Louis Vuitton is known for using high quality raw materials in all of its products, the company has an empowering position to observe its products quality by marketing them through its own stores all over the world . Since the founding, the products are made by hand which differentiate the brand among its competitors in the industry. Before 2005, it took 20 to 30 craftsmen to put together each Louis Vuitton bag. Over the course of about eight days, separate workers would sew together leather panels, glue in linings and attach handles. For years the company paid far more attention to product design, craftsmanship and image than to the mechanics of keeping their stores stocked. With help from management consultants at McKinsey & Co., Vuitton set out to make its manufacturing process more flexible, borrowing techniques from car makers companies. Today, clusters of six to 12 workers, each of them performing several tasks, make LV-logo bags in a single day. The new settings improved company's production and the sales rose to 9% from the previous method of manufacturing.
The reorganization extended beyond the factory floor. A distribution center in France used to send products directly to Vuitton's stores around the world. Now, the company is building a global distribution hub outside of Paris that will ship to six regional distribution centers: two in Japan, two elsewhere in Asia, one in the U.S. and one near Paris for European orders. Within a week of a product launch, stores around the world feed sales information to France and production is adjusted accordingly. Factories work on a daily schedule, compared to a weekly one before the reorganization.
The final stage of the reorganization expanded to the boutiques and the stores for a better customer service and more efficiency in employees performance . In the past, salespeople advising customers would disappear into stockrooms when products weren't available on the shop floor. Now, Vuitton assigns a few employees at each store to the stockroom. At a large new store on Paris's Champs-Elysees, items are sent via service elevator from a basement stockroom to the cash register. They arrive wrapped in tissue pape