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On day one of VivaTech 2022, visitors flocked to the LVMH Apartment – a stand decked out in deep blue and inspired by Paris’s Haussmann architecture, with elegant lines, colorful planters and high openings evocative of windows.
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The tone is set right from the entrance, where a letterbox attached to the door frame invites visitors to scan a QR code to access the virtual LVMH Apartment, a web3 version of the physical stand set up at the Porte de Versailles exhibition center in Paris. This immersive virtual world allows visitors to further explore the innovations showcased by the LVMH Group’s Maisons and its diverse ecosystem of startups, but also to find out about the latest job openings across the Group in digital and IT.
Step into the future
Entering the LVMH Apartment is like walking into the future that’s being shaped by our Maisons.
On display are innovations from 16 Maisons including the Octo Finissimo Ultra by Bulgari, the world’s thinnest mechanical watch with a QR code engraved on the barrel. Scanning the code gives the owner access to an NFT artwork that guarantees authenticity via blockchain technology and to exclusive multimedia content. And to top it all off, this innovative object is presented suspended in the air, thanks to technology developed by startup Levita, an LVMH Innovation Award finalist from 2021.
Nearby, Make Up For Ever presents Morpho Beauty, a program that combines the power of AI with the invaluable expertise of the Maison’s make-up artists. Morpho Beauty analyzes a face’s various characteristics, such as shape, lines, skin tone and texture, and then recommends the products and techniques that would most effectively highlight its beauty.
Tech… and for Good!
What do all the innovations presented in the LVMH Apartment have in common? They’re all inspired by the same spirit of sustainability – the same commitment to minimizing their environmental impact and protecting nature and the environment. For the Group’s Wines & Spirits Maisons, which work with the Earth’s bounty on a daily basis, this commitment is particularly important. In the LVMH Apartment, this is reflected by Château Galoupet and Ruinart. Both are presenting innovations that reduce their packaging’s carbon footprint: Château Galoupet with its Galoupet Nomade 2021 rosé in a flat bottle made from recycled plastic that’s almost ten times lighter than a classic bottle of rosé made from glass; and Ruinart with its chalk wrap – a new, extremely sculptural “second skin” case, which is 11 times lighter than its predecessor, for its Dom Ruinart 2010 champagne bottles.
A few steps away is a green wall featuring a bee, the symbol of Guerlain. For the first time ever, the Maison is offering “Cryptobees”. This innovative project fuses web3 and sustainability by selling NFTs to fund the rewilding of parcels of land in the Millière Valley nature reserve. The Cryptobees are hosted on the Tezos blockchain, recognized as one of the most sustainable. Those who purchase a Cryptobee during VivaTech will receive a special edition – a “CryptoQueenBee” – designed by artist Roger Kilimanjaro.
Women and Tech
On stage in the LVMH Apartment is “Women’s leadership in tech, the last frontier: inspiration!”, where Alexandra, Anca and Lisa talk about their experiences with the Group and its Maisons. And they’ve had plenty of experiences! Two of them even began their careers at LVMH as young interns and have since climbed up through the ranks to become the accomplished, respected leaders they are today. The secrets of their success? Fortunate encounters, inspiring managers who challenged them, lots of hard work, the desire to always do better and, of course, devotion to both their profession and their teams. These women are among the 28% working in IT or the 71% working in digital within the Group. They love a challenge and are driven by the entrepreneurial spirit that’s embedded into LVMH’s DNA. Coming up with new ideas, trying them out and then deploying them on a larger scale… all with the ultimate goal of enhancing the customer experience!
Livi, LVMH’s innovation avatar, kicks off the Tech Talks
Throughout VivaTech, visitors are invited into the lounge room of LVMH’s virtual apartment to tune into our Tech Talks, 20-minute sessions to discuss key topics for the future of the luxury industry.
Today, Livi moderated two of these Tech Talks with Group experts on:
- Blockchain, NFTs and the Metaverse – and how these technologies can lead to a more immersive and environmentally responsible luxury experience – with experts from Bulgari, Givenchy and Louis Vuitton.
- Data Transformation and Beauty Tech, during which experts from Make Up For Ever and Sephora demonstrated how AI can be used to create a personalized shopping experience and help customers discover new products.
More Tech Talks will take place in Livi’s lounge room tomorrow. Stay tuned!
Start me up!
Walk down the hallway and you’ll enter another room – a space dedicated to LVMH’s startup ecosystem. This is where the 21 startups shortlisted for the LVMH Innovation Award 2022 showcase their solutions to the key challenges facing our industry. Among them is Genesis, a French startup founded in 2018 that assesses the health of farmlands via a scientific rating system based on several dimensions: biodiversity, carbon and pollution. Monitoring these indicators makes it possible to evaluate the impact of farming practices and to develop action plans for improving land health.
