FLORENCE, Italy, June 10 (Reuters): Gucci is bringing more manufacturing in-house, as luxury firms step up efforts to meet rampant demand from Chinese shoppers with slicker operations.
Gucci, the fashion powerhouse of Kering, also outlined plans at its strategy update to almost halve its reliance on independent leather goods suppliers.
The step comes as labels begin to levy greater control over their production or invest in speeding up internal processes to ride a rebound in luxury goods sales.
Britain's Burberry and France's Vuitton are among the labels.
Gucci was one of the fastest-growing fashion brands in 2017 following a flamboyant design makeover.
The Italian brand said this week it could one day overtake LVMH's Louis Vuitton as the world's top luxury brand by sales.
It plans to cut its use of independent suppliers to 40 per cent of its leather goods production over the long term, from 75 per cent now.
CEO Marco Bizzarri said Gucci aims to halve the turnaround time between a product's conception and delivery in store.
The fashion powerhouse also aims to secure the production capacity it needs to match its punchy sales ambitions, Bizzari said.
"We want to reduce the lead time, and it's not possible if you're too scattered with small suppliers," he said.
"We also need to make sure other brands are not stealing supply. Because of the growth that we're having we need to protect our artisans," he added.
Bizzari was speaking with reporters at Gucci's new "ArtLab" site outside Florence, where it will do prototypes of bag and shoe designs.
Italian brands have traditionally worked with an external network of dozens of local artisans on items when French peers Hermes and Vuitton almost exclusively use their own workshops.
Handbag is one of such items that the Italian brands design and craft working with an external network of local artisans.
Gucci has bought out 10 local suppliers and said it was closing in on another 10.
It considers the shift to internal production will for the most part involve creating joint ventures with external workshops or giving them exclusive contracts.
Even that can help to stabilise production, however, when some manufacturers in Italy are vulnerable, thinks Olivier Salomon, managing director at consultancy Alix Partners in Paris.
He said some are tiny, almost family-like workshops which have know-how but where there are often questions over whether they are sustainable, or regarding succession.
Other brands with a big focus on leather goods like Milan-based Prada are grappling with these issues too.
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