Louis Vuitton (LVMH)

Louis Vuitton was born in 1821 in Anchay, a small village in the Jura mountains of eastern France. At 14, he decided to travel to Paris to seek his fortune. Unable to afford transport, he walked — a journey of approximately 400 kilometres that took two years, during which he worked odd jobs along the way. He arrived in Paris in 1837 and became an apprentice to Monsieur Maréchal, a box-maker and packer who prepared luggage for wealthy clients travelling by carriage and later by train.

Vuitton opened his own luggage workshop on Rue Neuve-des-Capucines in Paris in 1854. His innovation was seemingly simple but commercially transformative: the flat-topped trunk. The rounded tops of conventional trunks had made sense when luggage was strapped to the outside of carriages. With the advent of railway travel, luggage was stored in flat-roofed train compartments where trunks could be stacked. Vuitton's flat tops could be stacked; competitors' could not. He was appointed personal trunk-maker to Empress Eugénie of France within a year.

Louis Vuitton died in 1892. His son Georges introduced the iconic LV monogram canvas in 1896, designed explicitly to combat counterfeiting — which had become rampant as the brand became famous. The monogram was a pattern so distinctive and complex that it was difficult to reproduce convincingly. It worked, for a while. Louis Vuitton today employs a global team of lawyers and investigators dedicated entirely to fighting counterfeiting. The LV monogram is simultaneously the world's most recognised luxury symbol and the world's most counterfeited pattern.

Louis Vuitton merged with Moët Hennessy in 1987 to form LVMH — Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton. The merger united fashion with champagne and cognac under a single luxury conglomerate. Bernard Arnault, who had acquired a controlling stake in Christian Dior, manoeuvred into control of LVMH in 1989 in a corporate battle that the French press described as the "wolf in cashmere" — a reference to Arnault's apparently gentle manner concealing aggressive commercial instincts. Arnault built LVMH into the world's largest luxury group, eventually owning over 75 brands.

Under Bernard Arnault's leadership, LVMH became the most valuable luxury company in history, at one point exceeding €400 billion in market capitalisation — making Arnault briefly the richest person in the world. Louis Vuitton alone, analysts estimated, generated revenues exceeding €20 billion annually, with profit margins above 40%. The boy who walked 400 kilometres to Paris at age 14 and spent his career making travel easier for wealthy people had built the foundation of an empire that his successors would turn into one of the greatest business stories in European history.