Thinker, tailor, technophile

When Robert Polet, 54, became chief executive of the luxury conglomerate Gucci Group five and a half years ago, one of the first things he did was call a meeting with his IT department.

“I told them to go find out what sort of set-up Bill Gates and Steve Jobs had in their offices, and then get it for me,” says the notoriously personable Mr Polet, a Dutchman who has made a strategic art out of the gently self-mocking story, dimpling as he admits to the request.

What his team came back with is what now exists in his airy London headquarters: three flat screens on the wall outside his private office that allow real-time visuals from any three Gucci Group stores around the world; two screens on his desk, one for his e-mail and music, one for his documents; and a video conferencing screen in his boardroom that can connect to any Gucci Group office or executive at the touch of a button.

“It’s important for us to be ahead of the curve on everything, and as the leader, I need to set the example,” says Mr Polet. Indeed, he admits to being driven into a fit of pique when he discovered his head of Asia had a new BlackBerry model before he did. “I’ve told my tech guys never to let anyone in the company get a piece of technology before me,” he says. “I want everything first.”

Yet this desire for control is tempered when it comes to his business.

Since taking over from the team of Tom Ford and Domenico De Sole in 2004, Mr Polet has overseen the decentralisation of Gucci Group, devolving specific decision-making and strategic power to his collection of brand managers in a style he calls “the art of letting go” (he still asks them for three-year plans every year).

Previously the president of Unilever’s frozen foods division, Mr Polet was famously mocked on appointment as an “ice-cream seller” who did not know anything about luxury.
But, by 2007, Fortune magazine named him European Businessman of the Year. In 2008, all the Gucci Group brands had positive recurring operating income for the first time since owner Pinault Printemps Redoute bought a majority stake in the group in 2001, and though, like the rest of the luxury industry, Gucci Group has been hard-hit by the recession – last year’s third quarter sales were down 10 per cent compared with the same period in 2008 – Mr Polet is optimistic. The key, he says, is treating each brand as a specific case study, and not using a one-approach-fits-all strategy, whether the issue is technology or franchising.

Negotiating the interaction between luxury and technology is a delicate process, however, especially when the balance also involves different brands with different identities at different stages of growth. Gucci Group includes Gucci, Bottega Veneta, Balenciaga, Boucheron and Alexander McQueen in its stable of 10 brands, some of which are among the oldest in a business that has never been known for embracing technology.

The problem lies in reconciling a value system that has historically placed its emphasis on the importance of handwork, heritage and tradition with one geared towards the new, transient world of social media, and this is as true for Gucci Group brands as any others. Bottega Veneta, for example, has developed its own programme at the arts and crafts school in Vicenza, where it teaches artisans its traditional intrecciato technique of hand-weaving leather to ensure the future production of its signature Cabat bag: handmade by two people, over two days, just as it was in 1966 when it launched.

And at the same time, for those who want to go behind the scenes of the brand’s advertising campaigns, there is a YouTube video. It can seem an odd juxtaposition. Yet Mr Polet thinks not. “There is no contradiction between being timeless and time-sensitive,” he says. “You have to say: ‘This is part of our daily life, because it is part of our customers’ daily lives,’ and you have to figure out how to take what you do and engage with them. That is the essence of what we do: try to understand our customers. So that makes combining a brand like Bottega and technology not only legitimate but absolutely necessary.”

It is possible to argue that Mr Polet himself, who changed not only his job but the contents of his wardrobe when he moved from his previous position at Unilever to Gucci, is a case in point: he likes his toys and his tailoring too. Not that embodying such a combination was an employment qualification – Francois-Henri Pinault, chief executive of parent company PPR, was looking for someone with experience managing an international portfolio of brands, and Unilever’s $7.8bn frozen foods division qualified. Nonetheless, Mr Polet’s empathy with his market is clearly a useful trait.

