Hermès, Brunello Cucinelli, Mytheresa, Bain and McKinsey win Luxury Roundtable Awards

January 2, 2025

Hermès' sumptuous winter 2025 collection. Image credit: Hermès

Hermès, Mytheresa, Bain, McKinsey and Brunello Cucinelli are the winners of the Luxury Roundtable Awards for 2024, a year where most luxury marketers struggled to match their past performance.

While most luxury labels across sectors had to contend with geopolitical and economic uncertainty, these five organizations ensured that they retained the loyalty of existing customers, attracted new business and upheld their brand values.

Competition was tough for the Luxury Roundtable Awards (see criteria) – which are considered the top honors across luxury – but these winners clearly stood out because, above all, they understood two things about luxury: consistency of product quality and customer experience.

Even as it markets with its trademark whimsy, Hermès is always on brand via its house codes. Image credit: Hermès

Luxury Marketer of the Year and Luxury Brand of the Year: Hermès
Observers of the luxury business noted with keen interest how conglomerates such as LVMH, Kering, Richemont, Prada Group, Giorgio Armani, Puig, Swatch Group, Capri and Tapestry fared in 2024. Sales dipped for most globally, especially in China, which itself is going through a marked economic slowdown.

Yet, there was one outlier: Hermès.

Hermès’ success, in the face of all odds, is the undimmed loyalty of its customer base – mostly high net worth and wealthy.

Regardless of the economic environment, the French luxury brand’s customers keep coming back to its stores worldwide and online. Sales growth has been consistent over the decades, including 2024.

Why is this the case for Hermès? The answer is simple and something that many luxury marketers ignore at their own long-term peril: attention to quality and detail, limited distribution of product, calibrated store network worldwide and impeccable customer service.

Add to that list a great working environment for store associates, managers and executives, smart pricing strategy, creating desire through artful anticipation and respect for its heritage even as product creativity and experimentation continues.

Another feature of Hermès is its targeting: the HNW and UHNW clientele who are quite insulated from the vagaries of the stock markets.

Hermès rarely chases aspirational customers who are now the bread-and-butter of groups such as LVMH, Kering, Richemont and Swatch Group as they form the new “Luxury Industrial Complex” – big players leveraging storied brand names for ever-more larger audiences.

Cumulatively for Hermès, all of these attributes result in customer loyalty and continued desirability. Not surprisingly, Hermès has minimal debt and huge cash reserves.

Pierre-Alexis Dumas, artistic director of Hermès, recently gave an interview to U.S. television broadcaster CBS’ “60 Minutes” program. He made a distinction for Hermès: its products were costly versus expensive, the latter of which leads to disappointment given the expectations mismatch between quality and price paid.

The executive also claimed that Hermès does not have a marketing department. True, but the brand does plenty of marketing online, in print and in person through events. Yet that marketing is playful, light touch and on brand code – similar to a physical store experience.

Of course, one could pick holes in Mr. Dumas’ argument. It hard to believe that a Birkin bag – the No. 1 product of Hermès which is nowhere to be seen in its stores and revels in its own mythology – can cost thousands and thousands of dollars to manufacture per piece.

However, Hermès has convinced its customers that the cost of fine materials and impeccable craftsmanship are worth paying for: itself the primary reasons for buying a luxury good in the first place.

Homepage of online luxury retailer Mytheresa. Image credit: Mytheresa

Luxury Retailer of the Year: Mytheresa
Like Hermès, German online retailer Mytheresa outclassed its peers by proving that luxury ecommerce was not a losing proposition.

The U.S. arm of Mytheresa was the star of the show. Under the leadership of the able Heather Kaminetsky, the U.S. unit posted positive results and profit even as competitors such as Net-A-Porter, Moda Operandi and Farfetch struggled.

What helped is the tight curation of inventory that resonated with online audiences worldwide and pricing that was not beyond the reach of both aspirational as well as wealthy consumers.

Ms. Kaminetsky, herself a Net-A-Porter and Barneys veteran, is to be commended for taking the initiative.

