Francois Steiner sets the scene: Here's this German guy, he's got the skin of an elephant killed the previous week in Africa, and he's asking the shop assistants at the Louis Vuitton store in Berlin if they can make some luggage out of it for him.

But there's no punchline. It's not even a joke. The point the president of Louis Vuitton Europe is making is that the company will go to inordinate lengths to pamper its customers.

"We don't set limits," he says. "We said, `Yes sir, we'll do that.' And we stored the elephant in the back room of the store in Berlin, which is one of the tiniest in Europe. The elephant skin was big, and it did not smell very nice, but we did it."

Louis Vuitton is expanding rapidly. Not only does it now sell ready-to-wear clothes, pens, travel guides, towels and diaries, over and above its traditional range of bags and baggage, it also has more stores than ever. The Irish one, in a strategic corner of Brown Thomas in Dublin, is number 257; two months after it opened, sales are 20 per cent higher than expected.

Mr Steiner seems happy to be here, and says all the right things: "Ireland is very close to France in terms of the way of thinking, of culture, and the way people feel - I think French people feel very much at home here. And apart from that, it is a matter of opportunity. Business is very good in Ireland, the economy is buoyant, there is an interest in fashion - and there is tourism also. So it felt right. Ireland is an island and we felt we had to be there."

Also, the company usually notes the addresses of its customers in its shops around the world, and noticed there were more and more Irish customers.

Newer Irish customers can expect no special bargains at the store. Like all Louis Vuitton's shops, it is owned and run directly by the company, part of "a seamless brand". Prices are set centrally, and any currency variation of more than 2 per cent triggers a price correction on the ground.

Of course, Mr Steiner defends the high price tags: "Our luggage is expensive, but only because it takes time to make them. The price of the product is because of the time and the care we take to make them. It is true that one of our suitcases cost more than those in the supermarket, but if you amortise it over 25 years, I don't know which one is more expensive."

He denies that people are paying just for the label.

"If you buy an expensive suitcase, then it breaks after two years, or it goes out of fashion after a year, then you will be disappointed. Maybe the customer will be fooled once, but then they will know. We see young ladies walking in carrying the monogrammed canvas bag that is obviously older than they are - it is their mother's or their grandmother's. In our case, price reflects quality," he says.

LVMH, the firm's parent company, has emerged in recent years as an avaricious player in the relentless consolidation of the luxury goods industry. But Mr Steiner says this has had little impact on the day-to-day business at Louis Vuitton.

"The reason why we are successful is that we keep every brand with its own identity. If you are Louis Vuitton you are Louis Vuitton, if you are Moet et Chandon you are Moet et Chandon. Every company has its own policy and philosophy and identity," he says.

"We derive synergies in the fact that we share back-office facilities, pay-roll, human resources, budgeting, accounting, et cetera. But marketing-wise, they are kept separate."

One advantage of the group's size, however, is the cushioning effect this has on economic crises.

"The truth is, there is always a place in the world where things are not doing well, and another place where things are going well. We are always facing different types of cycles. Sometimes it's getting better in the US, and there is a crisis in Asia, sometimes the other way around," he says.

"Sometimes there are strange phenomena. In Indonesia, when the rupiah plummeted, people were buying lots of Louis Vuitton bags, even when at the end they were priced only in dollars. Because it was basically the only product that kept its value."

Another global consideration for the company is counterfeiting and trademark piracy. The approach of Louis Vuitton, he says, mixes philosophy and pragmatism.

"If you go to the palaeolithic arts museum in Perigord, you will see a necklace made out of deer incisor teeth. The strange thing is, deer don't have incisors - they are herbivores. But one in a thousand, by a genetic aberration, has incisors. So to have a necklace of these you need to kill 10,000 deer. In this necklace, you have 30 or 35 incisors - but two of them are fake, made out of bone. So counterfeiting is not a new phenomenon, really," he says. "The only way not to be copied is not to be successful."

However, the company has a permanent team of more than 10 people who do nothing but fight counterfeiting. They tend to ignore street dealers, concentrating on the factories that make the fake goods.

"So we sue them every year, we have people put in jail, we seize hundreds and hundreds of fake bags, fake leather, we try to seize the inventory, the machines where they produce them. The worst damage is not that we are losing customers but that there are people who might buy them in good faith, believe it's a Louis Vuitton bag, and are disappointed with the quality or the look of the bag."

He also points out that Mr Louis Vuitton himself, back in 1888, first stamped his initials on his bags precisely to prevent copying by rivals. He went from plain canvas to striped canvas, to a chequed canvas, all to distinguish his bags from the herd.

Will the company's future be as glorious as its past? Mr Steiner says he is sure only of two things.

"First, to be successful, we will still carry the same share of heritage and patrimony. Like a tree that grows, we need to have our roots growing at the same time. I don't know where we are going in the future, but I am sure we will keep our strong roots.

"The second thing I'm sure about is that we will keep providing our customers with the lifestyle they aspire to and desire through products and services."

Ultimately, he says, the company's job is to make its customers happy, even if those customers don't really know what they want.

"We have to implement the magic required to achieve our goals. It is more than the constituent parts of the products. People want magic."