It is not important who Antoine Arnault is. What is important is that his father is Bernard Arnault, the head of the LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton group in France. The name itself tells you what Bernard Arnault does.
Indeed, he is the luxury goods magnate of France, no, the whole world. In the 1980s, he took advantage of the global luxury market downturn and used various means to acquire several major luxury brands worldwide, eventually piecing together this colossal luxury group.
Bernard Arnault’s true peak came 15 years later. Relying on the subsequent boom in the global luxury market, he soared to the position of the world’s richest man, surpassing the owner of Amazon, and was exceptionally glorious.
Of course, the current LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton group is still just a regular Fortune Global 500 company, quite some distance from the position of the world’s richest man.
However, Huang He did not believe that Bernard Arnault would be targeting him at this time. After all, although Jiangnan Group had started to rise, it was still decades away from threatening Bernard Arnault’s luxury empire. He, at this moment, was unlikely to be targeting him.
Therefore, the one targeting him must be Bernard Arnault’s son, Antoine Arnault.
Bernard Arnault has three sons. In later generations, they fought fiercely, all wanting to inherit their father’s fortune. However, Bernard Arnault, with his superb skills, kept them suppressed, forcing these three sons to prove themselves by competing in performance.
Thus, Antoine Arnault’s goal is very clear: he wants to use this young Robert to strike at Jiangnan Group’s nascent luxury business.
Currently, half of the reputation of Jiangnan Group’s Hanfu is tied to the Tuileries Garden, and the other half is tied to Princess Vivienne. If Princess Vivienne were to switch from wearing Jiangnan’s formal attire to another princess’s gown, then the reputation that Jiangnan Hanfu had finally built would decline significantly, and user recognition of the brand would also decrease.
The luxury market competes on user recognition and imagination for a brand. Clothes worn by princesses make me feel like a princess when I wear them. If a princess were to change her outfit because of a genuine princess dress, then this dress would become a laughingstock.
It must be said, Antoine Arnault’s methods are quite good. An $80,000 dress could cause Huang He to lose much of the reputation he had built with a billion yuan, instantly.
And he didn’t even proactively send Lv.
“Vivienne, if you don’t want to change into this princess dress, can I try it on? I’ve never been a Disney princess before!” Suddenly, a voice said with a playful tone. Everyone turned to see Princess Stephanie arriving. She actually volunteered to try on the gift Vivienne had received.
“You want to wear it?” Vivienne looked at Stephanie strangely. She remembered that this woman didn’t have a habit of wearing other people’s dresses, and on her own birthday graduation party, such behavior was really out of character for Stephanie.
“He asked me to do this!” Princess Stephanie whispered to Vivienne. Vivienne glanced at Huang He, who was smiling, and then said with annoyance, “If you want to wear it, then wear it!”
Princess Stephanie chuckled and then looked at Young Robert, “Classmate Robert, you don’t mind if I try it on, do you?”
“Of course not, Your Highness the Princess!” Young Robert quickly replied. He had actually noticed that his actions were extremely unpopular, and Vivienne was on the verge of erupting in anger. He shouldn’t have been so aggressive.
But there was no way around it. He owed Antoine Arnault a sum of money. If he didn’t do as the other party requested, he would likely be immediately pressured to repay the debt, making his life difficult. So, Young Robert could only brace himself and push forward.
Now that Princess Stephanie had stepped in to help, Young Robert was naturally overjoyed. After all, as long as one princess wore the dress, his mission would be more or less accomplished.
Thus, Princess Stephanie, smiling, took the dress and went into a nearby room to change. After a while, Princess Stephanie emerged wearing this princess gown, standing next to Vivienne.
Those who saw this scene couldn’t help but sigh and exclaim, “So ugly!”
That’s right, it was just plain ugly. Disney’s princess dress was simply hideous.
Firstly, Disney itself is not a luxury brand, nor does it have business in garment production. Designing clothes is not their area of expertise.
More importantly, this princess gown was a special edition for Disney’s 80th anniversary, pieced together with features from the dresses of twelve famous Disney princesses.
Everyone knows Disney princesses are animated characters, and dresses in animation are different from real-life dresses.
