Case Study- Louis Vuitton 1 Table of Contents 1. Introduction 2. The company Louis Vuitton 3. Supply Chain Strategy 4. Constraints of the Luxury Industry 4. 1. Supply Chain Strategy of Louis Vuitton 5. Process map of buying process 5. Order Qualifiers and Order Winners 5. 1. 5. 2. Performance Dimensions Trade-off among Performance Dimensions 6. Internal Operation Practices 6. 1. Manufacturing Process 6. 2. Customization Point 6. 3. 6. 4. 6. 5. 6. 6. Service Package and Service Level Capacity Strategy Forecasting Demand Inventory Strategy . Purchasing and Logistics Strategy Practices 7. 1. 7. 2. 7. 3. 7. 4. Sourcing Decision Sourcing Strategy Organizing Logistics Interaction with the Final Customer 8. Conclusion 9. References 2 1. Introduction Louis Vuitton is a part of the Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessy Group. Being the core business, Louis Vuitton is the most famous brand not only in the group, but also in the fashion industry. It is well-known for its quality and design. Most of the Louis Vuitton consumers are wealthy people, who expect remium products regardless to the price. Considering this fact, Louis Vuitton may implement a strategy, which ensures availability of the products at any time and provide the clients with the best possible customer service. In the past, Louis Vuitton faced the out-of-stock problem and it has not been solved, yet. As a consequence, the company loses not only sales but also reduces its reputation. Historically, many companies in the fashion industry did not regard to the out-of-stock as a serious problem.

For many managers it was considered as a sign that the collections were well selling and revenues and profitability were high. However, the situation changed and the managers realized that consumers’ satisfaction is one of the most important aspects for a company in order to continue being successful, gain high profits and reputation. The source of the out-ofstock problem in Louis Vuitton causes some disagreements between the company’s vice president for marketing and sales and the vice president for manufacturing and logistics.

The first one states his opinion that the lack of flexibility and responsiveness is the base of the problem, while the second one blames the recent increase in new product introductions and the poor forecasting of demand (Dussauge, Moatti, 2009). This paper investigates in details the root of this problem and how Louis Vuitton can solve it by aligning the manufacturing process and marketing activities in the most efficient way. First, the paper describes Louis Vuitton as a company and the overall supply chain strategy it implements.

Second, special attention is paid to the manufacturing process, which is one of the most important parts of the supply chain. Third, company’s capacity, forecasting and inventory strategies are explained and suggestions for how they can be improved are given. Fourth, the paper examines the sourcing strategy, how the logistics activities are organized and how the interaction with the final consumer can help for solving the out of-stockproblem. Finally, a conclusion is drawn, recommending how these strategies can be improved in order to avoid the out-of-stock problem. 2. Louis Vuitton – The company Louis Vuitton was established in 1854 as a young manufactory for trunks. The company was located in Paris, France, and it became renowned for its innovative stackable trunks. The marketing and sales were limited to the company owned sales outlet, which was located in Paris. Retaining its commitment to innovation, the company introduced luxury trunks with detachable frames in 1876. In 1886, the company was able to broaden its sales efforts and opened its first Louis Vuitton store outside of France, located in London, England.

With the introduction of the legendary Monogram design, which was created by Louis Vuitton? s son, George, the company had become famous all over the world. In 1987 Louis Vuitton merged with Moet-Hennessy and formed LVMH. LVMH has become the world leader in luxury goods with total revenues of EUR 20. 320 billion in 2010. Today, Louis Vuitton is most-famous luxury brand with an estimated revenue of EUR 4. 5294 billion in 2010 (Translation of the french financial documents year ended december 31, 2010). 3. Supply Chain Stragety Louis Vuitton? supply chain strategy is the result of its supply chain management decisions, which define the active management of its supply chain activities and relationships in order to maximize their customers? value and achieve a sustainable competitive advantage. Furthermore, the supply chain management involves the conscious effort by Louis Vuitton to develop and run a supply chain in the most effective and efficient way possible. 3. 1. Constraints of the luxury Industry Like every industry, the luxury industry has certain requirements that have to be met, when producing products and services.

