With a customer-centric approach and a drive for agility, Luca de Meo’s move follows an internal assessment revealing the company’s weaknesses and current standing. Kering is entering a new phase under the leadership of Luca de Meo. Just three weeks after officially taking office, the new CEO of the French luxury group has convened several hundred executives for a global meeting to detail his roadmap and “put the teams in order”, according to La Lettre.
The new CEO has called several hundred executives to a global meeting to detail his roadmap and “put the teams in order”, as reported by La Lettre and confirmed by the AFP news agency. The meeting, which will be held in videoconference format, comes after the group’s executives received an internal memorandum drafted by De Meo over the summer, even before his official appointment on September 15.
In the document, the Italian executive, who replaces François-Henri Pinault in the day-to-day management of the group, sets out a diagnosis of Kering’s situation and proposes “more than a dozen lines of work” to relaunch its business. Among the main proposals is a strategic shift to “put the customer back at the center” and reduce dependence on the creative weight of artistic directions.
De Meo believes that the designers’ vision “is perfect for 20% of the most creative and emblematic products in a collection”, but that “for the other 80%, the designers’ vision is perfect for the remaining 80%”.but that “for the other 80%, small leather goods, footwear and commercial ready-to-wear, the common sense of the mass-market industries must be applied: To accurately understand the customer’s expectations”.
De Meo intends to halve product development times from the usual one year between design and arrival in the store to a maximum of six months. The aim, according to the executive, is to “gain speed” and adapt Kering’s structure to a more competitive and changing global context.
Kering is looking for speed and method under the new leadership of Luca De Meo. In the memorandum, De Meo also stresses the need to “rationalize, reorganize and reposition” some of the brands of the group, which owns Gucci, Saint Laurent, Bottega Veneta, Balenciaga and Boucheron. In addition, the executive intends to continue the process of deleveraging. “The current situation reinforces our determination to act without delay,“ said De Meo on the day of his appointment on Sept. 9.
The new CEO inherited a group under pressure from the global slowdown in luxury and, above all, the decline of Gucci, which accounts for more than half of Kering’s sales. With the creative direction still in transition following Demna’s arrival, the Italian brand has lost commercial traction, weighing down the group’s profitability in recent years.
The appointment of Luca de Meo, former CEO of Renault and with a long history in the automotive industry, has been interpreted as a commitment to industrial efficiency and brand management in a group going through its most delicate moment in a decade. After several quarters of decline at Gucci and with European luxury in a downturn, Kering now faces a restructuring that aims to balance creativity, business and execution.
De Meo’s objective, according to group sources, is to establish a transversal operational discipline that will streamline decisions and unify product strategy without diluting brand identities. In other words, to replace the “creator’s vision” model with a structure capable of reading the movements of the global consumer with the same precision as an automobile manufacturer in its market.
On the immediate horizon, the executive faces the task of rebuilding market confidence. In 2024, the group reduced its sales by 4% and closed the year with a double-digit drop in net profit. Kering, founded in 1963 by François Pinault and controlled by the Pinault family through its Artémis holding company, has begun a process of internal review of its portfolio, with a special focus on Balenciaga and Bottega Veneta.
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