Looking through LVMH and Louis Vuitton's Glassdoor
We downloaded and read more than 5,000 reviews about what it’s like to work at LVMH and Louis Vuitton on Glassdoor
What is it like to work in luxury retail? Amy Odell’s “Retail Confessions” Substack column gives us a good hint at the top end of the industry. Her anonymous interviews with (sometimes very well paid) retail employees at luxury firms reveal what it’s really like to sell fashion to the ultra-wealthy. If you’ve read any of the stories, you’ll know that managing the customers is a common complaint. There are customers who expect staff to fix bags that have been crushed in conveyor belts, customers who urinate in the Gucci store (that’s a good thing), and customers who pretend to buy horse saddles so they can get a Birkin.
What about the rest of the industry? We’ve decided to take a closer look at Glassdoor, a company which hosts anonymous, self-certified reviews from workers. The platform has previously made news in the fashion industry when reviews of former Celine designer Phoebe Philo’s own brand were found to include unverified allegations of exploitation of employees, a toxic environment and bullying management. “Worst experience of my career,” wrote one reviewer who said they were a head of a department at the brand, writing in October last year. We’re taking a closer look at Glassdoor to see if we can try and understand some of the concerns of employees at other fashion and luxury firms, starting with the largest luxury group of all.
Work at LVMH or Louis Vuitton and want to talk to us about your experience?
LVMH and Louis Vuitton on Glassdoor
LVMH, run by billionaire CEO Bernard Arnault, employs about 200,000 people around the world in over 80 countries, a fifth in France. It owns 75 brands or Maisons, including Louis Vuitton and Dior.
What we discovered when we downloaded and read all 5,667 reviews of LVMH and its biggest brand, Louis Vuitton, is that while most reviews are positive about working at the companies (their overall scores are 3.9 and 3.5 out of 5, respectively. The average for all reviews on the platform is 3.5) it’s not hard to find some surprisingly critical and even some concerning reviews when you start digging.
There are the usual complaints about pay, working hours and bad managers that you might find at any company. (The level of commission for retail staff is a common area of complaint at Louis Vuitton, which we’ll come on to.) But there are also more serious allegations in the reviews, including racism towards staff, an allegation that managers spy on employees, and many descriptions of what one reviewer called a “hyper-political” environment.
There are also some very colourful reviews, one of which likens working at Louis Vuitton to the Soviet Union, who alleges that clients were “ranked and colour-coded or labelled based on nationality.” That is just one review. We’ve tried to take these reviews with a pinch of salt – they’re anonymous and unverified, after all – but we think taking our closer look will be illuminating for workers and managers at those companies. Read on for the first of our looks through the luxury Glassdoor…
Contents
The bigger picture
Cuts to commission
Racism allegations
Hyper-politique
French control
Management and HR
An allegation of spying
The bottom line
Also coming up: Looking through the Glassdoor at Kering and Gucci (subscribe to Dark Luxury to get that as soon as it lands)
The bigger picture
First, an overall look at the reviews, which were overwhelmingly positive.
Most of the reviews were from retail workers, although some were from head office workers, management and director-level staff. Of the 2,132 reviews at LVMH we looked at, many more than half (1,481) gave four or five stars to the company, and less than five per cent were one star reviews.
At Louis Vuitton, of the 3,535 reviews we looked at, over 2,000 were four or five star ratings, and about 10 per cent gave one star reviews.
Many of the reviews said that working at LVMH and Louis Vuitton was well paid, felt prestigious and they enjoyed and learned lots working there. Most of the criticisms were about the long working hours, the high pressure environment, complaints about lower salaries, short lunch breaks and poor career progression. Some mentioned cut-throat work environments and that they can be impersonal places to work. All pretty typical stuff for a multinational corporation worth hundreds of billions of euros.
LVMH and Louis Vuitton have very high standards for their work, their working environments and the products they sell, which is reflected in the numbers on their reviews. But there were many reviews that suggest that sometimes they fail to match these standards, and many topics which employees complained about, and loudly. Those reviews are the areas of focus of this story.
First, a topic that is very dear to the hearts of Louis Vuitton retail employees. Commission.
Louis Vuitton cuts commission on most popular products
While many retail workers who wrote reviews liked that Louis Vuitton paid commission for sales, there were many specific and common complaints about cuts to payouts for selling the canvas monogram bags, one of the company’s most popular products.
“With the head of LVMH Bernard Arnault becoming the second richest man in the world, asking for better commission is not asking too much,” wrote one reviewer in 2019.