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How the CEO of Ralph Lauren got the company through the ‘boiled frog phenomenon’ of going too wide, too cheap

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Most 20-something trendsetters don’t own a sailboat, a tasteful cottage on Nantucket, or even a pony-emblazoned Polo shirt. But under CEO Patrice Louvet, Ralph Lauren is still enticing young people into its orbit. To familiarize the TikTok generation with the Ralph Lauren lifestyle, the company now operates 35 “Ralph’s Coffee” store-in-stores. “It’s an amazing platform to get in touch with younger consumers,” Louvet said. “For 20-year-old women […] it’s the first engagement with the brand.”

Now margins are rising and sales are at a nine-year high—two signs that the company’s multi-year “brand elevation” campaign has worked, Louvet told me in Paris recently. But it equally arms the company better for future global price and supply chain disruptions to come, he said. How did Louvet pull it off?

Before he arrived in 2017, Ralph Lauren “expanded in places where we probably shouldn’t have, which drove higher levels of promotional activity,” Louvet told me. “It was like the boiled frog phenomenon. I’m sure it was well-intended. Each year, we thought it was just marginal. But after a few years, you realize it’s not going to end well.”

Since then, he said, “we’ve had our eyes wide open on tough choices.” Joining Ralph Lauren after almost three decades at P&G, the native Frenchman took a page from his old employer’s turnaround book. To escape from the price race to the bottom, the company “took a one-year, painful hit” to reset consumer expectations.

Then, during COVID, Louvet reset the distribution strategy, and closed two thirds of its wholesale presence. The company, which now has a manufacturing supply chain stretching from Vietnam to Peru, is in a decent position to weather trade unrest. “If tariffs stay where they are, we have the ability to offset,” Louvet told me. “We can do efficiency work with our partners. But we can also continue our pullback on promotional activity, and perform selective price increases.”

But the big “a-ha!” for Louvet is finally getting back to what founder Ralph Lauren figured out so many decades ago—and what sets the company apart from other clothing retailers. “There are more parallels with companies like Disney,” Louvet observed. “We’re not in the apparel business,” he said, “We’re in the dreams business.”

Contact CEO Daily via Diane Brady at diane.brady@fortune.com

Top news

Trump denies Bessent persuaded him to keep Powell

President Trump denied a WSJ report that said Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent helped him understand that removing U.S. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell before the end of his term at the central bank would cause more problems than it would solve. “Nobody had to explain that to me. I know better than anybody what’s good for the Market, and what’s good for the U.S.A. If it weren’t for me, the Market wouldn’t be at Record Highs right now, it probably would have CRASHED! So, get your information CORRECT. People don’t explain to me, I explain to them!,” Trump said on social media. (Reality check: The market did in fact crash in April following Trump’s tariff announcements.)

Tariffs will cost Americans $2,800 per household

The Yale Budget Lab estimated how much extra U.S. consumers will pay once Trump’s import taxes are in place. It’s the highest tariff rate since 1910. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said on Sunday that most countries’ exports will get a rate of 10% or more.

The FBI might have information about Trump and Epstein

Maria Farmer complained to the FBI about Jeffrey Epstein in 1996 and named Donald Trump in that process. The agency brought no charges based on her testimony. Trump has not been accused of wrongdoing in connection with Epstein. Nonetheless, the NYT reports, it is possible that Trump’s name is sitting in the FBI’s investigative files.

The White House is souring on Netanyahu

The Israeli leader’s aggressive war against Gaza and Syria is now “out of control,” White House sources told Axios. “Bibi acted like a madman. He bombs everything all the time,” one source said. It’s not clear how much patience Trump has left for him.

Sen. Warren on tariffs

In an exclusive interview, Senator Elizabeth Warren told Fortune that “the impact of six months of Donald Trump will be felt for two generations.” White House spokesman Kush Desai told Fortune in a response that “No one has suffered more from America’s lopsided ‘free’ trade arrangements and foreign countries’ unfair trade practices than the working class Americans who Elizabeth Warren has always pretended to be a champion for.’”

Astronomer CEO resigns

The Astronomer CEO who went viral for an intimate moment with his Chief People Officer has resigned, according to the company. The private data infrastructure and operations company wrote that, “While awareness of our company may have changed overnight, our product and our work for our customers have not.” 

