Suppose you owned the world’s biggest luxury goods company, comprising a host of competing brands. (Yeah, dream on.) To what extent would you encourage sharing of information between them?
In Bernard Arnault’s LVMH, Jean-Guillaume Prats may organise get-togethers for representatives of the various still wine companies but it seems as though the various champagne houses are run as separately as, say, Dior and Marc Jacobs.
Krug have devised a computer programme to keep track of the thousands of samples of wines they buy and taste, but when I visited the house last year I detected no enthusiasm whatsoever to share...