blog

LVMH vs. Hermès

For Hermès, LVMH represents everything it is not.

“There is a part of our world that is playing on abundance, on glitz and glamour. And there is another part that is concentrated on refinement, and basically making beautiful objects,” Mr Thomas told the New York Times. “We don’t want to be a part of this financial world which is ruining companies and dealing with people like they are goods or raw materials. It’s not a financial fight, because we would lose that. It’s a cultural fight.”

The “culture of Hermès” sees it shun Chinese assembly lines to employ artisans in France to hand-sew its famous Kellys and Birkins, weave its flagship scarves in Lyon from silk raised on its farm in the mountains of Brazil and have an in-house “nez” who creates perfume from his home near Grasse, the world’s perfume capital in the South of France.

The approach has been spectacularly successful. This month, the group posted a record net profit for 2012 of €740 million, up 24.5pc and well above forecasts, confirming a stellar performance for France’s luxury industry as a whole last year. Up 32pc, the company’s operating margin was the highest since Hermes went public in 1993. Sales in Asia, excluding Japan, rose 36.2pc.

Photoshop tips, etc

File types : depends primarily on end usage for print the range is 240-300 dpi, or for digital 72-92 dpi. Usually for digital web/mobile usage standard formats are PNG or JPG

File format of RAW vs JPG : maybe for a later lesson but camera Raw is always the best format to shoot in it gives you greater control of size and image manipulation

Layers : tutorial that gives an overview of Photoshop layers

Keyboard shortcuts : a good idea to learn some keyboard shortcuts, it cuts down radically on mouse fatigue

Adjustment Layers : tutorial here

Text and Retouch tutorial : this is a good one to go through just to have a sense of things

Tutorials galore : here and here