Mathieu Roland Billecart is CEO of Billecart-Salmon “Off the Cuff” is a Q&A series from Luxury Daily exploring the career paths, current projects and next steps of those shaping the world’s best luxury brands.
The interviews feature a Proust-style twist, allowing readers to get to know industry leaders on a personal level. This edition features Mathieu Roland Billecart, CEO of French Champagne house Billecart-Salmon.
In this Q&A, Mr. Billecart discusses the value of hard work, the art of waiting and earning the authentic luxury label with care and quality.
Here is the dialogue:
What was your first job ever? What did it teach you?
My first job ever was to work during harvest as a cutter (of the grapes) and then as a wine press worker.
It taught me humility towards nature and the hard work of farming grapes respectfully. It also reminded me that I should go to the gym more often as it was physically very intense!
Which skills have been critical to your success? Did you gain these skills within or outside of the workplace?
Persistence, persistence, persistence.
We are working with nature and that brings its lot of uncertainties every year. Also, when we make our wines we make them between three and 15 years before we can release them from our cellars, so you need to have very strong belief about any strategic decision that you make.
These are not skills, as such, but more personal values and character that make you hold your ground.
What is the best piece of advice you’ve ever received?
When I was in training in London, my boss used to say, “The harder I work, the luckier I get."
I think it is easy to blame others for what happens when things don’t go your way. [Instead], you just need to roll up your sleeves and never give up until you make it happen.
How has your field changed since you started out in luxury, and what do you think your industry will look like in a decade?
I think the concept of “luxury” has been expanding rather fast, and for some organizations a luxury positioning means just selling at a high price with a fancy packaging. This can be damaging for houses such as ours that offer deeply grounded, authentic, exclusive and top quality wines to the market as potential consumers get confused with dressed up mass-market offerings.
We recently released a revamping of our range centered around four different savoir-faire instead of a more basic and traditional Champagne range. This is the result of six years of teamwork that required many strategic and sometimes difficult decisions all around our ecosystem.
We love long lunches at Billecart-Salmon.
I like the simple moments, cooking for my family, walking around the golf course and, of course, I am never far from a nice restaurant with a good wine list.
True luxury, the vision we apply at Billecart-Salmon, is a blend of authenticity, exclusivity and, of course, superior quality for our Champagne. Most people focus on the result of wanting to be positioned as luxury where, for us, it is all about the efforts to merit that positioning.
A lunch on the slope with my family on a sunny day after a morning of skiing would be right up there – with a glass of Champagne in hand, of course!