Entrepreneur. He has received international recognition as the founder of the Louis Vuitton Company. His mother died when he was ten, and with his father's remarrying, his home was no longer a happy one. In March of 1835, he, at the age of 13, moved to Paris, a journey he made by foot. It took him two years to walk the nearly 300 miles to Paris as he had to stop and work odd jobs for food and lodging. The teenage Vuitton was taken in as an apprentice in the workshop of a successful box-maker and packer named Monsieur Marechal. His first company was established in 1854 as a luggage manufacturer. His introduction of a light-weight, flat-top trunk with gray Trianon canvas became public rage in the market. Prior trunks had rounded lids making them poor for stacking. He had been appointed as trunk-maker to Empress Eugenie de Montijo, wife of Napoleon II. He was very protective of his clients' privacy. A standard small Vuitton trunk would retail for $5,600 at Le Bon Marche in Paris. In 1871 after the France-Prussia War had destroyed his factory, he rebuilt in a more desirable location. As a reaction against the copy of his work, he changed the Trianon design in 1872 to a red and beige vertical-striped canvas, in 1876 to beige and brown stripes, and in 1888 he changed the design to the famous Damier Canvas. His fifth design change was patented in 1896, which had the Monogram canvas interlocking LVs, diamond points, and Kimono-inspired flowers. From the 1800s even to present day, Vuitton has been fighting the problem of world-wide counterfeiting of his product. Besides luxury leather items, he also started manufacturing other fashion accessories, ready-to-wear clothes, and jewelry. Upon his death, his company did not die with its founder. Under his son Georges, who created the company's famous LV monogram, the Louis Vuitton brand would be renowned as a world-wide luxury leather and an upscale-lifestyle brand, which it still remains today. The fifth generation of Vuittons is training the next generation to make their family's beautiful and desirable products. In the year 1987 the Vuitton company merged with Moet & Chandon and Hennesy to form the conglomerate LVMH. The company launched a perfume brand in 2016 and opened another store in Paris in 2017. The Louis Vuitton empire, which today includes seventy brands in all including Bulgari, Dom Perignon, Sephora, and Tag Heuer, has close to 4,000 retail stores under the Louis Vuitton umbrella and according to Forbes magazine, the brand is worth over 33 billion dollars.