AI generates false diagnosis for U.K. patient

A patient in London was mistakenly invited to a diabetic screening after an AI-generated medical record falsely claimed he had diabetes and suspected heart disease. The summaries, created by Anima Health’s AI tool Annie, also included fabricated details like a fake hospital address. NHS officials have described the incident as a one-off human error, but the organization is already facing scrutiny over how AI tools are used and regulated.

Young people have a new, annoying way to answer the phone

They don’t say anything. Not even “hello.” That’s because they’re inured to junk and robocalls and are screening the call for meaningful interaction with people they know.

The markets

S&P 500 futures were up 0.27% this morning. The index closed flat at 6,296.79 on Friday. China’s SSE Composite was up 0.72%. The STOXX Europe 600 was flat in early trading. The Nikkei 225 was down 0.21%. Bitcoin was up 1.44%, at more than $119K.

From the analysts

JPMorgan on OpenAI: “Frontier model innovation an increasingly fragile moat. We view the inability of a single provider to have a sustained competitive edge as a signal model commoditization is a likely outcome (OpenAI’s once flagship GPT-4 now ranks 95th in LM Arena),” per Brenda Duverce and Lula Sheena.

Deutsche Bank on inflation: “Inflation risks are still being underestimated, with a remarkable complacency across key assets. That is particularly so when you consider that the 2021-23 inflation spike wasn’t anticipated at all in advance. And it’s already the 4th year in a row (so far) that markets have overestimated how dovish the Fed are going to be. Today, there are several factors coalescing at a global level that can push inflation higher still. Most notably, tariff rates are rising, with a 10% baseline in the US and several sectoral tariffs already imposed. There’s still the looming prospect of tariffs on August 1 which markets simply aren’t pricing in yet. In the Euro Area, there’s a huge fiscal stimulus in the pipeline, at a time when unemployment is at multidecade lows,” per Henry Allen.

Macquarie on the Fed split: “Comments coming from Fed officials suggest that the FOMC is cleaving, with a vocal side arguing for rate cuts to begin now, and another side (including Jay Powell) still wanting a delay. But that split persist, could evolve into a split along political lines, with one side swayed by political motives, and the need to accommodate fiscal policy, at the expense of adherence to the price stability mandate. This would contribute to US yield-curve steepening,” per Thierry Wizman and Oliver Allen.

Around the watercooler

Top economist sounds the alarm even louder on the housing market and says homebuilders are ‘giving up’ by Jason Ma

There’s a ‘scary’ recession warning hidden in the too-good-to-be-true economic data, Wells Fargo warns, by Jason Ma 

Crayola CEO’s how-to-succeed guide for new hires: Lose the tie and pretend you don’t know anything by Irina Ivanova

Experienced software developers assumed AI would save them a chunk of time. But in one experiment, their tasks took 20% longer by Sasha Rogelberg

After earnings fell by $300 million, Cardinal Health’s CEO went ‘ruthless’ to turn it around—and he says workers backed him because ‘people want to win’ by Emma Burleigh

CEO Daily is compiled and edited by Joey Abrams and Jim Edwards.

This is the web version of CEO Daily, a newsletter of must-read global insights from CEOs and industry leaders. Sign up to get it delivered free to your inbox.



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SpaceX to offer insider shares at record-setting $800 billion valuation

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SpaceX is preparing to sell insider shares in a transaction that would value Elon Musk’s rocket and satellite maker at as much as $800 billion, people familiar with the matter said, reclaiming the title of the world’s most valuable private company. 

The details, discussed by SpaceX’s board of directors on Thursday at its Starbase hub in Texas, could change based on interest from insider sellers and buyers or other factors, said some of the people, who asked not to be identified as the information isn’t public. SpaceX is also exploring a possible initial public offering as soon as late next year, one of the people said. 

Another person briefed on the matter said that the price under discussion for the sale of some employees and investors’ shares is higher than $400 apiece, which would value SpaceX at between $750 billion and $800 billion. The company wouldn’t raise any funds though this planned sale, though a successful offering at such levels would catapult it past the record of $500 billion valuation achieved by OpenAI in October.

