Walpole: What are boards really looking for from the next generation of luxury CEOs?
Melissa Reed: In a single word: breadth. Boards still want (and businesses still need) CEOs who respect and value creativity but they’re no longer willing to trade off commercial rigour to get it. We live in difficult economic times and this has certainly been felt by the luxury industry over the past couple of years, which has required different skills to navigate. We’re also seeing requirements for stronger leadership: can this person attract and retain exceptional talent, rather than just perform well themselves as transformation environments require the efforts of a team over individual?
How is the changing luxury consumer reshaping the leaders the industry needs?
Every brief now speaks to a need for cultural fluency that simply wasn't there five years ago. The consumer is younger, more global, and far less deferential to heritage as a standalone asset. That means boards are asking for leaders who understand community, culture, and platforms as instinctively as they understand product and merchandising. It's shifted some searches away from purely traditional luxury experience towards candidates with strong consumer and brand instincts from adjacent sectors.
Where will the next generation of British luxury leaders come from?
Less from a single, well-worn pipeline than in the past. We're increasingly looking at strong operators from global hospitality, design, premium retail, and fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG): sectors that share the same obsession with craft and service but often bring sharper commercial or digital instincts. The traditional luxury playbook can no longer be relied upon and so we’re consciously evaluating skills to determine who has the capacity to do the job next as opposed to who has already done the job.
This means the future British luxury leader will probably be less defined by where they have worked but more by what they can bring, whether that’s balancing commercial performance with creativity or heritage with innovation. Searches are therefore widening accordingly. Whilst boards still want the unicorn candidate who can bring everything fast, they are also more open to considering candidates from outside the sector. We are seeing bolder choices by boards as a result.
Are luxury businesses doing enough to plan for succession?
In our experience, not consistently, and it's often structural. Many luxury houses are privately or family-controlled, which means succession gets tangled up with ownership and legacy, not just capability. The businesses we see doing it well start conversations about the next CEO years before there's any urgency, and they deliberately rotate high-potential leaders through commercial, creative, and international exposure so there's a genuine slate to choose from when the moment comes. There's a real opportunity being left on the table internally: businesses that invest early in their own high-potential talent through active learning and engagement will build a much deeper bench of future leaders and give themselves choices around leadership succession. Much of our work now advises organisations on how to do this well.
What does a leadership team built for a global luxury consumer look like?
Genuinely diverse in a functional sense, not just a demographic one. Real market knowledge sitting in the room so leaders who've gained real depth of experience operating in Asia, the Middle East, or the US. It also means the C-suite has expanded: AI, digital, data, and sustainability now sit at the top table as commercial disciplines, not support functions. We always look at career journeys not just current roles, and we work with organisations to map skills and capabilities alongside strategy. By doing this we can identify skills gaps in the team and work out the best way to plug that gap, whether that’s by finding ways to do that internally or look to the external market to find the best complementary fit (both experience and culturally).
What will distinguish the luxury leaders of the next decade?
Three things stand out from the mandates we run: comfort with ambiguity, because technology and shifting consumer values are outpacing any established playbook; a genuine gift for attracting and keeping exceptional creative and commercial talent, since competition for it has never been fiercer; and the judgement to protect long-term brand equity under real pressure. Contrary to the current mood music, I don’t think they need to be a technologist, but they absolutely do need to understand AI, data, digital commerce and its appropriate use for competitive advantage.
With macro-economic conditions likely to remain challenging, leaders will need to be comfortable making difficult choices with commercial courage and steward brands to be more relevant, desirable and resilient for future decades.
More information at hiec.com