Princess dresses in animation often use bright red and purple colors, which look good in animation. But in reality, such vivid color schemes result in a very awkward appearance. Not to mention that these dresses incorporated features from twelve princesses’ dresses, making the colors a chaotic medley, a riot of colors. The wearer, Stephanie, looked visibly displeased.
Moreover, Disney seemed to know that the color scheme of this dress wasn’t very appealing. But it was okay; they could use rhinestones… It’s Disney’s old trick: how to make a product seem valuable?
Just add diamonds.
But this made the taste even worse.
Especially when the two princesses stood together, Stephanie next to Vivienne, she looked like a clown meeting a real princess, hilariously outshone.
The result was that after standing together for less than three minutes, Stephanie couldn’t stand it anymore. She ran back to change into her original outfit, then glared fiercely at Huang He. It seemed Huang He was going to have a big financial loss tonight.
However, even though it was only for three minutes, it was enough. Through these three minutes, all the guests present realized that there was a heaven-and-earth difference between the $80,000 Disney dress and Jiangnan’s dress; Disney was far inferior to Jiangnan Group.
Once this impression was formed, everyone present, when comparing luxury brands in the future, would consider that at least in terms of clothing, Jiangnan’s brand value would be higher than Disney’s brand value.
In fact, the brand value of most luxury goods is not as high as that of Disney. Therefore, Jiangnan Group’s clothing naturally ranked above most luxury brands. This was a flawless logic.
Not to mention that many people were secretly taking photos with their cameras of the two princesses standing together. The next day, these photos would likely be in the news, with headlines like “Two Princesses Meet, Jiangnan Outshines Disney!” which would surely be very interesting.
When Antoine Arnault saw these news reports, he would be extremely grateful to Young Robert.
Of course, at this moment, Young Robert couldn’t think of so many intricacies. He quickly moved away from Princess Vivienne, fearing he would attract more hatred.
Next was the segment of continuing to give birthday gifts. With the previous example, most people dared not flaunt their birthday gifts. Vivienne also accepted these birthday gifts with a smile. Eventually, most eyes fell on Huang He, as it seemed the prominent boss, Huang He, had not yet presented his gift.
“Ahem!” Huang He coughed and stood up. The surrounding people focused their attention even more on Huang He. They all wanted to know what kind of unique gift Mr. Huang He had prepared!
“Can I say I didn’t prepare any gift?” Huang He thought helplessly. He had truly forgotten about the birthday gift. After all, in the past few days, Huang He had been focused on short-selling Yahoo’s stock price, constantly making various micro-maneuvers to suppress Yahoo’s stock price. If it weren’t for Hu Jing’s reminder, he would have forgotten that he had to attend Vivienne’s graduation birthday party today.
Having rushed over, he naturally hadn’t prepared any gifts. With all eyes focused on him, Huang He was truly in an awkward position.
What should he give as a gift?
Huang He sighed; giving gifts was really difficult.
Just then, Huang He’s phone rang. Looking down, he saw it was Little Swift calling.
“Boss, the latest news is that Jerry Yang has announced he is taking responsibility for this matter and has resigned from Yahoo!” Little Swift said on the phone.
“I know!” Huang He nodded. Jerry Yang’s resignation was something he had expected.
“Also, Larry Page just called me. He said he hopes we can cooperate with him on some matters to further destroy Yahoo’s stock price,” Little Swift continued.
“Cooperate with him on what?” Huang He asked curiously.
“He hopes I can persuade Apple to sign an advertising contract worth over a hundred million dollars with Google, to be the first shot fired for our newly established advertising alliance. This can further attack Yahoo’s advertising alliance business and show the world the influence of the advertising alliance we jointly established!” Little Swift said.
“So, can you persuade Jobs to place an advertisement on Google, and do it right away?” Huang He asked with annoyance.
“Heh heh, that’s why I’m looking for you, boss. If we can drive Yahoo’s stock price down by 1 dollar, we can earn an additional 300 million dollars in profit!” Little Swift chuckled.
“In that case…” Huang He pondered for a moment and then said, “Ask him if he can get a brand new advertisement online within half an hour!”