When the opportunity to buy MCM arose in 2005, Kim swooped. She reasoned that if she had managed to build a US$100 million (£51m) business in South Korea with MCM in just three years, then “maybe it’s better to just buy the brand” and take on the rest of the world.
Like many luxury brands before it, MCM was over-distributed, over-licensed and plagued by the problem of fakes. Kim’s plan to revive the brand and reclaim its place as a premium global fashion house followed the same three steps she had learned at Gucci; cleaning up the distribution, appointing a new creative director – she tempted Michael Michalsky from Adidas at their first meeting, with whom she “shook hands on the deal even before exchanging terms and conditions” – and implementing a strong PR and marketing campaign.
Step one involved closing 150 accounts and stores. “It was an expensive exercise, but we had to disconnect the brand from its past,” she says. Once the sales outlets had been pruned back to those that Kim felt were suited to the brand’s high-end positioning, expansion began in earnest.