Keeping it in the Longchamp family

Longchamp CEO Jean Cassegrain says the key to the fashion retailer's success is keeping the business in the family.

We’ve had significant growth in the last 3 years or so, 3 very good years or so, successively, and so we’ve grown by 75% over 3 years. In terms of emerging markets, our key markets would be China, Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia; Brazil is also a country that we’ve developed a lot in the past 3 years.

I think we want to remain focused on the product, on the brand, don't want to get distracted by, you know, financial issues, and financial community in general.

Yes, we tried to be consistent and persistent, year after year, people are getting to know us, they’re becoming more aware of the brand, they’re noticing how it’s changing, how it’s evolving.

Well, innovation is the heart of our company and the heart of our business, we are fat of the world fashion, so it means changing all the time, it’s every season, every six months, it’s a new challenge.

Yes, we are very flexible and we like to try things, so we launch many new products, and most of them fail, and I think it is’ a natural process, you have to try, fail, try, fail, to find you know, one product, or several products that are going to be really good.

If we have the backyard difficult, we don’t have to cut everything, because we, you know, we are not publicly, instead we don’t publish our accounts, what’s important as a family business is that we look for at the long term, so our focus is on building the brand, regardless of the short term economic cycles.