his workshop resulting in him having to change address and start from scratch. Along with the new address came a strong focus on luxury. And it was in 1872 that the luxury brand was created. For the next 20 years Louis Vutton created luxury luggage until he sadly passed away at the age of 70 in 1892. The Louis Vutton brand however did not die with him and his son Georges carried it on. George then took the brand from selling luxury luggage and trunks to manufacturing and selling ready-to-wear, shoes, watches, jewellery, accessories, sunglasses and books. in 1913 George opened the Louis Vutton building which was the largest luxury luggage store in the world - at the time. It was in fact Louis Vuttons son, George that created the well known LV logo, that remains with the brand today. Between 1945 and 2000 LV continued to expand and bringing new products to the market all produced with their signature LV leather. In 2001 LV collaborated with Marc Jacobs and made a range of luxury bags which people say put LV on the highest level possible in terms of a brand and gave the brand the luxury image it has today. Since then LV have carefully selected high end brands to collaborate with and hand picked specific celebrities to work with. 

Clientele 

It is no secret to who the brand Luis Vutton targets their products towards, you could take a very educated guess based on the price of the products alone! LV produce extremely high end products that appeal to the eye of those with far too much money. However the brand is desired by a whole range of diverse people with pay cheques that are many sizes!  By collaborating/publicly linking with other luxury high end product like : Hermes, Chanel, Supreme. This helps remind people of the standard of the brand. So LV target their brand to ABC1 people - and extremely rich people who can afford to ‘splash out’ on their products. By using certain celebrities like :  Madonna, Angelina Jolie and now Jaden Smith in advertising and promotion and perceiving them in a ‘rich/wealthy’ light, this has increased the desire of the brand as many people want to be seen and respected like they have for these celebrities. 

- LV is one of the worlds most counterfeited brand in the world with millions fake products produced and sold every year. Think of how many ‘looky looky’ men you have seen on holiday with a wide range of ‘LV’ belts and wallets. 

Effective Marketing Methods 

Luis Vutton has been the brand it is today for a long time and gained its status a long time ago. Things like the internet were not around at this time for the brand to spread round the world in the matter of a few clicks. LV first gained its respect back in 1852 by producing boxes and packages for Napoleon III’s wife - which was an amazing marketing method as it spread the brand name around France and eventually the world extremely effectively and gave it it’s royal/luxury perception from day 1. Since then LV have continued to publicly link with high end, rich, well liked and classy celebrities to maintain its status. Luis Vutton have kept up with trends and have a stong social media following today. They have an instagram with 9.9 million followers, which allows them to promote items with pictures of new products and pictures of well know, high end, A list celebrities repping the LV sign! 

Future Plans 

Bernart Arnold stated that LV would slow down the production rates and focus more on quality and exclusively to help maintain the valuable perception the brand has. LV have recently taken on Jaden Smith - the singer/song writer/ actor/ son of the famous Will Smith, as the face of the brand as they feel his passion for fashion and public following is big enough to benefit the brand. I guess time will tell us weather or not this will work out for them…