He carries a BlackBerry Bold (the latest version), an iPod Touch, a Samsung flat phone (“the flattest phone you can have; they’re no longer sold, but I bought three”); an iPod Classic; and a Toshiba laptop. He does not tweet, but he is on Facebook, though his list is private. He tried LinkedIn and MySpace, but says he became too bombarded by requests to connect, and so closed his accounts.

He has been engaged in a standing game of electronic and cultural one-upsmanship for the past 10 years with his 22- and 24-year-old daughters. One of his proudest moments, he says, was when he discovered The Fray before they did, though it was equally disheartening when his youngest daughter had to explain to him how Instant Messenger worked – on his own BlackBerry. On the other hand, he did beat them to Apple TV.

Yet even Mr Polet admits customers vary from luxury brand to luxury brand, and thus the technology and avenues used in each brand have to differ. Part of it, he says, has to do with the life cycle of the brand itself, and part of it has to do with integrity.

Thus, for example, he says it makes sense for Gucci to have created an iPhone application, as it was creative director Frida Giannini’s idea, and, in fact, features her own playlist (she is known as a music collector, and has walls full of old vinyl albums).

But Boucheron, the fine jeweller, could never do this because it has no identifiable “name” or “face” (it is designed by a team) and a brand clearly cannot have a playlist. On the other hand, Boucheron was the first fine jeweller to have a virtual store, where part of the appeal is the ability to help design your own piece of jewellery – in effect, to join the team.

Meanwhile, Mr Polet adds, for a brand such as Alexander McQueen, which has very limited money for traditional marketing, “the internet is a very efficient, cost-effective way to interact with your customers”. And indeed, Mr McQueen is one of the most famous fashion tweeters, and was among the first to stream his fashion show live.

Balenciaga, although also seen as cutting edge aesthetically, is at a different point in its life cycle – it is one of the group’s fastest-growing labels. Mr Polet says they are investing more in building the house’s bricks-and-mortar store network, though they are also redesigning the e-commerce site.

And yet, Mr Polet admits, e-commerce aside, there is no way to measure the revenue-generating effect of the group’s online initiatives; to know if a man or woman who downloaded the Gucci application or follows Alexander McQueen on Twitter or is a Facebook friend of Stella McCartney will ever convert into a paying customer.

Nevertheless he insists they will – his gut tells him so. This is debatable, but it is also, ironically, a traditional luxury approach. One of the basic tenets of the business is an insistence by both designers and executives that their gut tells them if a product is correct, as opposed to any form of market research; it is an industry truism that consumers never know they want a luxury product until they see it. Mr Polet is simply applying the same logic to his e-strategy.

“The potential of customers interacting with a brand online goes way beyond looking at an ad page in Vogue or Vanity Fair,” he says. “The Gucci app had 340,000 downloads at the end of October, just a few weeks after it launched. That makes those people part of the Gucci world.

“And it’s free. It’s the ultimate entry-level product. And maybe that will lead to them buying a belt or a wallet or a perfume.”

And if it does not? “This sort of one-on-one engagement is the only way for a brand to stay alive and relevant,” he insists. “The back and forth – that is key to the future. I know it absolutely.”

The CV
Born: July 25 1955 in Kuala Lumpur (he is a Dutch national).
Education: Studied business administration at Nyenrode in the Netherlands and earned an MBA from the University of Oregon, US. Attended the Harvard advanced management programme in 1996.
Career: Joined Unilever in 1978 and worked in a variety of marketing and senior executive positions throughout the world. Big break was his appointment in 1989 at the age of 34 as chairman of Unilever’s businesses in Malaysia. Last position was president of Unilever’s worldwide ice cream and frozen foods division, a $7.8bn business consisting of more than 40 operating companies. Joined Gucci Group as president, chief executive and chairman of the management board in July 2004.
Interests: Sailing, cycling, golf, exploring, reading, producing olive oil.
- Financial Times, 17 Jan 2010