In order to define the requirements of the luxury industry, it is necessary to define luxury goods themselves first. Brun, Caniato, Caridi et. al. (2008) define luxury goods as products that consistently deliver premium quality, heritage of craftsmanship, recognizable style and design, exclusivity, emotional appeal, global brand reputation, association with a country of origin, presence of elements of uniqueness and lifestyle of the creator. Those attributes are considered as critical success factors. As a 4 consequence, Louis Vuitton has to align its supply chain to deliver products, which features these critical success factors. . 2. Supply Chain Strategy of Louis Vuitton In order to be able to satisfy the requirements of the luxury industry, Louis Vuitton has to pursue several manufacturing and service activities of its supply chain in particular geographical regions. For Louis Vuitton, the requirement of marvelous quality implies a careful selection of firsttier suppliers. Therefore, Louis Vuitton purchases its raw material, such as leather for example from Italian suppliers, form the Tuskany region. Each order for leather raw materials takes on average 6 to 8 weeks for most of the suppliers to be delivered.

Those raw materials are than kept as inventory, in Louis Vuitton? s central logistic centre in CergyPontoise near Paris, France. Due to the delivery time of approximately two months, Louis Vuittons maintains 10 weeks of raw material in inventory at Cergy-Pontoise, France. From inventory, the raw material leather gets transferred to one of 12 Louis Vuitton? s manufacturing facilities within France, such as Marraz, Sarras, Staint Donas, etc. At those manufacturing facilities the average total elapsed time that is needed to complete the manufacturing process – the cycle time – is 6 days. Graphiclal illustraion of Louis Vuitton?  flow of goods within the supply chain On average, each workforce at one of Louis Vuitton? s manufacturing facilities is able to make 5 handbags per day. After the manufacturing process is finished, the final products are shipped to the central logistic centre in Cergy-Pontoios, France. Form the central logistic centre, the goods are distributed in stock keeping units (SKUs) to one of the regional warehouses. In order to satisfy an order of Louis Vuitton? s flagship store in Tokyo, the SKUs are shipped by ship to Osaka, Japan. Arrived in the regional warehouse in Osaka, the products are kept as inventory.

Finally, when the Louis Vuitton flagship store in Tokyo, Japan, runs out of stock of a particular product, an order is be received at the regional 5 warehouse in Osaka, Japan, and the product can be shipped by truck to the Louis Vuitton flagship store in Tokyo, Japan. 4. Process Map of Buying Process Consumers of luxury products have high expectations regarding the products? quality, and design. Furthermore, the consumers want be provided with a complete shopping experience, when they purchase a Louis Vuitton handbag for EUR 3,000 or a pair of Louis Vuitton shoes for EUR 1,000.

An essential part of this shopping experience is the product itself. Therefore, Louis Vuitton? s supply chain has to be set up in a to make demanded products available, wherever and whenever they are demanded by a consumer. Given the example of the Tokyo flagship store, Louis Vuitton is able to have 98% of all demanded products from classic product lines available at their store. But if consumers request a product of one of Louis Vuitton? s fashion lines, which are newly and more frequently introduced product lines, such as the Graffitti Line, the rate of available products decreases to 80%. . Order Winners and Order Qualifiers When Louis Vuittons has to make the decision about the contracting a new supplier, the firm applies the Order winner and Order qualifiers principle. Bozarth and Handfield (2008) define this principle that highlights the relative importance of different performance dimensions. Order qualifiers are defined as performance dimensions on which customers expect a minimum level of performance whereas order qualifiers describe performance dimensions that differentiate a company? s products and services from those of its competitors. 5. 1.

Performance Dimensions When evaluating supply chains, there are four relevant performance dimensions: quality, flexibility, time, and cost. Quality describes the characteristics of a product or service that bear on its ability to satisfy stated or implied needs (Bozarth and Handfield, 2008). Time refers to how quickly operations in a supply chain can be pursued and describes the ability to 6 deliver products as promised. Flexibility is the responsiveness of the operations of a supply chain to unique needs of different customers. Finally, costs can be divided into labor, marterial, engeneering and quality-related costs.

Each of these performance dimension can be valued differently be every company according to the dimension on which the company emphasizes at the expense of other in the process of value creation. 5. 2. Trade-offs among Performance Dimensions As aforementioned, Louis Vuitton demands raw materials that satisfy certain characteristics, when the company places an order to its suppliers, such as the superior quality of Italian leather. As a consequence, superior quality is the minimum level of performance that is required to become a supplier of Louis Vuitton.