A few years ago, she wrote to the global CEO that Mytheresa needed a U.S. arm. Making a convincing case, she went on to take the local operation to new heights – an easy-to-use website, attractive luxury fashionwear, appealing pricing and targeted marketing all helped to earn Mytheresa its top spot in global luxury ecommerce.

An honorable mention should also be made for Saks, a Canadian-controlled department store chain that has now become the owner of its rival, Neiman Marcus Group.

With this merger, Saks owns its eponymous stores, Neiman Marcus shops and the famed Bergdorf Goodman men’s and women’s stores in New York.

Luxury department store chains have struggled to keep up in an environment where luxury brands’ monobrand stores are the biggest competition. What distinguishes Saks from its competition is the sheer breadth of inventory, prized retail locations, associates’ black book of relationships and strong marketing.

The acquisition of Neiman Marcus opens a new chapter for Saks, where hopefully two plus two equals four – which is not always the case with luxury acquisitions.

Market Researcher of the Year: Bain & Company and McKinsey & Company
Two management consultancies have tied for Luxury Roundtable’s Luxury Market Researcher of 2024: Bain & Company and McKinsey & Company. Both have deep ties to luxury brands and retailers as well as access to valuable data on affluent and wealthy consumer behavior.

Snapshot of key luxury sectors' performance in 2024. Source: Bain & Company

The Bain-Altagamma Luxury Goods Worldwide Market Study is consistently held as the standard bearer for luxury research and trends worldwide.

The consultancy pairs with Italian luxury trade association Altagamma to produce its flagship study as well as smaller reports on the global performance of luxury brands and consumers.

In 2024, Bain accurately predicted flat global luxury sales at $1.6 trillion, with expectations for the same numbers in 2025. Bain’s reports not only delve into numbers but also touch on consumer response and reaction to brand overtures.

The organization also unearthed a startling fact, as Claudia D’Arpizio, Bain & Company partner, leader of the firm’s global fashion and luxury practice and lead author of the flagship study, said in the report.

“50 million luxury consumers [out of 400 million worldwide] have either opted out of the luxury goods market or been forced out of it in the last two years,” Ms. D’Arpizio said, highlighting that this attrition was mostly among younger millennials and Gen Z.

“This is a signal for brands that it’s time to readjust their value propositions,” she said. “To win back customers, particularly the younger ones, brands will need to lead with creativity and expand conversation topics.

“Simultaneously, they must keep their top customers front and center, surprising and delighting them while rediscovering one-to-one human interactions.

“For all customers, it will be critical to double down on personalization, leveraging technology to achieve it at scale.”

Consistency in analysis, insights and data are the hallmarks of good market researchers, as Bain has steadily proven. So is the descriptive-prescriptive approach in its studies, which greatly aids its luxury-brand customers as well as industry observers in planning for the period ahead.

Fashion industry growth is expected to remain low but increase slightly from the year prior. Source: McKinsey & Company

Similarly, McKinsey & Company’s predictions on the state of luxury fashion have been spot-on over the years, even more so in 2024.

Partnering with trade publication The Business of Fashion, McKinsey has produced stellar research that guides clients, luxury marketers and industry stakeholders on the likely trajectory of consumer spending on luxury fashion.

Several factors, both economic and geopolitical, will affect the growth of the luxury and non-luxury fashion business in 2025, per the latest report.

The latest study was the most pessimistic in its outlook in years, bemoaning the arrival of “a long-feared cyclical slowdown.”

“Consumers, scarred by the recent period of high inflation, are increasingly price sensitive,” per the executive summary of the report. “There is also the surprising rise of dupes, the acceleration of climate change and the continued reshuﬄing of global trade.

“Regional diﬀerences, which came into focus in 2024, will become even starker in the coming year.

“In short, the negative environment predicted by many in the fashion industry this time a year ago has now manifested. There is still growth to be found, but economic uncertainty, geographic disparities as well as shifting customer behavior and preferences mean seizing it will require navigating a maze of compounding challenges at every turn.

“Consequently, 2025 is likely to be a time of reckoning for many brands.”

