"Independent Luxury" : A manual for the survival of independent luxury businesses

By

Dominique Muret

Published
Aug 9, 2015

Hundreds of books have been published about the largest and most famous fashion brands... But none so far have had a look at independent luxury businesses.

That's why Jonas Hoffmann - strategy consultant specialized in the luxury sector and professor at SKEMA Business School in Lille, France - and Laurent Lecamp - executive vice-president in charge of sales at Swiss watchmaker Carl F. Bucherer, decided to write the very first book on these highly innovative companies, which are surprisingly relatively unknown from the public.

Published by Palgrave-Macmillan, "Independent Luxury: the four innovation strategies to endure in the consolidation jungle" is a 250-page publication that will hit the shelves of English bookstores during the first half of August, with a price tag of £31.99. It will then be available in other countries at a price of €48, or €33 for those who prefer the e-book version.

"The main idea was to help independent entrepreneurs in the luxury sector, as they have to confront countless difficulties in order to find their place under the sun, facing luxury behemoths; we explain what to do in order to resist in this jungle and how to stand out." This is how Laurent Lecamp sums up the objective of this book, having been himself in a similar situation when he founded Cyrus, an independent watchmaking company.

The book analyses various innovation strategies chosen by independent luxury businesses, and brings out four essential trends. This is an amazing book, which offers an inside view in the world of independent luxury through the assessment of about thirty innovative companies, which enviable growth rates are considered as exemplary, in sectors such as fashion and accessories, watchmaking, gastronomy and automobile, among others.

All these brands share the passion of their founders, who have at some point been driven by a brilliant idea or a particularly innovative project. However, the iron law is that very few actually survive in the long run... Through a synthesis of their observations and analysis, Jonas Hoffmann and Laurent Lecamp supply the reader with a 'survival kit', that can be found in the last part of the book.

The two authors designed a strategic approach for the daily management of independent brands that materializes as a theorem named BA2RE® (Believing, Anticipating, Acting, Reaching, Enduring). This 'magic formula' contains the five essential steps for their survival...