An executive with over 30 years of experience with global luxury brands, from L’Oreal and Louis Vuitton, Valérie Chapoulaud-Floquet became one of the first people outside of the Hériard-Dubreuil family to become Chief Executive Officer of the Rémy Cointreau Group, taking over an enviable collection of luxury Cognac and liqueur brands.

drinks bulletin: When you joined the business you took over a role previously held by a family member. What were the first and main challenges you met?

Valérie Chapoulaud-Floquet: The most important thing for me was to understand the industry and company. So for two months, I travelled across the globe and met the team, brands and countries/regions. For most of my trips, I was incredibly lucky in that I was always with a family member and that I could have the three of them - Dominique, François and Marc explain the history and story behind each situation because they grew up with their grandparents, parents and then themselves running the company.

DB: How have you found the transition from your time with businesses such as LVMH and L’Oreal?

VC: When I worked at LVMH - Louis Vuitton, Bernard Arnault (Chairman and CEO) would always say: “It’s a family business, it’s my company.” 

Of course, in reality, it’s a listed company, and he doesn’t control 100 per cent of it, but he does make most of the critical decisions. So, if you wanted to go for a big project, you were able to meet with him within 48 hours and have a decision. It was a good school for me in that sense because at L’Oreal it was the exact opposite - it could take years to move up there.

Moving to Remy has been very refreshing; the difference here is that it is a real family.

DB: How do you premiumise a portfolio already considered as luxury?

VC: Two ways - you either focus on the high-end products in your portfolio or you launch new products. But launching new grand aged spirits takes time to pick up.

So one of the things we have done is stop producing VS. With Cognac, the quality gets better with age. As we only buy grapes from Petite and Grande Champagne - the highest quality - it doesn’t make sense to produce VS, which is aged for just two years. Instead, we decided our niche would be VSOP, aged for four years plus.

DB: Do you have plans to launch any new products?

VC: Before going to something different, I want to make sure that I have done my job properly on what already exists.

We already know what we need to do with Rémy Martin, and with Louis XIII it is more a question of format and growing awareness.

With Cointreau, I want to focus on the original, and with St-Rémy we are looking at opening the markets and simplifying the range. We are extremely happy with Metaxa and what’s in the range.

I think we are ready to do some launches with Bruichladdich, Port Charlotte and Octomore and then we need to take care of the two babies, which are Westland and Domaine des Hautes Glaces – two new single malt distilleries that we bought in Seattle and France. We are still in the early stages with these, but that allows us to create a business plan that will include launches and releases.

DB: What opportunities do you see in the Australian market for the brands?

VC: I think we are only just starting to scratch the surface with Louis XIII here and that the brand will grow bigger in time. Cointreau is already big here, but I still see some opportunity. I don’t think we quite know the limit to Cointreau yet as we haven’t invested in the brand for a long time, so if we do our job right there could be the opportunity to grow on a significant scale, and that would be exciting for Australia.

I also think our whisky brands are going to be big here, but it will take some time for our new products to make their way over because we must be strong in France and America before expanding.

DB: How important is this market to Rémy Cointreau?

VC: We are committed to the Australian market. We think that we still have a lot of opportunities here.

We want to be close to this market because mixology in the on-trade is important and we are always hearing that the most influential mixologists come from Australia, the UK and US. That’s something very important to us, particularly with Cointreau.

Cointreau was a part of the early stages of mixology; it has been a part of classic cocktails from day one; the Margarita, Side Car, Cosmopolitan, White Lady, the list is very long, and all these cocktails were created with Cointreau, so we are truly part of it. Because of that and because Australia is so active in the on-trade, we want to be able to give this market the best propositions.

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