A luxury brand sells the dream: to customers, to employees, to banks

Nobody wants to work for a commodity

With us, all new people start as interns, paid, six months plus six, and at the end one in two is hired. To be able to offer a path like that, with the contract only at the end and only possibly, you cannot be a commodity. You have to have a brand and sell the dream. The person who joins us dreams of one day working in the Milan showroom, in the city centre, smartly dressed, perhaps with a commission on sales. If they speak languages, New York. It is a career dream, and it is tied to the brand. If I am a commodity, the only people who join are those who need a job, and they are not the ones I am looking for.

The dream for customers, employees and banks

For customers the dream is an emotional product: the kitchen shaped at 45 degrees, handcrafted, which blows up every time I post it on social media. If you sell a service, the dream is taking the person from a state of discomfort to one of well-being. For employees it is a career. And for investors, which in Italy means banks, it is a substantial, serious business plan, based on numbers, that demonstrates ability and sells the dream that tomorrow I could be the new Cucinelli, so the bank gets back the money it lent me. In 2009 I did it: a working group, several banks approached, a major Italian bank that financed our acquisition.

Marchionne's scheme

Sergio Marchionne communicated like this at FCA: brand, vision and mission at the centre; around them the customers, the employees and the change directed at the market. In cascade, the people inside perceived the value of the brand and Marchionne's own mission, and the market rewarded the effort. We too, in our small way, have to do this work: communicate the change in the company, from before to after, so that customers and staff perceive it together.

A brand also has to breathe the air. You don't grow by staying in the warehouse.

The brand breathes the air

That is why we opened our own showrooms in Milan and New York, not just near the factory: aspiration grows from the ground up if the brand is where the customers are. One of my customers, who ran a high-end American car brand, first moved the offices from Detroit to New York, because luxury has to absorb the city. Then he bought himself two kitchens and five bathrooms.

How to make it last

A dream holds up over time only if it is consistent. Art direction sets the mood: photos and videos with the same atmosphere, which then flow into marketing and advertising. The product is consistent with the story: I can't tell one thing and deliver another. The showroom replicates the catalogue: same kitchen, same floor, same backdrops, same colour, in Milan as in Rome. The customer finds everywhere what they saw on their phone. That is how Vuitton has identical stores all over the world, and how the dream stays credible even after ten years.

How long a brand lasts depends on how far the people inside and outside the company believe the same story, and they believe it if the story is true and they find it the same in every place they come across it.

From my book Direct from Milano and my classroom courses. Figures and examples updated to September 2026.