Fashioning the fashionables

Any relation between grey hair and wisdom has to be tempered. The youthful Emmanuel Macron has few grey hairs but millions are confident in his wisdom; Raza Miah, the wizened proprietor of hand-made envelopes in old Dhaka grins toothlessly as he points to his white hair and says in inimitable Dhakaiya 'didn't get these white strands by chance'. Yet from the nineties or so, there was a marked shift among businesses to sweep out conventional belief in age and wisdom and push talented, promising younger people in to authority. It has worked as Mark Zuckerberg  exemplifies. Steve Jobs and Bill Gates are examples of tempering age and wisdom.

Then there's the example of Cyrus Mistri, heralded as a harbinger of change in a family-owned business and just as shocking a departure from Tata Sons. He was forty-three when appointed Chairman, nearly a decade younger to the new Chairman Natarajan Chandrasekhar, appointed in February this year. Mistry's departure raised all kinds of questions ranging from whether family-owned businesses really cared about culture change to the pivotal question of freedom to act.

The mark of a well-oiled business is its ability to respond nimbly to market situations, changing consumer preferences and still deliver the bottom line targets. Increasingly, though, businesses are finding it tough to manage all three and global business leadership has been slow to acknowledge that market uniqueness is another crucial factor for growth. The concept of the sachet scent shampoo and toothpastes soaring as did the theory of cheap cell-phone calls to numbers on similar networks. It sent call making and durations grow spectacularly along the trusted theory of volumes over value. These are crunch decisions that can backfire. Growing brands lost steam because of venturing out too early in to diversified product ranges, causing the main product to lose reverence.

Mont Blanc's reaction to sales slump following the global meltdown was to focus on downscale products. Gucci stuck to the proven path of holding brand positioning and braving it through, thereby adding spice to the marketing concept of innovating but accelerating brand spend in low times as investment for the future. Perhaps that's why the decision by Burberry CEO George Bailey to give up one IOC his hats and retain Creative Directorship is a brave one. Bailey has seen Burberry grow only 2.0 per cent as opposed to Gucci's impressive 30 per cent and the decision to move appears more his own than the board. They were confident in his decision; indeed that of the suggestion that 57 year-old Marcus Gobetti was the man to succeed him. Gobetti, in turn, has raised a prospect most boards would find disastrous. He has proposed a two-year growth freeze while he invests to ensure compounded growth thereafter. A new concept and a risky one given the factors of uncertainty mentioned earlier in this piece. In terms of leadership it's a bit of a masterpiece. Gobetti's credentials are impressive in the creation of the brand Celine built on cult-handbags. Burberry has travelled a far distance since being mere bags during the Second World War. What Gobetti brings to the table are the ideas he must have for turning those cult-handbags into a fashion choice. Should he fail, the door is open. If he succeeds Bailey comes out as a talent-spotter.

At the end, Gobetti has fewer hairs to grey. But when one looks at the frayed skin and white in Barrack Obama's hair after his Presidency and indeed the greying temples of BAT Bangladesh's in-house hi-flyer Shehzad Munim, one wonders whether it is worth it. Just another minor collateral damage in the cut-throat world of business.

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