For Michel Lacoste, something happened on his way to Melbourne for the Australian Open. Well, Manila happened.
The last time I saw the Lacoste chairman and CEO was in Paris during the Lacoste-Visionaire party onboard the Le Paquebot on Port Debilly just adjacent to the great Eiffel Tower, in an event which was not unlike a Jeff Koons exhibition: big, brash and teeming with inflatable gators, guitars and girls in sailor outfits. “You are 75 years old only once in your life so you should enjoy it,” reasoned Michel about celebrating the brand’s 75th anniversary in style, an understatement. He recently made a quick stop in Manila to visit Lacoste boutiques in our own neck of the woods, and he got quite an impression.
“You’ve been to Paris and visited the Lacoste shops, but the shops in Manila are of the same quality as the ones around the world,” Michel enthused. “I’m impressed. The merchandising (of Lacoste boutiques in Manila) conveys well what the brand is all about.” Something about seamlessly allying elegance and comfort.
An aside: Michel pointed out that his father, tennis legend and Lacoste founder René Lacoste (who invented the light-knitted pique shirt), never competed in the Australian open. Thus, Michel quipped, the man nicknamed by American sportswriters as “Le Crocodile” was absent in the land of Crocodile Dundee. “So, when (the organizers of) the Australian Open came to us for sponsorship (to be the official outfitter of the tournament), we were very happy to do so.”
Thus, on his way to watch Lacoste global brand ambassador Andy Roddick compete against some of the best tennis players in the world, Michel visited Lacoste shops in Bangkok and Manila. Never just a job requirement for a man who doesn’t demarcate where work ends and life begins.
“I don’t know if there’s a day where I can say I started working for Lacoste. As a kid I saw my father working Saturday afternoons on the business of the company. In 1963, the quantities we sold worldwide were smaller than the ones we sold in the Philippines. Very well-known name, very well-known brand, but tiny, tiny operations. My father made it grow. I was still in school when I started taking (business) trips with him. I started working part-time, and then full-time… You see it’s completely natural — I don’t know what the border is between work and family. Am I working here (in Manila), or am I just having fun? I just never know (laughs),” Michel explained.
And that love (and tenacity and patience) for work and play Michel learned from his father.
“When I was about 12 (my dad and I) decided to build a model for a sailboat,” Michel relates in the book The René Lacoste Style. “We worked on it for an hour or two each evening and it must have taken us the whole winter to finish. For obvious reasons, we called it ‘Crocodile.’ Papa was such a perfectionist that every little piece of wood — and there was hundreds of them — was smoothed and sandpapered until it fitted perfectly into position. In the spring, the ‘Crocodile’ was launched on one of the lakes in the Bois de Boulogne.”
Evolution Of The Croc Brand
Michel explained, “Quite clearly we are a bigger company with bigger figures, but the roots of the business and the spirit of the product haven’t changed very much. It has evolved to try to keep in touch with what the consumers want. Frankly, I think what we do today is completely faithful to why the Crocodile brand was born (in the first place). Our wish is that when the consumer gets up in the morning, puts on a Lacoste product, and sees the image reflected in the mirror, he or she will say, ‘Hey, I’m comfortable this way.’ Everybody has a right to dress comfortably. And this is what we are trying to provide with our sporty and elegant clothes.”
The pieces in Lacoste’s latest collection were, according to Lacoste artistic director Christophe Lemaire, inspired by the South of France and Italy. The brand’s Club line (with a silver crocodile logo) boasts colors such as sepia tones, shades of brown, dusty pinks and off-whites. Club has sophisticated beachwear, Greek-goddess inspired sandals, and ladies summer suits. For men there are leather belts and leather espadrilles. The Sunset Group line offers more playful colors. Take the shades of sorbet, for instance. Sunset Group features T-shirts and short shorts combo, as well as tank-top overalls for ladies. Men can go for light summer sweaters and polo shirts with summer stripes.
Elegant, check… Comfy, double check…
‘Save your logo’
Lacoste is joining an environmental advocacy project called “Save Your Logo,” initiated by the World Bank and some of the world’s most prominent environmental organizations. They approached different brands that use animals as their logo and asked their help in protecting their respective mascots. Lacoste has the crocodile; figure out which ones use the lion, the tiger, the polar bear and the elephant for their logos.
“We are very proud to become the first company to announce our participation in the project,” Michel explained. Lacoste will help the “Save Your Logo” movement in protecting species of crocodiles and alligators (by providing financial support to global initiatives aimed at protecting biodiversity, or putting up breeding farms), specifically a small alligator specie in the Yangtze River numbering only a 150 or 200 in the wild. Another is a long-nosed crocodile in India, which is also in danger of extinction.
Michel doesn’t downplay how the global recession has affected business all over the world, even for a strong brand such as Lacoste. He said, “Like everybody, we are very worried. But the December figures that came in weren’t as bad as we expected.”
The Lacoste chairman explained that in these trying times, consumers need security and Lacoste belongs to those brands wherein consumers find much-needed security. “Security in the physical quality, as well as the classical elegance of the product. If you’re insecure, you don’t buy something that’s terribly exciting now, but perhaps you wouldn’t find as exciting three months later. We have a good reason to think that (this doesn’t happen to our brand).” Timelessness, he was in effect saying, is one of Lacoste’s strong points.
Michel admitted he’s not overly optimistic about the current situation, but he’s not excessively pessimistic either. Business, he offered as a simile, is like a table with four legs: the product itself, the manufacturing, the distribution, and the promotion/advertising of the product. The secret is to work twice as hard to keep things stable.
It helps that when you have a timeless brand such as Lacoste, you can easily roll through the good times, the bad times and everything in between.
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Lacoste is distributed in the Philippines by Stores Specialists Inc. Lacoste boutiques are located at Glorietta 4, Alabang Town Center, The Power Plant, Robinsons Place Manila, SM Mall of Asia, SM Megamall, The Podium, Gateway Mall, TriNoma and Ayala Center Cebu.