Bourgogne-Franche-Comté’s first participation in the Sommet du Luxe
The Bourgogne-Franche-Comté Region has taken part for the first time in the Sommet du Luxe. This event brought together the major luxury goods firms on 5 February last at the Hôtel Intercontinental in Paris. This 17th event organized by the Centre du luxe et de la création had as its theme, in round-table discussions and specialized studies, “Luxury goods: the manufactory of emotion”.
Marie-Guite Dufay, President of Bourgogne-Franche-Comté Regional Council, and Arnaud Marthey, President of AER BFC, took part alongside other leading figures in a round-table entitled “The power of emotion: the challenges for luxury goods in 2019”. It was a unique opportunity to present the know-how of Bourgogne-Franche-Comté in the luxury goods and creative sectors.
The Region’s President reminded the audience that “subcontractors in leather goods, craftworkers in jewellery, watchmakers, and lens makers all contribute to excellence in our region and represent more than 10,000 jobs”. She also evoked the quality and precision of the work: “Behind luxury products, there are skilled trades, workers who are true craftsmen and women”. Her contribution was also an opportunity to explain the role of the Regional Council which “supports innovation and vocational training to maintain this know-how. The Council provides the breeding-ground so that those who commission work can be guaranteed that our traditions of excellence will continue.”
“Being rooted as they are in outstanding local craftsmanship, luxury products convey something of our art of living, a concentrated essence of Bourgogne-Franche-Comté, its values and traditions”, Arnaud Marthey observed. He went on to point out, “We have a genuine culture, supported by a fine and long history and associated with technology. The force of a region is to be a place that maintains skills, quality and scarcity and a place that is also a springboard for innovation. Here the combination of know-how and innovation rests upon a strong industrial tradition. Our role is to bring creativity and technique together.”
Bourgogne-Franche-Comté, as a land of contrasts, has come into its own. It is a unique region for luxury products: it is the only region to have both the skills (leatherwork, watchmaking, jewellery, materials processing) at a very high level of excellence and the capacities for innovation that will enable those skills to be part of the future.
The study conducted by the Centre du Luxe provides several points of interest: nowadays customer experience and customer feeling are becoming crucial factors in triggering purchases. Together with reputation, emotion is one of the main components of desirability. Emotion is based on scarcity, quality, creativity, and history. On these criteria, Bourgogne-Franche-Comté has a great card to play.
The 350 participants in the Sommet du luxe were able to discover the talents to be found in Bourgogne-Franche-Comté through a video of the region’s industry, shown after the round-table talk:
And issue no. 3 of the magazine Influences produced by the Agency and distributed at the event:
