Philip Corne has come a long way since his first job as a teenager selling dinner sets at the Grace Brothers department store in Sydney's west.

After spending nearly three decades working for the retailing behemoth, Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessy (LVMH), he now sits in the board room as executive chairman of L Catterton Australia – part of the largest consumer-focused private equity fund in the world with $US14 billion ($18.1 billion) under management.