People seldom know that the fashion and luxury industry has become an industry with high water pollution, raw material consumption, and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Premium goods and sustainability seem contradictory, but Kering Group, one of the leading global luxury houses, has blazed the way for more than two decades.

From the Chairman and CEO, and Sustainability Programme Director at headquarters to employees on each continent, sustainability was rooted in the mind of everyone at Kering. It evolved its strategies for environmental protection and social benefit issues by various means: the Group adjusted its organizational structure and set up a specific department with experts from different backgrounds. The Group also calibrated specific numbers to improve on operational efficiency and decrease pollution. More intriguingly, it diversified ways to achieve business objectives such as innovative initiatives like the “Kering Generation Award (K Gen)” and the measurement tool, “Environmental Profit & Loss (EP&L)”. The K Gen in China aimed to gather critical players along the value chain within the luxury ecosystem while establishing an open platform to enhance awareness of corporate citizenship and environmental protection. EP&L measured Kering’s ecological impacts, assessed raw materials used in production and designing, and directed the Group towards more sustainable sourcing solutions, innovative technologies, and new materials development. However, both innovative initiatives had their limitations. The cultural differences between East and West mean it is difficult to duplicate the western model in the eastern cultures. At the same time, any new management tool had to overcome organizational inertia and balance the interests of different stakeholders.

Stakeholder management has thus become an inevitable issue. Internally, the Group had to balance corporate-level enforcement and brand-level autonomy. Externally, the Group had to engage with various stakeholders like NGOs, investors, and media. Vendors and suppliers also played essential roles. Kering had to actively communicate and coordinate with these groups of people in their ecosystem to achieve long-term sustainable growth.

Companies that just tried to showcase their efforts in sustainability issues could simply decrease GHG emissions or improving operational efficiency. Still, none of these such short-term methods could last in the long run. How could they continuously make achievements to meet ecological objectives? How could they sustainably implement sustainability strategies?