Fancy Tech is the big winner of the LVMH Innovation Awards 2024. On Thursday morning, before a full house at the Vivatech show, Morgan Mao, the young head of the Chinese platform that generates product presentation films using artificial intelligence , saw her eye-catching tree-shaped trophy (signed by the Dior teams and made in Murano, Italy) presented in a gorgeous Louis Vuitton box.
But the real star of the morning was Bernard Arnault, celebrated like a rock star at Viva Technology. At the lively Parisian show of new technologies, the reactions are undoubtedly less moderate than at events in the world of luxury, and a standing ovation accompanied the arrival of the French magnate on stage 1 of the Porte de Versailles exhibition center. The presence of the LVMH CEO was captured by hundreds of smartphones held in feverish hands. Before presenting the Innovation 2024 prize, the CEO of LVMH, dressed in an elegant anthracite suit over an unusual black turtleneck, greeted the seven directors of the winning startups of the competition. And, in English, he extolled the links between his approach to luxury and the spirit of innovation.
“Why do we support innovation and startups?” he asked, after celebrating Maurice Levy, head of Publicis, sitting next to Antoine Arnault, with whom LVMH started Vivatech eight years ago. “We have 75 highly developed start-ups in the group we call maisons. They are companies that started as family start-ups. With LVMH, we have always supported and invested in innovative companies. Some have done well, others less so, for example, we invested in the early days of Google, but also at Netflix at a time when it was a DVD rental business. There are reasons for success. The first is creativity and innovation. quality of your product is essential. The third point is entrepreneurship and efficiency.
So the luxury giant turned to businessmen. “We have seen some fantastic ideas that do not find their place. Execution is always key. When Facebook was born, there were many similar projects, but only one survived. It is an ultra-competitive world. That is why we are also partners of the Olympic Games. What we “What matters is the spirit of the athlete. To be an entrepreneur you have to have the spirit of a top-level athlete. You have to have it every day and for a long time.”
At this year's great innovation and technology event, the luxury giant reaches conquered ground. The LVMH group pavilion, installed in the heart of the main hall of the Porte de Versailles convention center, is packed. Long before the visit of the group's CEO, the stands that presented the innovations developed by the different houses highlighted the associated start-ups, which were offered small spaces to present their solutions.
Thus, the six categories awarded in the awards presented on Thursday actually highlighted around twenty companies with which the Group deploys solutions for its clients or its teams. All the selected companies offer solutions that respond to the strategic priorities defined by the Group,” explains Gonzague de Pirey, Director of Innovation and Data at LVMH. These solutions can affect the majority of LVMH companies, but we also work with companies that “They have the capacity to meet the needs of brands. Therefore, these are emerging companies that are already mature and capable of expanding their solutions.”
Seven winners with a strong focus on AI
This is, in fact, the case of Fancy Tech, which also won the Immersive Digital Experiences award, born in 2019 and which already has more than 200 employees, with the ambition to grow rapidly. We developed our solution in China, but next month we will open an office in Paris with a team to be as close as possible to the European brands' headquarters,” Morgan Mao explains to FashionNetwork.com. Our ambition is to become a global company We are developing our 3D modeling solution along with generating movies and brand briefs through artificial intelligence to obtain the most accurate proportions of products. GenAI expands the limits of human imagination and creativity.
Although 1,545 companies had applied for this 2024 edition of the Innovation Awards, the majority of this year's award-winning startups exploit artificial intelligence and data. In addition to Fancy Tech, six other companies received awards on May 23. Ircam Amplify, which creates sound worlds for brands, received the Image and Media award for brand desirability. Aectual received the Sustainability & Greentech award for its architectural elements and furniture created using a large format 3D printer and recycled materials. The Omnichannel & Retail award went to Glanceable, which uses artificial intelligence to analyze customer feedback and make recommendations to improve customer satisfaction.
Authena, which focuses on product and resource authentication using AI resources and IoT object intelligence, won the Excellence in Operations award. Heraldony, winner of the Employee Experience, Diversity and Inclusion award, took an artistic break at the awards ceremony. Her mission is to create licenses for companies to use the works of disabled artists. Finally, the jury awarded a special mention for Data, AI & Gen Ai solutions to the American company BLNG, which offers a virtual studio assisted by generative artificial intelligence for the jewelry industry.
It was identified that each of these actors had worked with one or more of the Group Houses. With the spotlight now on them, everyone is talking about the opportunity to work with other LVMH brands, but the event should also open the doors to other protagonists.
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