Arnault Takes Shot at Amazon — and Others — Over Fakes

PARIS — Fresh off another year of record results for LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton, Bernard Arnault said Tuesday he plans to step up the battle against the sale of counterfeit goods online, dealing a potential blow to Amazon’s ambitions in the luxury space. The chairman and chief executive officer of the luxury conglomerate, who in recent weeks has several times briefly surpassed Amazon ceo Jeff Bezos as the world’s wealthiest man on Forbes’ real-time Billionaires List, expressed skepticism about online pure players and accused them of profiting from the sale of fakes. “They’re all losing money. That’s not a great sign. And the bigger they get, the more money they lose. We’ve been asked several times to participate in these businesses, and I’ve always said no,” Arnault told reporters and analysts at LVMH’s annual results press conference here. “We created a relatively small [e-commerce] site called 24S, which unfortunately is no exception to the rule. It’s also losing money, but it’s not losing a lot because it’s small. We’re growing it modestly. We hope to find a way to make it profitable, but for the time being, we haven’t. We shall see,” he continued. Arnault added that online sales at beauty retailer Sephora,

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