In addition, several suppliers perform differently on different performance levels like price, flexibility or time. For instance, two suppliers (A and B) may both provide superior quality, but supplier A provides a delivery time of 6 weeks, while supplier B provides delivery times of 10 weeks for a lower price of the raw material. Due to the fact that Louis Vuittons values the performance level of time and flexibility higher than the one of price, which can simply be passed on to its customers, who are willing to pay higher prices, Louis Vuitton? order would be place at suppler A. This implies that the performance dimension of time of supplier A is the dimension that differentiates itself from supplier B, and enables it to become an upstream supplier. 6. Internal Operation Practicees 6. 1. Manufacturing Process Currently the manufacturing process in Louis Vuitton consists of many single steps. According to (Passariello, 2006) the high specialization of the employees, each of them performs only one specific task and after that the incomplete items are moved to a second employee.

However, this is extremely time consuming. This is the reason why, the company should train its workers and decrease their level of specialization. , Tthen in case of an unexpected higher than expectedincrease in demand, Louis Vuitton it would may be able to meet it (Passariello, 2006). Furthermore, Louis Vuitton can implement the U-shaped manufacturing, which means that employees are organized in groups of six to twelve people,   7 closely situated next to each other, so when one part of the goods is finished, the products directly go to the next group.

Due to the shorter time and distance, the manufacturing process can be more flexible. Moreover, the defect rate of products is 2% (Dussauge, Moatti, 2009), but if the above mentioned strategy is implemented, this percentage can be reduced, because the defects may be caught within the small stations.? This fact may reduce service costs. Considering these suggestions, Louis Vuitton will be able to combine high technology, which it already possesses, with more broadly skilled labor force, which would be the right mix in order to meet the consumer demand. 6. 2.

Customization Point Most of the Louis Vuitton products are make-to-stock products. This means that the products require no customization. However, serveral goods that are produced by Louis Vuitton are make-to-order products, such as the customized trunks. This implies that standard components are used during the manufacturing process, but the final products include customer-specific configurations. Customers can choose online between different colors, sizes and interior designs of the trucks. In addition, Louis Vuitton offers further customization by assemble-to-order products.

Thereby, the point of customization is at the very end of the manufacturing process. An example of assemble-to-order products are regular Louis Vuitton handbag with the customer’s initials added. 6. 3. Service Package and Service Level As a luxury brand, Louis Vuitton offers a good service package. This includes all tangible and intangible activities provided by a company. Tangible activities include about 340 retail stores, owned by Louis Vuitton worldwide. Besides the regular ones, Louis Vuitton also has Guerilla Stores (retrieved from: http://meaganwilsonnews. blogspot. om/2010/09/cdg-xlouis-vuitton. html). These are stores, opened only for a short period, at chosen locations that are considered to be unique and most often linked to art. In these shops there is only a limited number of items and not all of them are sold. Furthermore, only some people are informed by mail for the opening of these special retailers. Another important tangible aspect of Louis Vuitton is the front and back room service. The front room service involves direct interaction with the consumer and the back room service, on the contrary, does not require any contact with the consumer.

Having a good service package means constant communication between the front and the back room service operations. One way to improve it, is implementation of electronic systems combined with shop assistants, who only talk to   8 consumers and report their wants to the back room employees. Implementing this, consumers? time is saved and any confusions about the out-of-stock problem are avoided, since the shop assistants do not go to the back room and after that returning without the desired product. Among the intangible activities, design has the highest degree of customer contact.

This is proved by the production of customized trunks. Another example is the postpurchase service, which is the service Louis Vuitton offers in case of defect products. In those situations, products can be returned and may be repaired. This service does not require extra payments from the consumer. Additional intangible activites are the manufacturing skills. They cannot be seen by the consumers, but are considered the most valuable actvities, because, to a great extend, Louis Vuitton products are bought due to the quality of the goods.

Online stores are another intangible activity, consumers use to easily purchase a desired good on the Internet. On the one hand, it saves cosumer? s time, on the other hand, the probability of a potential out-of-stock problem is reduced, because once the purchase is realized the company can react in a several ways to deliver the product. It can send the product from a store or from different warehouses, depending on where the consumer is located and where the item is available at that time. Despite of the good service package, the service level toward consumers is still unsatisfactory.