A little further, on the left, is Lumen, a British startup with an innovative solution that combines an eye-tracking system with algorithms to help brands measure the attention received by their digital ads. Lumen enable advertisers to work out whether their ads have actually been seen, on which medium and for how long and, most importantly, how they can optimize their campaigns. A few steps away, another London-based startup called Toshi explains how it “brings the store to the costumer”. Its solution includes products home-delivered in 30-minute delivery windows by specially trained Toshi customer service representatives, the possibility of trying products at home before buying them and an instant return service.
That’s all for now. We can’t reveal everything on day one! More excitement to come tomorrow, starting with the LVMH Innovation Award ceremony, where the winner of the sixth edition will be announced, in the presence of Bernard Arnault…. and Livi! More to come.
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Right this way for Day 2 at VivaTech!
LVMH kicked off Day 2 at VivaTech with the eagerly awaited LVMH Innovation Award Ceremony, attended by Bernard Arnault, followed by a host of compelling exchanges and marquee events… Among them, Toni Belloni, LVMH Group Managing Director, spoke at a roundtable on Digital Transformation on VivaTech’s main stage, where he highlighted how crucial it is for our Maisons’ growth and most importantly the customer journey by supporting fast growing startups with innovative solutions.
Start me up again!
Today was a chance to catch up with Blockbar, a startup founded in 2021 by cousins Dov and Samuel Falic. Blockbar has created a groundbreaking marketplace for NFTs corresponding to bottles of premium and super-premium wines and spirits. Each NFT is a 3D model of the physical bottle. The owner of the NFT owns the bottle and can then have it shipped to them at any time by “burning” their NFT. An elegant and effective way to guarantee authenticity!
Ensuring that employees recognize the challenges faced by people with disabilities is a priority for businesses. To help them, Séverine Hassler and Camille Maldjian created Gamino in 2020. This French startup has developed short (five to ten minutes) digital training videos with a game format that allow participants to quickly put themselves in the place of someone with a disability. For example, to understand how hard it is to read with dyslexia, Gamino has participants read a text with letters that are continually being rearranged. Gamino’s awareness training earned it the Employee Experience & CSR prize at the LVMH Innovation Award 2022 competition.
The Showcase, a Swiss-based startup, is demonstrating a really novel solution. An intriguing lightbox with a screen mounted on top is actually a portable mini studio designed specially to let instore sales advisors make remote presentations of luxury watches and jewelry. Thanks to high-quality images and adjustable lighting to reveal all the distinctive details of the product – the sparkle of diamonds, for example – the sales advisor interacts with the customer as if they were on a videoconference. The Showcase is also integrating live shopping capabilities in its solution, working with Bambuser, the startup that won last year’s LVMH Innovation Award.
And the winner is …
The ceremony for this year’s LVMH Innovation Award unfolded on the main stage at VivaTech in front of a large audience, with Bernard Arnault in attendance, accompanied by Maurice Lévy, chairman of the supervisory board of Publicis Groupe and co-founder of the VivaTech show.
21 startups – 48% of them led by women – were shortlisted for the final round of the LVMH Innovation Award and invited to VivaTech to showcase their innovative solutions to tomorrow’s luxury industry challenges in six key areas: Sustainability, 3D/Virtual Product Experience & Metaverse, Employee Experience & CSR, Media & Brand Awareness, Omnichannel & Retail, and Operations & Manufacturing Excellence. The ceremony – co-hosted by LVMH’s New Face of Innovation, Livi, from her virtual apartment, saw awards presented to one startup in each of these six categories. A Special Mention prize was also given to a seventh startup for innovation in Data & Artificial Intelligence. The Grand Prize at this sixth edition of the LVMH Innovation Award went to TOSHI.
For the past six years, the LVMH Innovation Award has drawn hundreds of candidates from around the world. This year, after assessing 950 innovative solutions from 75 countries, LVMH shortlisted 21 startups whose solutions address the challenges facing its Maisons, inviting them to join the Group’s accelerator program, La Maison des Startups, at the Station F incubator in Paris.
Toshi, the winning startup at the LVMH Innovation Award 2022, will receive personalized support at La Maison des Startups for six months. Founded in London in 2017 by Sojin Lee, Toshi has redefined standards for delivery of luxury products, letting e-commerce customers choose a 30-minute time slot for home delivery by a specially-trained Toshi associate, which makes it possible to “try-before-you-buy” and immediately return a product should they decide it isn’t right for them. Berluti, Christian Dior Couture and RIMOWA already figurea among the startup’s clients.
Get ready for Day Three at VivaTech tomorrow… Lots of excitement in store!
