LVMH creates a new operating role to integrate its beauty business more deeply

LVMH wants to turn its beauty maisons into a more integrated platform

LVMH is introducing an important organisational change within its perfumes and cosmetics business with the appointment of Alexandre Oulès as Chief Operating Officer of LVMH Beauty, a newly created position designed to strengthen industrial and operational coordination across the group’s maisons. Reporting to Véronique Courtois, Oulès will oversee areas including manufacturing, supply chain and purchasing. The move may initially appear to be an internal restructuring, but it reveals a much broader strategic ambition: LVMH wants to preserve the creative independence and identity of its individual brands while extracting greater economic value from operating one of the world’s largest portfolios of luxury beauty houses.

The scale explains why this matters. LVMH’s Perfumes & Cosmetics business brings together 16 maisons and generated approximately €8.174 billion in revenue in 2025. The portfolio includes businesses with very different positioning, customers and operating models, ranging from Dior, Guerlain and Givenchy to Benefit Cosmetics, Make Up For Ever, Fresh, Maison Francis Kurkdjian, Fenty Beauty and Acqua di Parma. Each needs to preserve its own creative language, product philosophy and relationship with consumers, yet many activities behind the finished product can benefit from greater coordination. Raw-material purchasing, packaging, manufacturing, inventory planning, logistics, industrial technology and supplier relationships can create substantial economies of scale when managed with a more transversal approach.

The next battle in luxury beauty will also be operational

Premium beauty has traditionally been understood primarily as a competition around product, innovation, image, celebrities, distribution and marketing. All of these remain essential, but the growth of the category is making operational complexity increasingly important. A major maison can simultaneously launch skincare, make-up and fragrance across dozens of markets, work with hundreds of components and suppliers, manage multiple packaging formats and need to react rapidly when a product unexpectedly becomes viral. In that environment, a flexible supply chain can become as valuable a competitive advantage as an exceptional advertising campaign.

The creation of a cross-maison COO suggests that LVMH wants to capture greater scale without transforming its portfolio into one homogeneous beauty company. That distinction is critical. Consumers buy Dior because they want Dior and Guerlain because they want Guerlain; they do not buy an abstraction called LVMH Beauty. Integration therefore needs to happen largely behind the scenes. Creativity can remain decentralised while manufacturing, purchasing, logistics and selected technology processes become more efficient through shared infrastructure. It is a particularly compelling model for luxury because it attempts to solve one of the industry’s oldest contradictions: achieving scale without appearing mass-market.

Dior, Guerlain and Francis Kurkdjian still need to feel different

The principal challenge will be determining how far integration should go. A conventional industrial company would attempt to standardise processes, reduce supplier numbers and increase volumes to lower costs. In luxury, excessive standardisation can destroy value. Part of the appeal of a Maison Francis Kurkdjian fragrance, a Guerlain creation or a Dior beauty product comes from the perception that each maison possesses distinctive expertise, ingredients, history and codes. LVMH must therefore ensure that operational synergies remain almost invisible to the customer.

That means sharing what does not create differentiation while protecting what does. Logistics infrastructure can be centralised; an exceptional raw material, artisanal process, distinctive bottle or characteristic formulation may need to remain unique. The real operational expertise lies in identifying that boundary. If LVMH can reduce costs and accelerate processes without creating visible homogenisation, it can strengthen margins and investment capacity while preserving the value of each house.

Speed is becoming a competitive advantage

Beauty is also evolving considerably faster than many traditional luxury categories. TikTok, Instagram and digital communities can turn a fragrance, lip product or treatment into an international phenomenon within days. A company that needs months to increase production can lose a major opportunity while another brand captures demand. A more coordinated industrial structure could allow LVMH to identify requirements, reallocate capacity and respond faster.

Artificial intelligence is likely to play an increasingly important role in this process. Demand forecasting, inventory planning, logistics optimisation, trend detection and behavioural analysis can reduce both stockouts and overproduction. For a luxury group, both are problematic: running out of a bestseller means losing sales and customers, while producing too much creates inventory pressure and can ultimately damage margins and exclusivity. Operational excellence in luxury means producing enough to capture demand without allowing abundance to become the enemy of desire.

Beauty is becoming a strategic pillar within the LVMH architecture

There is also a commercial reason to strengthen the division. Beauty allows LVMH to build relationships with far more consumers than can afford haute couture, high jewellery or certain handbags. A customer may first enter the Dior universe through fragrance and later develop a relationship with make-up, skincare, fashion or accessories. Beauty therefore operates simultaneously as an entry point, a recurring business and a loyalty platform.

Purchase frequency is fundamentally different as well. A customer may acquire a handbag only occasionally, while fragrance, skincare and make-up require replenishment. That recurrence generates more data, more visits and more opportunities to deepen the relationship. Meanwhile, the expansion of niche fragrance, premium skincare, personalisation and diagnostics is steadily raising the economic ceiling of the category. Beauty no longer needs to function solely as an accessible gateway into luxury; it can create its own ultra-premium tiers.

Greater integration could finance greater creativity

Perhaps the most interesting consequence of the restructuring is creative rather than operational. If LVMH can secure better purchasing conditions, eliminate inefficiencies, improve inventory management and use production capacity more effectively, part of those resources can be reinvested in what consumers actually see: product, ingredients, innovation, boutiques, experiences, communication and talent.

It would therefore be a mistake to interpret the creation of the new role purely as a cost-cutting exercise. In an industry where capturing attention is becoming increasingly expensive, operational efficiency can become fuel for greater creative investment. The maisons that operate more intelligently will have more resources available to build desire.

Alexandre Oulès’s appointment therefore points towards a new phase for LVMH Beauty. The group appears to be moving from a collection of maisons that share an owner towards an architecture in which the brands remain clearly differentiated in front of the consumer while benefiting much more deeply from the combined strength of the group behind the scenes. If successful, LVMH could build something particularly difficult to replicate: the creativity and exclusivity of multiple independent maisons combined with the industrial, technological and purchasing power of a global beauty platform generating more than €8 billion in annual revenue.

Prepare to lead the transformation of luxury

The reorganisation of LVMH Beauty demonstrates that managing a luxury company today requires far more than understanding product and marketing. Supply chain, artificial intelligence, data, operations, innovation, distribution and international management are becoming essential components of competitive advantage.

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