The service level defines the percentage of contented consumers. In the case of Louis Vuitton, it is 92%. 8% of all consumer are unsatisfied and go to a competitor or do not buy at all (Dussauge, Moatti, 2009). These actions result in losing opportunity costs, decreasing the perceived value of the company by its customers and consumers, and in the worst scenario, losing customers and consumers. To reduce to minimum these options and increase the service level, Louis Vuitton could improve its capacity strategy. 6. 4. Capacity Strategy Capacity is important for service and manufacturing companies.

Managers have to decide how to organize manufacturing in the most efficient way that a maximum number of units is produced for a time period. Currently, employees working for Louis Vuitton are divided into groups and each group is able to produce 120 handbags per day (Passariello, 2006). However, considering the out-of-stock problem, one can assume that it is not the sufficient quantity to meet the demand and a solution has to be found. The production of Louis Vuitton can be expressed as following: Capacity = (120 handbags, per group, per shift) x (number of groups) x (number of shifts) 9

Since the capacity is a function of the right hand side variables, in order to increase the capacity, Louis Vuitton has to increase the number of groups. In that way, Louis Vuitton will be able to increase its manufacturing capacity and potentially solve the out-of-stock problem. There are two main capacity strategies: lag capacity strategy and lead capacity strategy (Bozarth, Handfield, 2008). Lag capacity strategy implies that capacity is added after demand has been realized, but in the fashion industry, where products are introduced often and producing is time consuming. Therefore, this strategy is not applicable.

Louis Vuitton, as most fashion brands uses the lead capacity strategy. Hence, capacity is added in anticipation to demand. However, they are still not able to meet the demand. It is recommended for Louis Vuitton to switch to the match capacity strategy, therefore the company may be able to build up inventory for periods of high demand and eliminate the out-of-stock problem. 6. 5. Forecasting Demand There are three laws for forecasting but the most appropriate one for Louis Vuitton is the second law of forecasting – “Forecasts for a near term tend to be more accurate” (Bozarth, Handfield, 2008).

To reach this accuracy the company should use a mix of qualitative and quantitative forecasting models. A qualitative model includes the identification of peak times of demand such as Christmas and Valentine’s Day. Moreover, it is recommended that for the quantitative forecasting, Louis Vuitton can use the Adjusted Exponential Smoothing model. It is the most appropriate forecasting model for the fashion industry, because the demand in the fashion industry fluctuates. In addtion, this model can capture all the variations in demand.

Furthermore, it emphasizes on the most recent periods by which the future tendencies can be predicted to some extent,. Finally, the Adjusted Exponential Smoothing model includes the relationship between a certain industry, in our case, the fashion one, and the overall economic development. This correspondence is known as “trend”. Applying the Adjusted Exponential Smoothing model, the following growth rates for the year 2012 can be reported: worldwide increase in demand +5. 51%, including the highest expected growth rate in Asia-Pacific with +9. 58%.

Therefore, Louis Vuitton should also expect a growth at around 5% – 6% and should prioritize the Asia-Pacific region and assure itself that capacity meets the demand and keep larger inventory in this district. 10 11. Inventory Strategy Louis Vuitton has to decide whether to reduce the inventory in order to avoid additional costs induced by required inventory space in the stores or to increase the availability of demanded products. Undeniably, inventory must be as close to the stores as possible. This implies that if a certain product is out-of-stock it can be quickly delivered and satisfy consumer wants.

Moreover, inventories should be kept in regional warehouses and that would also help Louis Vuitton to react in the most flexible way to fluctuations in demand. For instance, if the store in Tokyo is out-of-stock, it would be easier to report about the problem to the backup warehouse in Osaka, rather than to the main one in France. It will result in shortening the lead time. As a consequence, Louis Vuitton has to be constantly aware of the stock level. This can be achieved by the introduction of a continuous review system, which is used to manage ndependent demand of inventory and monitors the inventory level of any item constantly to release reorders, when the reorder point is reached. Thus, the company will be able to solve the problem once a higher than expected demand is realized (Bozarht and Handfield, 2008). Moreover, Louis Vuitton has to introduce an efficient Economic Order Quantity (EOQ) and Reorder Point (ROP) in order to smooth the replenishment process. The most appealing strategy for Louis Vuitton should be larger inventories in the regional warehouses at higher prices. 7. Purchasing and Logistics Strategy Practices 7. . Sourcing Decisions The main credos of Louis Vuitton are “Be creative and innovative” and “Aim for product   11 excellence”. The company sticks tightly to this philosophy and one can say that this is the key for their success. Since Louis Vuitton was established in 1854, the core competencies of the company have always been design and quality, they perfectly correspond to the aim of Louis Vuitton to be one of the market leaders in the fashion industry. The company has always strived to produce goods whose design is recognized all over the world.