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Day 3 at VivaTech !
Our leaders share their vision
On the third day of VivaTech, Stage 3 welcomed Hennessy President and CEO Laurent Boillot, who spoke about the impact of new technologies on the future of the storied cognac house.
Evoking Hennessy’s centuries of history, global reach and deep roots in France’s terroirs, Laurent Boillot emphasized that innovation is essential in helping Hennessy meet key challenges such as learning more about key subjects, from taking advantage of AI to gain more intimate knowledge of soils, to expanding the brand’s presence in the Metaverse to connect with and nurture dynamic relations with the Maison’s different communities.
He noted that this connection with communities – regardless of where they are physically located – and this ability to develop meaningful exchanges with them, figure at the heart of Hennessy’s vision. The Maison is also actively pursuing Web3 developments to enrich and reinvent the customer experience with things like digital certificates for greater personalization, crypto payments, product models for the Metaverse and more.
All Hennessy’s activities are linked directly to the earth, to the soils where grapevines grow, to the fruit of these vines that go into the composition of its unique cognacs, Laurent Boillot said. Hennessy thus has a heightened awareness of environmental challenges. To meet them, new technologies are clearly an essential asset.
Over to VivaTech Stage 2 in mid-afternoon, where Nelly Mensah, LVMH Group Head of Crypto & Metaverse, took part in a round table on business opportunities in the Metaverse.
Joining a panel of major Web3 players – Marc Petit, VP & General Manager, Unreal Engine Ecosystem – Epic Games, Sébastien Borget, Founder and COO of Sandbox, and Sébastien Badault, VP Metaverse and Web3 at Ledger – Nelly Mensah underscored the immense potential of Web3, which is still in its nascent stages. She noted that LVMH is exploring various avenues for payment options, customer follow-up, product pairing (matching NFTs with physical products) and enhancing the customer experience in the Metaverse.
Nelly Mensah says that virtual worlds in the Metaverse will never replace the exceptional in-store experience to which customers remain very attached. On the other hand, the Metaverse brings LVMH new opportunities to inspire its customers and to create new touchpoints along the customer journey.
Héritage first
Just a little to the right, taking center stage under the white arcades, is a friendly invitation to find out more about Fendi’s creations and craftsmanship. With the “Hand in Hand” project, Fendi offers visitors the opportunity to reproduce the precise, meticulous hand movements used by Italy’s finest artisans through a digital experience. Plunge your hands into a space loaded with 3D sensors and try to decorate the Maison’s iconic Baguette bag with coral or fine lace. It isn’t easy putting yourself in the hands of an artisan… but it’s fascinating!
Continue on your way to find out how Maison Dior succeeded in turning its flagship store at 30 Avenue Montaigne into its first fully-connected boutique while also optimizing every stage of the in-store customer experience. Against the exceptional backdrop provided by the recent renovations at this mythical address, Dior’s sales teams now use digital tools to accompany their customers throughout their journey. Enhancements include 3D personalization to find the product that perfectly matches the customer’s criteria, a simpler order preparation and pickup process, and a mobile solution for digital payments and duty-free formalities.
A sensorial innovation, just like any other
Featured in the the LVMH Apartment’s Open Kitchen, “Senses of Hennessy” is an immersive experience designed for travel retail points of sale, enabling travelers to discover Hennessy cognac in just a few minutes, without a tasting.
Blending images, sound and scents, “Senses of Hennessy” creates a multisensory portrait of the Maison’s cognacs. Simply take a seat in front of the console, slip on the headphones and follow the prompts on the touchscreen. Responding to your choices, the machine invites you to smell the different scents created by a master perfumer to evoke Hennessy cognacs. Thanks to technology developed by AirParfum, the scents do not mix, avoiding any olfactory overload! To accompany these olfactory impressions and create a real multisensory journey, Hennessy also uses OpenWine – a development spawned by the LVMH Group’s intrapreneurial program DARE – with a series of short video clips that combine evocative images and familiar, soothing sounds.
HR stories
Each day since the start of VivaTech, people from our IT & Digital teams have taken the stage at the LVMH stand to share HR Stories. Today, Maria, Jessica and Fabrice respectively from Louis Vuitton, LVMH and Christian Dior discussed “How hybrid data teams redefine the retail world”. Here are a few excerpts. They wasted no time staking out a position with the affirmation “Data is the same as philosophy!” Data challenges you to find answers and solutions. Exactly. But one challenge for teams working with data is to communicate effectively with people who often come from very different backgrounds. Still, everyone shares the mantra “The force is in the numbers”, and firmly believes that data is an amazing tool for optimizing the customer experience. And ultimately, everyone has the same over-arching objective: leverage data to serve our customers and our Maisons.
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