Product Development interview prep.

Behavioural questions to expect

1. Walk me through your CV.
2. Tell me about a product or line plan moment where you owned a measurable outcome.
3. Why luxury product development - vs CPG product, fashion merchandising, mass beauty, or DTC product?
4. Why this category - hard luxury (watches, jewellery) vs soft luxury (leather, RTW) vs beauty + fragrance?
5. Why the firm?
6. What is your read on our product pyramid and franchise health?
7. How would you describe our atelier and métier footprint?
8. Walk me through how you would refresh a tired icon without breaking the franchise or the cost-price equation.

Technical concepts to master

• Line plan + product pyramid + icon stewardship

  Line plan · Product pyramid (entry / core / icon / haute) · Icon + franchise stewardship · SKU productivity + discipline · Métier d'art + haute layer

• Creative-to-atelier translation + sample lifecycle

  Creative brief + season strategy · Tech pack · Prototype + iteration · Sample-to-shop yield · Sample + production calendar

• Materials + savoir-faire + supplier ecosystem

  Atelier + manufacture · Tannery + materials supplier ecosystem · Savoir-faire + métier d'art · Vertical integration · Sourcing + capacity allocation

• Costing + retail price architecture + margin discipline

  Cost build-up · IMU + retail multiplier · Retail price ladder + tier discipline · Cost-down vs craft preservation · Geographic + currency price-harmonisation

Practical drills

• An icon handbag retails for $4,500 at a 75% IMU - landed cost $1,125 (raw $450, atelier hours $500, overhead $175). Creative wants a refresh with a richer leather (+$120 raw) + a new métier-stitch detail (+30% atelier hours). You must hold IMU at 75%. Walk through the costing, the retail-price decision, and the franchise + capacity implications.
• You are the new product director for a maison whose leather goods line plan has drifted: entry SKUs have grown to 45% of revenue, core is intact but tired, icons are under-invested, and haute / métier-d'art has gone quiet for 3 years. Atelier capacity is constrained. Walk through how you would reset the pyramid across the next 4 collections.
• Your maison is launching a new haute jewellery programme - 12 one-of-a-kind pieces at $200K-$1.5M each. Atelier capacity is finite: the high-jewellery atelier has 8,000 hours / year; each piece requires 200-600 atelier hours. The programme must protect existing high-jewellery clients + recruit new top-client relationships without breaking the rest of the jewellery line plan. Walk through the line plan, capacity, and pricing logic.

Smart-question anchors

• Product pyramid balance - entry / core / icon / haute split + capsule discipline
• Franchise + icon stewardship - which are protected, refreshing, or under-leveraged
• Atelier + manufacture footprint - owned ateliers, tanneries, vertical-integration trajectory
• Métier d'art + haute programmes - cadence, capacity, halo logic
• Costing + IMU + retail multiplier discipline - margin trajectory, cost-down posture

Sourced from

Bain & Altagamma Luxury Goods Worldwide Market Study · Kapferer + Bastien - The Luxury Strategy · McKinsey + Business of Fashion State of Fashion report · WWD + Vogue Business luxury product + merchandising coverage · Luxury master programmes + practitioner guides (BoF Education, INSEAD luxury, ESCP luxury, SDA Bocconi luxury master, Polimoda) interview prep + curriculum materials