
Hermès
02/20/24 • 247 min
4 Listeners
In luxury, there’s Hermès... and there’s everyone else. Stewarded by one French family over six generations, Hermès sells the absolute pinnacle of the French luxury dream. Loyal clients will wait years simply for the opportunity to buy one of the company’s flagship Birkin or Kelly bags. Unlike every other luxury brand, Hermès:
- Doesn’t increase supply to meet demand (hence the waitlists)
- Doesn’t loudly brand their products (IYKYK)
- Doesn’t do celebrity endorsements (stars buy their bags just like everyone else)
- Doesn’t even have a marketing department! (they barely advertise at all)
And yet everyone knows who they are and what they represent. But, despite all their iconoclasm, this is not a company that’s stood still for six generations. Unbeknownst to most, Hermès has completely reinvented itself at least three times in its 187-year history. Including most recently (and most dramatically) by the family’s current leaders, who responded to LVMH and Bernard Arnault’s 2010 takeover attempt by pursuing a radical strategy — scaling hand craftsmanship. And in the process they turned the company from a sleepy, ~$10B family enterprise into a $200B market cap European giant. Tune in for one incredible story!
Sponsors:
Sentry: https://bit.ly/acquiredsentry
Vanta: https://bit.ly/acquiredvanta
ServiceNow: https://bit.ly/acquiredsn
More Acquired!:
- Get email updates with hints on next episode and follow-ups from recent episodes
- Join the Slack
- Subscribe to ACQ2
- Merch Store!
© Copyright 2015-2025 ACQ, LLC
Links:
- See our episode page for visuals!
- The saddle stitch (video)
- Inside the Saddlery at the Faubourg
- Hermès 2022 Annual Report
- Axel Dumas Interview
- All episode sources
Carve Outs:
Note: Acquired hosts and guests may hold assets discussed in this episode. This podcast is not investment advice, and is intended for informational and entertainment purposes only. You should do your own research and make your own independent decisions when considering any financial transactions.
In luxury, there’s Hermès... and there’s everyone else. Stewarded by one French family over six generations, Hermès sells the absolute pinnacle of the French luxury dream. Loyal clients will wait years simply for the opportunity to buy one of the company’s flagship Birkin or Kelly bags. Unlike every other luxury brand, Hermès:
- Doesn’t increase supply to meet demand (hence the waitlists)
- Doesn’t loudly brand their products (IYKYK)
- Doesn’t do celebrity endorsements (stars buy their bags just like everyone else)
- Doesn’t even have a marketing department! (they barely advertise at all)
And yet everyone knows who they are and what they represent. But, despite all their iconoclasm, this is not a company that’s stood still for six generations. Unbeknownst to most, Hermès has completely reinvented itself at least three times in its 187-year history. Including most recently (and most dramatically) by the family’s current leaders, who responded to LVMH and Bernard Arnault’s 2010 takeover attempt by pursuing a radical strategy — scaling hand craftsmanship. And in the process they turned the company from a sleepy, ~$10B family enterprise into a $200B market cap European giant. Tune in for one incredible story!
Sponsors:
Sentry: https://bit.ly/acquiredsentry
Vanta: https://bit.ly/acquiredvanta
ServiceNow: https://bit.ly/acquiredsn
More Acquired!:
- Get email updates with hints on next episode and follow-ups from recent episodes
- Join the Slack
- Subscribe to ACQ2
- Merch Store!
© Copyright 2015-2025 ACQ, LLC
Links:
- See our episode page for visuals!
- The saddle stitch (video)
- Inside the Saddlery at the Faubourg
- Hermès 2022 Annual Report
- Axel Dumas Interview
- All episode sources
Carve Outs:
Note: Acquired hosts and guests may hold assets discussed in this episode. This podcast is not investment advice, and is intended for informational and entertainment purposes only. You should do your own research and make your own independent decisions when considering any financial transactions.
Previous Episode

Novo Nordisk (Ozempic)
Last year Novo Nordisk, the Danish pharmaceutical company behind Ozempic and Wegovy, overtook LVMH to become Europe’s most valuable company. And the pull for Acquired to finally tackle healthcare (18% of US GDP!) became too strong for us to resist. While we didn’t know much about Novo Nordisk before diving in, our first thought was, “wow, seems like these new diabetes and obesity drugs mean serious trouble for big insulin companies.”