In their scope of work, both Bain and McKinsey did not hold back on speaking truth to power as they unearth what makes luxury consumers tick and how luxury brands and retailers can serve their markets better in good times and bad.

Brunello Cucinelli at an event organized Dec. 5, 2024 honoring top Hollywood clients at Los Angeles' famed Chateau Marmont hotel. Image credit: Brunello Cucinelli

Luxury Personality of the Year: Brunello Cucinelli
The usual array of luxury executives topped the news in 2024, chief among them LVMH chairman/CEO Bernard Arnault, who saw his net worth drop in the tens of billions with the decline in the company’s share price over sluggish sales.

Still, Mr. Arnault is a man with a plan, and is in the midst of placing the next generation of Arnaults in key spots across his empire. We shall see the fruits of his endeavors in the second half of this decade.

Then there is Francois-Henri Pinault, CEO of Kering, who is often seen in the company of entertainment industry personalities. He is acutely aware that Kering’s flagship Gucci brand, as well as Saint Laurent, Alexander McQueen and Bottega Veneta, need some serious attention if they have to keep up with their LVMH rivals.

Miuccia Prada is grooming her son to take over and Giorgio Armani is still going strong with a spanking new flagship store in Manhattan below an apartment building named after the brand.

However, there is one founder/CEO who is almost old school in his belief of what luxury means to him and his customers: Brunello Cucinelli.

While other luxury brands posted flat or slightly negative sales, Mr. Cucinelli’s self-named fashion brand grew nearly 12 percent in 2024. The brand’s muted, pastel tones delighted wealthy clients worldwide, charmed by the founder’s razor-sharp focus on quality and appropriate pricing.

Also well-known is Mr. Cucinelli’s “humanistic” tendencies and compassionate treatment of his own employees. His support of Solomeo, the village where his company is based, along with cultural institutions and historic properties key to the locals is commendable.

So is his adherence to the Made-in-Italy brand, closely aligning the product with the provenance which lends its cachet to the offerings.

In a recent earnings call, Mr. Cucinelli said a key differentiator for his brand versus its rivals was to “maintain exclusivity, creativity, craftsmanship, innovation and contemporaneity.”

Mr. Cucinelli is known for his contrarian stand on evergreen products, unlike his competitors who swear by flagship items – Hermès’ Birkin and Kelly bags, Dior’s Miss Dior and Chanel’s No. 5, for instance.

The jury is still out on this line of thinking, but evergreen products “lead directly to a brand’s graveyard,” according to Mr. Cucinelli.

Like Hermès, Brunello Cucinelli knows who its customers are. It has wisely bet on the upper end of the market, known more for its financial resilience and asset diversification.

Mr. Cucinelli, in the earnings call, firmly believes that “luxury will never go away. We think the propensity to buy in the higher range is unchanged, if not greater, for products of absolute luxury.”

The executive has also taken a strong stand against antagonizing customers, including the wealthy, with repeated price increases.

Not that this stops most luxury brands from justifying price hikes on currency harmonization and raw material and labor costs going up. But customers are cottoning on and it shows with sluggish overall luxury industry sales.

Fair price matters as much to Mr. Cucinelli as it does to his customers.

“Trust was one of the most recurring words we were met with during our recent trips around the world and talking to retailers, customers and investors,” Mr. Cucinelli said. “We were told we could be trusted.”

Click or tap here to learn more on how Hermès, Brunello Cucinelli and Patek Philippe are steadily growing their sales and customer loyalty at Luxury Roundtable’s Luxury Outlook Summit 2025 in New York on Jan. 15. Join us – only two weeks left!

Mickey ALAM KHAN is CEO of Luxury Roundtable, a network offering intelligence and networking events for luxury professionals across sectors. He is also a luxury real estate brokerage advisor, consultant to luxury brands and marketing strategist. Reach him at mickey@napean.com.

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Hermès, Brunello Cucinelli, Mytheresa, Bain and McKinsey win Luxury Roundtable Awards

Hermès, Brunello Cucinelli, Mytheresa, Bain and McKinsey win Luxury Roundtable Awards

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