On the one hand, the classical collections have not been changed for years, and therefore being a symbol of elegance and prestige. On the other hand, fashion and collections constantly change in order to be modern. This is due to the fact that the designers, who work for Louis Vuitton are encouraged to implement all their ideas. Quality is the second core competence the company uses to be one of the best brands in the industry. To provide the customers with the best, Louis Vuitton uses high quality raw materials, which is the first step to a qualified final product.

Furthermore, employees involved in the manufacturing process do 80% of their task manually (Dussauge, Moatti, 2009). This is a unique way of production in the present days. It is more costly and time consuming, but is highly valued by the consumers. Considering these facts, Louis Vuitton needs to make the right sourcing decisions. Bozarht and Handfield (2008) define sourcing decisions as high-level, often strategic, decisions regarding which products and services will be provided using resources within the firm, known as insourcing, and which will be provided by a firm? s supply chain partners, known as utsourcing. First, the company should keep the designing and manufacturing activities sourced in, because these activities are the most important regarding Louis Vuitton? s creation of value.. Second, distribution activities can be sourced out. The company is able to use firms, such as Schenker, TNT, DHL, etc, with regard to their regional performance. Louis Vuitton can choose among a variety of distributors in each country and select the most reliable one, which provides accurate delivery and service for a given price level. Warehouses are another part of the supply chain which can be sourced out.

Renting a warehouse implies a smaller investment for Louis Vuitton and enables them to be more flexible. The out-of-stock problem Louis Vuitton faces, can be solved to a certain extend via placing warehouses in regions with high population such as Osaka. If the out-of-stock problem is materialized in Japan, it can be easily solved by the location advantage Louis Vuitton has. The trade off of these decisions may be that Louis Vuitton should have a clear view which raw materials, product components and services are really essential and source them in and which ones are important but could be successfully sourced out. 2 7. 2. Sourcing Strategy Another important decision for Louis Vuitton is which Sourcing Strategy to choose. According to the fact that the company requires high quality raw materials, but not all of the existing suppliers offer sufficient quality, at all times. One possible solution is the implementation of the single sourcing. This means that Louis Vuitton depends on only one firm for all items needed for producing their leather goods (Bozarht and Handfield, 2008). However, this can be extremely risky, because of the probability of unexpected situations such as fire or workers’ strike.

Another solution may be the multiple sourcing strategy. This implies that Louis Vuitton relies on many suppliers, but the associated risk with this type of strategy is that many firms become familiar with the core competencies of Louis Vuitton and it is possible to use these competencies for their own commercial purposes. Finally, the most suitable sourcing strategy in the case of Louis Vuitton is the dual sourcing strategy. As a consequence Louis Vuitton uses two suppliers, which serve the needs of the firm proportionally.

Both of them are willing to have the leader position on behalf of higher revenues. This situation is advantageous for Louis Vuitton, because it can be assured that because of the competition between the suppliers, it is always supplied with premium quality raw materials on a particular price level. 7. 3. Organizing Logistics One of the main aspects of the logistics system is the distribution. Distribution is the process by which goods are shipped from the manufacturer to the warehouses and later to the stores.

Most companies aim at minimizing their distribution costs and Louis Vuitton is not an exception. This is the reason why the company uses the multimodal solution. Therefore, Louis Vuitton combines transporation by sea, air and road. The advantage of cargo ships is that they can transfer big quantities on long distances. Moreover, Louis Vuitton operates in different continents and thus it is of great importance to ship in a cost effective way. The water transport provides such an efficient services at low prices. However, in specific situations such as rush orders, it is more rational to use airfreight.

It can increase the costs but it guarantees that the company avoids the out-of-stock problem and satisfies customers? and consumers? wants. The distribution system, on its side, has a great impact on the location of warehouses. For instance, the main centralized logistics warehouse in Cergy-Pontoise. It is located near Paris, France (Dussauge, Moatti, 2009). The capital of France facilitates the headquarters of Louis   13 Vuitton as well as it is a city with high demand in fashion products. These are some of the reasons, why Louis Vuitton chose to situate its central distribution center.