Elon Musk on Saturday denied that SpaceX is raising money at a $800 billion valuation without addressing Bloomberg’s reporting on the planned offering of insiders’ shares. 

“SpaceX has been cash flow positive for many years and does periodic stock buybacks twice a year to provide liquidity for employees and investors,” Musk said in a post on his social media platform X. 

The share sale price under discussion would be a substantial increase from the $212 a share set in July, when the company raised money and sold shares at a valuation of $400 billion. The Wall Street Journal and Financial Times earlier reported the $800 billion valuation target.

News of SpaceX’s valuation sent shares of EchoStar Corp., a satellite TV and wireless company, up as much as 18%. Last month, EchoStar had agreed to sell spectrum licenses to SpaceX for $2.6 billion, adding to an earlier agreement to sell about $17 billion in wireless spectrum to Musk’s company.

Subscribe Now: The Business of Space newsletter covers NASA, key industry events and trends.

The world’s most prolific rocket launcher, SpaceX dominates the space industry with its Falcon 9 rocket that lifts satellites and people to orbit.

SpaceX is also the industry leader in providing internet services from low-Earth orbit through Starlink, a system of more than 9,000 satellites that is far ahead of competitors including Amazon.com Inc.’s Amazon Leo.

Elite Group

SpaceX is among an elite group of companies that have the ability to raise funds at $100 billion-plus valuations while delaying or denying they have any plan to go public. 

An IPO of the company at an $800 billion value would vault SpaceX into another rarefied group — the 20 largest public companies, a few notches below Musk’s Tesla Inc. 

If SpaceX sold 5% of the company at that valuation, it would have to sell $40 billion of stock — making it the biggest IPO of all time, well above Saudi Aramco’s $29 billion listing in 2019. The firm sold just 1.5% of the company in that offering, a much smaller slice than the majority of publicly traded firms make available.

A listing would also subject SpaceX to the volatility of being a public company, versus private firms whose valuations are closely guarded secrets. Space and defense company IPOs have had a mixed reception in 2025. Karman Holdings Inc.’s stock has nearly tripled since its debut, while Firefly Aerospace Inc. and Voyager Technologies Inc. have plunged by double-digit percentages since their debuts.

SpaceX executives have repeatedly floated the idea of spinning off SpaceX’s Starlink business into a separate, publicly traded company — a concept President Gwynne Shotwell first suggested in 2020. 

However, Musk cast doubt on the prospect publicly over the years and Chief Financial Officer Bret Johnsen said in 2024 that a Starlink IPO would be something that would take place more likely “in the years to come.”

The Information, citing people familiar with the discussions, separately reported on Friday that SpaceX has told investors and financial institution representatives that it’s aiming for an IPO of the entire company in the second half of next year.

Read More: How to Buy SpaceX: A Guide for the Eager, Pre-IPO

A so-called tender or secondary offering, through which employees and some early shareholders can sell shares, provides investors in closely held companies such as SpaceX a way to generate liquidity.

SpaceX is working to develop its new Starship vehicle, advertised as the most powerful rocket ever developed to loft huge numbers of Starlink satellites as well as carry cargo and people to moon and, eventually, Mars.



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National Park Service drops free admission on MLK Day and Juneteenth while adding Trump’s birthday

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The National Park Service will offer free admission to U.S. residents on President Donald Trump’s birthday next year — which also happens to be Flag Day — but is eliminating the benefit for Martin Luther King Jr. Day and Juneteenth.

The new list of free admission days for Americans is the latest example of the Trump administration downplaying America’s civil rights history while also promoting the president’s image, name and legacy.

Last year, the list of free days included Martin Luther King Jr Day and Juneteenth — which is June 19 — but not June 14, Trump’s birthday.

The new free-admission policy takes effect Jan. 1 and was one of several changes announced by the Park Service late last month, including higher admission fees for international visitors.

The other days of free park admission in 2026 are Presidents Day, Memorial Day, Independence Day, Constitution Day, Veterans Day, President Theodore Roosevelt’s birthday (Oct. 27) and the anniversary of the creation of the Park Service (Aug. 25).

Eliminating Martin Luther King Jr. Day and Juneteenth, which commemorates the day in 1865 when the last enslaved Americans were emancipated, removes two of the nation’s most prominent civil rights holidays.

