How Kering is turning China’s innovation speed into global capability

What happened July 22, No. 200 Xinhua Road, Shanghai. The nearly century-old building retains the solemn character of traditional Chinese architecture, with its red-glazed tile roof, upturned eaves, and gray-and-white walls. Yet within this space shaped by history and cultural memory, the seventh Kering China Innovation Day was asking a different question: What might the future look like? Inside, the scene belonged to another era. AI, holographic projection, and intelligent devices transformed the historic space into a showcase of future possibilities. Visitors queued for 3D foot-scanning technology that generated personalized size recommendations while others manipulated holographic images with simple hand gestures. Nearby, an AI bartender created cocktails based on individual preferences as a remote-free robotic dog interacted with guests in the experience area. Employees from Kering and its houses moved from booth to booth, speaking with startup innovators, testing products, and taking notes. Their interest went beyond the novelty of new technologies. What mattered more to them was whether these innovations could move beyond the exhibition floor, integrate into the daily operations, and ultimately become long-term capabilities that drive business growth. The contrast between new technology and a century-old building became the most vivid metaphor of this year’s Kering China Innovation Day: a luxury group built on heritage is exploring how technology can become part of its future. Behind this ambition lies a broader question facing the entire industry: As a sector rooted in tradition, craftsmanship, and cultural value enters the age of AI, how should it define what comes next? China’s new role: From consumer market to innovation hub This year’s Kering China Innovation Day featured nine startups across three areas: creativity and brand communication; omnichannel retail and e-commerce; and client service and experience. The presence of Luca de Meo, CEO of Kering, further underscored the significance of the event within the group’s broader innovation strategy. In his opening keynote, de Meo revisited the “ReconKering” strategy unveiled three months earlier at Kering’s Capital Markets Day in Florence, Italy. The strategy is built around two concepts: “True Luxury” and “Next Luxury.” The former represents the foundations Kering aims to preserve — creativity, craftsmanship, cultural relevance, and product excellence. The latter points toward the group’s future direction, including new technologies, new client expectations, new markets, and new categories. Innovation serves as the bridge between the two. Beyond improving efficiency, it explores how Kering can create new capabilities for the future while preserving the core values of luxury. Within this framework, China’s role is expanding beyond that of a consumer market. Discussing the country’s place in Kering’s innovation strategy, de Meo said: “If there is one place in the world where this spirit of innovation is fully alive, it is China.” What supports this view is not only China’s market scale but also its ability to rapidly connect technology, consumers, and business scenarios. Mature digital platforms have created closer links between content, transactions, services, and consumer feedback, while diverse AI applications and an active startup ecosystem enable new technologies to enter real business environments faster, where they can be tested and continuously refined through practice. During his visit to China, de Meo was accompanied by more than 30 group and house executives, including brand leaders and key functional teams. The visit was not simply a market tour; it was an opportunity for senior decision-makers to engage directly with China’s evolving consumer landscape, local business practices, and emerging opportunities while working with local teams to explore how ReconKering could be implemented in the market. Simply put, Kering does not see China merely as a place to apply new technologies but as a market where innovative solutions can be developed and validated. The group is bringing questions to China, seeking answers in real business environments, and then scaling successful approaches across more houses and markets. Kering China Innovation Day is therefore evolving beyond a platform for showcasing local innovations. It is becoming a bridge between global strategy and China’s market practices. For Kering, China is not only a place to identify trends and validate solutions but also an important innovation hub for developing “Next Luxury” capabilities and bringing new ideas to its houses around the world. The Jing Take: Technology within, creativity at the core Yet the real challenge of innovation is not simply finding new technologies; it is convincing an organization built on deep traditions to embrace change. Yet the real challenge of innovation is not simply finding new technologies; it is convincing an organization built on deep traditions to embrace change. To achieve this, Kering first needs to redefine the role of technology within the luxury industry. For decades, creativity, design, and craftsmanship have been regarded as the core capabilities of luxury houses, while technology has largely remained in the background — supporting internal systems, marketing initiatives, or individual projects rather than shaping product development, client experiences, and business decisions. Such caution is understandable. Luxury is built on cultural heritage, creative judgment, and human craftsmanship. As AI, data, and automation increasingly enter creative processes, designers and brands naturally question whether technology could weaken brand identity, make creativity more standardized, or dilute the tangible connection between people and materials. On whether AI can fundamentally change the creative process in luxury, de Meo takes a pragmatic view. Having witnessed the