Moreover, it is close to the English Channel which is a part of the Atlantic Ocean, and the Rotterdam port, which is the largest cargo port of Europe, form where the shipments to the five backup warehouses around the world departure. Shipping from France to other countries may imply long customer lead time, which is the required time between the customer’s order and the delivery of this product. To shorten it Louis Vuitton could benefit from spot stock warehousing. It is a system used for keeping seasonal fashion goods close to the market place.

Another way to shorten the lead time is implementing a mix of consolidation and crossdocking warehousing. Consolidation is the combination of smaller shipments into big ones (Bozarht and Handfield, 2008). On the opposite site cross-docking defines the process of a single shipment that is divided into smaller ones. Shortening the lead time is one of the most important aims of the companies, because of the fact that goods are available in the stores just at the time consumers demand them. Another factor Louis Vuitton has to focus on is lean manufacturing.

This term is associated with the efforts firms put to minimize all the resources (Bozarht and Handfield, 2008). One way for Louis Vuitton doing that is to decrease the overproduction of goods with lower demand. The second possible solution is the implementation of more frequent shipments of smaller quantities. This is especially of great importance in combination with an improved forecasting system. It has the potential to reduce costs by not keeping less goods in stock, which are not highly demanded. Furthermore and as aforementioned Louis Vuitton supports the implementation of lean manufacturing by renting warehouses instead of buying them.

It makes the company more flexible and less sensible to demand fluctuations. In addition, the firm has to fully utilize its employees, which implies a high level of multitasking. 7. 4. Interaction with the final customer One of the most efficient approaches for avoiding the out-of-stock problem is to interact and understand the preferences of the final consumer. Louis Vuitton can do that via tracking the last purchases. In this way the company can recognize if a certain customer is willing to buy goods from the classical or from the modern collections.

By doing so, Louis Vuitton can progressively improve its forecasting activities in order to know which collections have to be produced and which inventory has to be increased. In addition, the company has to implement mechanisms to interact with their customers and consumers, such as is a survey   14 or research on the Internet. Employees of Louis Vuitton can pursue different opinions online about the products and forward their knowledge to the research and development department for specific preferences, such as color or size.

Using these tools for interacting with customers, Louis Vuitton could improve the forecasting and manufacturing and meet its demand. 8. Conclusion To improve the alignment between manufacturing and marketing, Louis Vuitton has to consider several factors. First, giving the present out-of-stock problem combined with the expected growth rate of +5% to +10% for the year 2012, the company has to increase their manufacturing capacity, based on the expected growth rate for the overall industry and for the different regions as well.

In order to achieve that, they should add more labour force. More groups of workers will lead to increased production and therefore increased inventory in the warehouses. This would result in greater availability of products in retail stores and solve the out-of-stock problem. In addition, larger inventory of product enables Louis Vuitton to be responsive to increasing demand in peak times as well as providing the opportunity to focus on the production of newly introduced products and the satisfactions of its demand.

Furthermore, Louis Vuitton should consider to decrease the introduction of new fashion lines in order to avoid disruptions of manufacturing and supply chain activities caused by changes in the manufacturing process due to newly introduced products. Second, by improving the forecasting tools, Louis Vuitton should be more accurate in estimating the future demand for specific products. By implementing, for example, the Adjusted Smoothing Model Louis Vuitton would realize, which items need to be produced in greater quantities.

Moreover, Louis Vuitton should forecast more often and for shorter time periods. Louis Vuitton should continue to insource the leather good production and use the dual sourcing strategy for purchasing raw materials. 15 9. Refrences Bozarth, C. C. , Handfield, R. B. , (2008). Introduction To Operations And Supply Chain Management, Pearson International Edition, second edition. Brun, A. , Caniato, F. , Caridi, M. , Castelli, C. , Miragliotta, G. , Ronchi, S. , Sianesi, A. , Spina, G. , (2006).

Logistics and supply chain management in luxury fashion retail: Empirical investigation of Italian firms, Int. J. Production Economics, Vol. 114, p. 554-570. Dussauge, P. , Moatti, V. , (2009). Louis Vuitton: New product introductions vs. product availability, HEC Paris, Faculty and Research, Retrieved from: http://www. hec. edu/Faculty-and-Research/Languages-Cultures/Publications/ Case-studies Passariello, C. , (2006). Louis Vuitton tries modern methods on factory lines, The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved from: http://www. post-gazette. com/pg/06282/72865328. stm 16