The EADS-daughter Eurocopter and the French luxury brand Hermès joined forces and presented the partnership’s result at this year’s NBAA flight fair in the US only a few days ago: the EC 135-helicopter. For one year five employees of each party worked on the helicopter; Hermès designed the interior as well as parts of the exterior of the new EC 135.

With the help of Hermès, Eurocopter aims to better market its helicopters to VIP-clients like CEOs. According to Eurocopter, the sales volume of helicopters for business trips has increased by 30 percent per year for the past three years. It is still a niche, but one with a growing importance. “Hermès teaches us to understand the perception of more demanding costumers”, says Philippe Harache, Vice-CEO of Eurocopter and adds: “We would like to serve every niche on the market and we have to catch up on this customer segment.” He sees the greatest sales potential in the US, the biggest market for helicopters.
Hermès sees the co-operation as a kind of showcase for their product quality. “We can show that we are able to work with high-tech-companies.”, says François Taverne, CEO of Hermès Gainier. In the context of another project, Hermès already designed the interior for the French state president’s Peugeot cabriolet.
Eurocopter has planned to produce ten EC 135-helicopters, but if demand is higher they also could imagine extending the co-operation with Hermès to other models.

Co-operations between fashion/luxury brands with transportation companies are not entirely new. The Italian fashion brand Versace, for instance, already designs the interior of TAG Group’s business jets and partners since March this year with Eurocopter’s Italian competitor Augusta Westland with the aim to give the interior of its helicopters a more luxury feel. Such partnerships definitely help helicopter and business jet manufacturers to address the VIP clientele – but from my point of view especially luxury brands like Hermès need to be very careful in selecting co-operations. I’m not so sure whether the traditional Hermès customer understands a co-operation like this as for him the Hermès brand values probably stand for totally different things than the brand values of a company like Eurocopter. I’m also wondering whether CEOs really want helicopters with Hermès styling. What do you think?