My top 10 highlights from The House of Arnault:

1.  He made a bunch of comments that were very, very detail-oriented. Things that you wouldn’t typically notice, but once you’ve seen tens of thousands of stores over the years, it’s what comes to your mind immediately.

2.  Arnault spots any incongruities that might disrupt the aura of opulence he has carefully constructed. Then he reels off texts and emails to his senior executives describing any perceived deficiencies in bullet points of obsessive detail.

3.  Arnault has assembled the world’s largest luxury conglomerate and globalized a sector once constrained by the limited ambitions of family-owned European companies encrusted in tradition.

4.  Arnault believed that luxury brands could be larger than anyone at the time imagined.

5.  "Every morning I have fun when I arrive."

6.  He abhors complacency so much. The worst way to start a meeting is to tell him the sale are robust.

7.  Dior had three stores and the equivalent of €90 million in sales back then (when Arnault took over). It has 439 stores and had €9.5 billion in sales last year.

8.  Arnault is clever enough to realize that when someone is an extremely creative personality you need to give the horse room to run and then back up that talent with strong LVMH management.

9.  Last year LVMH spent €2.45 billion on real estate acquisitions. He makes money from his own stores, from leasing space to rivals, and from the appreciation of premium real estate.

10.  Arnault recently raised the CEO retirement age at LVMH from 75 to 80. Afterward he got a letter from Warren Buffett telling him he made a mistake by setting the new age limit so low.

Listen to #355 Rare Bernard Arnault Interview on Apple, Spotify, or the web.

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