Name: Levi's chief on luxury and lifestyle | FT Business
Uploaded: 2016-06-01T05:27:14.000Z
Duration: 5 min 4 s
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Welcome to the Business of Luxury Summit in San Francisco. With me is president of Levi Strauss, James Curleigh.

Adverbs of degree

James, business of luxury, jeans, really?

Yeah, well, as a president of Levi's brand when I got invited to speak at the luxury summit I said, "I think you got the wrong number."

But actually, when I started to think about it, it's shaping the lens of luxury through Levi's.

When I started to think, wait a minute, there's something here

in terms of craftsmanship, in terms of our iconic heritage past, in terms of what's happening with the vintage market.

Our innovations that we're announcing even recently with Google, they're all dimensions of luxury.

Maybe not as we knew it yesterday, but as we might know it tomorrow.

And you've talked often about the importance of lifestyle brands, and Levi is really representing that.

And how does the big 220 million dollars stadium sponsorship deal work in San Francisco, the 49ers football team? Yeah.

Yeah, well it's interesting because essentially every brand is a lifestyle brand.

It's a style of someone's life. But we were one of the original lifestyle brands.

We set the authentic .... back in the 1870s.

I mean all throughout the ages. From gold miners to cowboys to Hollywood Marlon Brando, rebels with or without a cause, rock 'n' roll

right through to the entrepreneurs who are now global leaders of companies choose to wear Levi's to work.

So with that, we started thinking well, that is lifestyle.

But we're seeing the different forces of sports, we're seeing the different forces of fashion come together

and we're in that authentic center point, and we thought authentic center point deserves to be in the center of culture.

And we believe that through the Levi's stadium deal, it puts us in the center of culture often.

Whether it's Super Bowl, Beyonce, Taylor Swift, Grateful Dead, Manchester Barcelona football or future events. We're in the center of culture often.

And you've had a, you say a hundred billion hits on Youtube and Google search?

Well, I think if you understand now that notion of luxury also comes through not just the products that you covet, but through the experience you have.

And I think luxury is defined by an experience and if you look at the ticket price of some concerts today, or the Super Bowl,

you can argue that's clearly in the luxury realm.

But the experience of innovation and technology today that says I'm in an experience but I'm gonna tell the world,

and it's synonymous where you are, which is Levi's stadium, we can actually accelerate and drive awareness of Levi's stadium way beyond just the stadium itself.

Now, in the 90s and around the turn of the century, Levi's sales you're beginning to see a little bit of fall off, the rise of premium brands.

How did you persuade colleagues to balance this, the need to pay attention, respect the past or go for the innovative future?

Well I think that the starting point is always, you know, let's just look at what we have today.

We're the world wide leader in denim. We always have been since we invented the 501 in 1873.

But we can't take that leadership for granted. And as I mentioned in the conference, we are the world wide leader and there is no clear number two.

But there's about 100 number twos around the world.

So we have to understand how to look at our iconic past, and if we don't make our heritage matter, who will?

So we make that matter. But at the same time, we put a lens of innovation through performance, sustainability, craftsmanship,

so that we're bringing solutions around comfort casualization and contemporary style.

And you also opened the Eureka Innovation Lab in San Francisco in 2015.

Well, if you think about the start-up culture, they always start somehow in a garage or somewhere where they're innovating and they're doing things,

then we said," let's recreate the conditions for success, for innovation right here in San Francisco California."

Proprietary knowledge, materials, proprietary partnerships that lead to better solutions.

So the vision there is really, continually invent the future of denim and beyond on a daily basis under our control.

And men's wear accounts for around 75% of your overall sales. You are the world's biggest belt reproducer.

But how are you gonna win the ladies round?

Well, I think, I mean women by definition it's a fashion moving world.

Picking out a pair of jeans isn't that easy. But we are the world wide leader in women's denim. It just happens to be much more fragmented, competitive market.

Last year, we embarked on a journey to relaunch our entire denim collection, the 700 series, the 710, 711, 712,

and it's rapidly becoming the fastest growing part of our women's collection.

And we also brought Alicia Keys to give us a little help on the music front.

And James, you've played in various rock bands, including in London.

Do you have a little song for us at the end?

Haha, well you have to end on " You can't always get what you want, but if you try sometime, you just might find. You get what you need. "