And then... we realized that Novo Nordisk IS the big insulin company. And in a story befitting of Steve Jobs and Apple, they’d just disrupted themselves with the drug equivalent of an iPhone moment. Once we dug further, we quickly realized this company has it all: an incredible 100+ year history filled with Nobel Prizes, bitter personal rivalries, board room dramas, a generation-defining silicon valley innovation, lone voices persevering against all odds — and oh yeah, the world’s largest charitable foundation at its helm. Tune in for one incredible story!
Sponsors:
Sentry: https://bit.ly/acquiredsentry
Vanta: https://bit.ly/acquiredvanta
ServiceNow: https://bit.ly/acquiredsn
More Acquired!:
- Get email updates with hints on next episode and follow-ups from recent episodes
- Join the Slack
- Subscribe to ACQ2
- Merch Store!
© Copyright 2015-2025 ACQ, LLC
Links:
- Chart: US Healthcare Spend by Category
- Chart: US Distribution and Reimbursement System (for pharmaceutical drugs)
- Chart: Insulin Supply Chain
- YouTube Talk: What People Get Wrong about the Finances of the Drug Industry
- Alex Telford: The pharma industry from Paul Janssen to today: why drugs got harder to develop and what we can do about it
- Out-of-Pocket Health: Obesity Drugs
- Out-of-Pocket Health: US Healthcare System Problems
- All episode sources
Carve Outs:
- Noxgear Tracer 2 running vest
- Drops of God
- Wool by Hugh Howey
- Mere Mortals at San Francisco Ballet
- Blackberry
Note: Acquired hosts and guests may hold assets discussed in this episode. This podcast is not investment advice, and is intended for informational and entertainment purposes only. You should do your own research and make your own independent decisions when considering any financial transactions.
Next Episode

Renaissance Technologies
Renaissance Technologies is the best performing investment firm of all time. And yet no one at RenTec would consider themselves an “investor”, at least in any traditional sense of the word. It’d rather be more accurate to call them scientists — scientists who’ve discovered a system of math, computers and artificial intelligence that has evolved into the greatest money making machine the world has ever seen. And boy does it work: RenTec’s alchemic colossus has posted annual returns in the firm’s flagship Medallion Fund of 68% gross and 40% net over the past 34 years, while never once losing money. (For those keeping track at home, $1,000 invested in Medallion in 1988 would have compounded to $46.5B today... if you’d been allowed to keep it in.) Tune in for an incredible story of the small group of rebel mathematicians who didn’t just beat the market, but in the words of author Greg Zuckerman “solved it.”
Sponsors:
Sentry: https://bit.ly/acquiredsentry
Vanta: https://bit.ly/acquiredvanta
ServiceNow: https://bit.ly/acquiredsn
Links:
- The Man Who Solved the Market
- The Quants
- Bloomberg’s 2016 RenTec profile
- Quartr's visualization of RenTec's returns
- All episode sources
Carve Outs:
- Modern Treasury’s Transfer Conference Registration
- The New Look
- Cole Haan x Acquired!
- Class of Palm Beach (and the Mini Kelly inside the Birkin!!)
More Acquired!:
- Get email updates with hints on next episode and follow-ups from recent episodes
- Join the Slack
- Subscribe to ACQ2
- Merch Store!
© Copyright 2015-2025 ACQ, LLC
Note: Acquired hosts and guests may hold assets discussed in this episode. This podcast is not investment advice, and is intended for informational and entertainment purposes only. You should do your own research and make your own independent decisions when considering any financial transactions.
If you like this episode you’ll love
Episode Comments
Featured in these lists
Generate a badge
Get a badge for your website that links back to this episode
<a href="https://goodpods.com/podcasts/acquired-35985/herm%c3%a8s-45126277"> <img src="https://storage.googleapis.com/goodpods-images-bucket/badges/generic-badge-1.svg" alt="listen to hermès on goodpods" style="width: 225px" /> </a>
Copy