transformation brought by AI in other industries, he believes its value in luxury still needs to be proven through practice. For him, AI is not about replacing human judgment but expanding the space for exploration, like adding a turbocharger to a traditional engine. As he put it, “It may not make things better, but it can certainly help you do things faster.” This philosophy is also central to ReconKering. Kering is not seeking to place technology above creativity but to move technology beyond a supporting role and embed it into the group’s everyday capabilities — from improving product development and understanding consumer needs to enhancing client experiences, retail operations, logistics, and production efficiency. This understanding of the relationship between technology and creativity is also shaped by de Meo’s experience leading technological transformation in the automotive industry. Several years ago, he encouraged automotive design teams to experiment with AI-assisted vehicle design. Designers were initially concerned that technology might interfere with a creative process built on experience and sensory judgment. But in practice, AI did not replace design decisions; it improved the speed of validation. A process that once took around 15 hours to recalculate aerodynamic performance after adjusting a vehicle line could now be reduced to about 10 minutes. By reducing waiting time and repetitive work, technology gave designers more room to explore. A similar logic can apply to fashion and jewelry. Digital simulation can help designers compare more options before production, reducing physical prototyping, material consumption, and development costs. AI can also help brands organize client feedback, support sales training, and improve operational decision-making. But ultimately, what determines whether a product resonates or what story a brand chooses to tell still comes from designers, artisans, and creative teams. For Kering, the goal is not to use technology to replace creativity but to make technology an everyday capability that supports creativity, client experience, and operations. The transformation required is not only technological but cultural: leaders must give teams the space and confidence to experiment, allowing the value of technology to be proven through real-world use. From pilots to long-term capability Yet changing mindset is only the beginning. For Kering, a group with multiple houses and a complex business structure, the greater challenge is turning innovation from isolated experiments within individual teams into capabilities that can be replicated and scaled across the group. Over the past few years, Kering’s China Innovation Hub has worked with startups to launch more than 50 innovation pilots, covering areas such as 3D virtual try-on (VTO), virtual reality (VR), augmented reality experiences, live commerce, generative AI content creation, and AI-powered learning and training. The nine startups selected for this year's Innovation Day showcased disruptive solutions in sectors such as brand communications, retail services, and internal operations, providing opportunities for pilot exploration with Kering Houses. Generative engine optimization, AI-generated content, and marketing AI agents help brands adapt to how information is discovered in the AI era; AI shopping agents, 3D foot scanning, and personalization solutions enhance client experiences; and sales training and user research tools help employees improve service quality and decision-making efficiency. But Kering is not short of pilots. What remains scarce are solutions that can move beyond individual use cases, cross house boundaries, and create lasting value. As de Meo noted: “Pilots are never the destination. An innovation that stays a pilot is a curiosity. An innovation that scales is a competitive advantage.” Scaling innovation is difficult because the journey from a demonstration to everyday adoption is not straightforward. Technologies must fit into different houses’ workflows, while employees need to understand and embrace how they can be used. Kering’s task is to preserve the individuality of each house while turning proven experiences into capabilities that can be shared across the group. To support this transition, Kering is building a more systematic innovation framework, spanning tool adoption, organizational development, and capability building. The group is currently using a data integration tool that allows managers to access sales, client, and financial information through mobile devices and identify potential business opportunities. At the same time, Kering is rolling out digital capability training across the organization, bringing AI tools into different roles and encouraging employees to explore applications relevant to their own work. This is also the direction Kering China Innovation Day has continued to explore. After seven editions, the platform has become an important gateway for Kering to connect its houses, startups, and industry partners and jointly explore the future. But the real test begins after the exhibition ends: whether these innovations can continue entering daily operations, expand from one team to many, and ultimately deliver faster decisions, greater efficiency, and better client experiences. For Kering, this is also the central question behind the ReconKering strategy: scaling technology beyond isolated experiments into group-wide capabilities while ensuring each house retains its unique identity and gains new advantages in the AI era. The Jing Take reports on a piece of the leading news and presents our editorial team’s analysis of the key implications for the luxury industry. In the recurring column, we analyze everything from product drops and mergers to heated debate sprouting on Chinese social media.

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How Kering is turning China’s innovation speed into global capability

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