Alain Dominique Perrin's pucker-up

"I deliberately waited, to write this text, for the only French organization that classifies training in luxury professions to publish its 2016 list. I didn't want evil spirits to think that I was trying to lure the client into the training I created 26 years ago!
In this 2016 ranking (source SMBG), ISML* "Sup de Luxe", which belongs to my school, EDC Paris Business School, is 1st, as it has already been 9 times in 13 years and 2 times in 2nd place. Our training, which is the oldest of all and which was hailed by the profession as being very visionary at the time, clearly does not need either notoriety or students.
My open letter is a warning; a paving stone in the pond; a "pounding". Given my experience and skills in this sector (President of Cartier, then President of the Richemont Group - Cartier, Van Cleef and Arpels, Mont-Blanc etc), I think I can, without pretension, ...pay for this luxury! Over the past twenty years, with an intensification in recent times, I have seen the emergence of new training courses here and there aimed at supplying the luxury industry with young and enthusiastic executives. Some of them - less than a dozen - have proved their worth and I would describe them as serious: ESSEC, ISIPCA, the University of Marne La Vallée, ISML "Sup de Luxe" of course... Thanks to the perpetual evolution of our teaching, thanks also to our privileged links and partnerships with professional federations and luxury brands around the world, we are able to meet their needs and thus create jobs for our young people, in France and internationally.
And then there are the others. Those who make often gullible students and their parents, who are even more so, believe that hiring is limitless, that their programs will arm them to enter through the front door into a world that shines and generates colossal revenues. The others who play with ambiguity on words, with a lot of publicity, pretending for example to have agreements with 700 companies in the sector! ... While there are barely half of them in the world. It's just tendentious and very tidy!
The truth at the moment is that 250 new junior executive jobs are created every year. No more than that. The major brands have already recruited most of the profiles they needed. And internationally, they have changed their strategy by now favouring "local" recruitment rather than expatriation.
At the hit- parade of professions, good salesmen have dethroned marketing professionals. We are also looking for specialists in retail trade, wholesale, digital communication, logistics and supply chain. And, of course, the "hand crafts"; those precious craftsmen who create high-end products.
You have to be wary of well-coated speeches that make you dream, but often only lead to disillusionment and repeated internships, -when young graduates already have the chance to find an internship! Opportunism has no limit for quantities of pharmacies. Beware of counterfeiting! »
* Higher Institute of Luxury Marketing
Alain Dominique PERRIN
President of EDC Paris Business School
President of the Fondation Cartier