Some civil rights leaders voiced opposition to the change after news about it began spreading over the weekend.

“The raw & rank racism here stinks to high heaven,” Harvard Kennedy School professor Cornell William Brooks, a former president of the NAACP, wrote on social media about the new policy.

Kristen Brengel, a spokesperson for the National Parks Conservation Association, said that while presidential administrations have tweaked the free days in the past, the elimination of Martin Luther King Jr. Day is particularly concerning. For one, the day has become a popular day of service for community groups that use the free day to perform volunteer projects at parks.

That will now be much more expensive, said Brengel, whose organization is a nonprofit that advocates for the park system.

“Not only does it recognize an American hero, it’s also a day when people go into parks to clean them up,” Brengel said. “Martin Luther King Jr. deserves a day of recognition … For some reason, Black history has repeatedly been targeted by this administration, and it shouldn’t be.”

Some Democratic lawmakers also weighed in to object to the new policy.

“The President didn’t just add his own birthday to the list, he removed both of these holidays that mark Black Americans’ struggle for civil rights and freedom,” said Democratic Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada. “Our country deserves better.”

A spokesperson for the National Park Service did not immediately respond to questions on Saturday seeking information about the reasons behind the changes.

Since taking office, Trump has sought to eliminate programs seen as promoting diversity across the federal government, actions that have erased or downplayed America’s history of racism as well as the civil rights victories of Black Americans.

Self-promotion is an old habit of the president’s and one he has continued in his second term. He unsuccessfully put himself forwardfor the Nobel Peace Prize, renamed the U.S. Institute of Peace after himself, sought to put his name on the planned NFL stadium in the nation’s capital and had a new children’s savings program named after him.

Some Republican lawmakers have suggested putting his visage on Mount Rushmore and the $100 bill.



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JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon says Europe has a ‘real problem’

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JPMorgan Chase & Co. Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon called out slow bureaucracy in Europe in a warning that a “weak” continent poses a major economic risk to the US.

“Europe has a real problem,” Dimon said Saturday at the Reagan National Defense Forum. “They do some wonderful things on their safety nets. But they’ve driven business out, they’ve driven investment out, they’ve driven innovation out. It’s kind of coming back.”

While he praised some European leaders who he said were aware of the issues, he cautioned politics is “really hard.” 

Dimon, leader of the biggest US bank, has long said that the risk of a fragmented Europe is among the major challenges facing the world. In his letter to shareholders released earlier this year, he said that Europe has “some serious issues to fix.”

On Saturday, he praised the creation of the euro and Europe’s push for peace. But he warned that a reduction in military efforts and challenges trying to reach agreement within the European Union are threatening the continent.

“If they fragment, then you can say that America first will not be around anymore,” Dimon said. “It will hurt us more than anybody else because they are a major ally in every single way, including common values, which are really important.”

He said the US should help.

“We need a long-term strategy to help them become strong,” Dimon said. “A weak Europe is bad for us.”

The administration of President Donald Trump issued a new national security strategy that directed US interests toward the Western Hemisphere and protection of the homeland while dismissing Europe as a continent headed toward “civilizational erasure.”

Read More: Trump’s National Security Strategy Veers Inward in Telling Shift

JPMorgan has been ramping up its push to spur more investments in the national defense sector. In October, the bank announced that it would funnel $1.5 trillion into industries that bolster US economic security and resiliency over the next 10 years — as much as $500 billion more than what it would’ve provided anyway. 

Dimon said in the statement that it’s “painfully clear that the United States has allowed itself to become too reliant on unreliable sources of critical minerals, products and manufacturing.”

Investment banker Jay Horine oversees the effort, which Dimon called “100% commercial.” It will focus on four areas: supply chain and advanced manufacturing; defense and aerospace; energy independence and resilience; and frontier and strategic technologies. 

The bank will also invest as much as $10 billion of its own capital to help certain companies expand, innovate or accelerate strategic manufacturing.

Separately on Saturday, Dimon praised Trump for finding ways to roll back bureaucracy in the government.

“There is no question that this administration is trying to bring an axe to some of the bureaucracy that held back America,” Dimon said. “That is a good thing and we can do it and still keep the world safe, for safe food and safe banks and all the stuff like that.”



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