LVMH buys Italian cashmere brand Loro Piana

Coats starting from
14,000 euro

The French
luxury company of billionaire Bernard Arnault is paying two billion euro for 80
percent of the shares in one of the most exclusive Italian clothing producers.
The remaining 20% will stay with Sergio and Pier Luigi Loro Piana, the sixth
generation of the family that is at the helm of the company and that is also
where they will remain.

Loro Piana
is one of Europe’s most specialised processors of cashmere from Mongolia,
merino from Australia and vicuña from the Andes. Those exclusive fabrics get
used in equally exclusive pieces of clothing that are definitely not for
everyone: a coat of Loro Piana can easily cost you 14,000 euro.

Despite –
or maybe because of – that focus on luxury Loro Piana has been on the rise for
years. The company saw its sales rise by 13% to 630 million
euro and if it is up to the brothers Sergio and Pier Luigi, the company will
hit the target of 700 million euro this year. That would mean another rise of
10 percent.

“Only with
Arnault”

Therefore
it is no wonder the French king of luxury has set his mind on the Italian label
and its interesting contacts and experience. In an interview with the French
paper Le Figaro, the brothers Loro Piana say they “only wanted to negotiate
with Bernard Arnault”: “We know his capacity to retain the identity of brands
and still have them evolve. Remember Dior, Guerlain, Fendi…”

At the
stock market the takeover was greeted with applause: LVMH was the strongest
climber of the day at the CAC40.