LVMH sets up partnership with Milan's Bocconi University

By

Jean-Paul Leroy

Published
Mar 18, 2016

The LVMH group has joined forces with Milan's Bocconi University by signing a five-year partnership deal, involving the creation of a university professorship dedicated to luxury goods and fashion management.

Called 'LVMH Associate Professorship', the initiative was launched at the LVMH Days 2016, a series of events targeting students.

Bocconi University enjoys a high reputation well outside of Italy for the teaching of economics, finance, management, public administration and law.

Its collaboration with the LVMH group began in 2010, through the group's participation in the graduate training programme called 'Track in Luxury Business Management'.

The new project is led by Professor Emanuela Prandelli and is aimed at addressing the new challenges linked with the digital world that face luxury goods companies. "In the luxury industry, finding the right balance between distance and proximity to users raises complex issues regarding the opportunity of benefiting from digital technology," stated the professor on Wednesday 16th March, in her inaugural address.

"With this major partnership, world luxury leader LVMH is marking its engagement and desire to transmit the creativity, excellence and values which make its labels strong," said Chantal Gaemperle, the group's Executive Vice-President for Human Resources and Synergies.

The new professorship was announced during the LVMH Days 2016, two days organised by the luxury goods group and Bocconi University, to allow the students to get to know LVMH better.

On the occasion, the first edition of the LVMH Challenge was launched. Organised this year by Loro Piana, it pits teams of students in competition with each other, facing a real business challenge encountered by the label, and will offer several internship opportunities at Loro Piana.

The students are then invited to take part in the LVMH Recruiting Date, a meeting and networking session with HR managers from eleven of the group's companies.
 
The partnership with Bocconi is far the luxury group's first of its kind. Back in 1991 it created an LVMH chair with Essec dedicated to luxury marketing. A General Management and Retail Excellence chair was launhced with HEC Paris in 2016. At Centrale Paris, LVMH, with other companies (Carrefour, Safran, Sanofi), contributed to a chair dedicated to supply chain. LVMH also has a partnership with the Singapore Management University via the Asia Luxury brand Research Initiative. Partnerships also exist with Parsons, Central Saint Martins, etc.