Lanvin is leading its namesake higher.
The Lanvin Group posted a 38% rise in revenues last year, expanding to 425 million euros — a 25% increase on a pro forma basis.
The flagship Lanvin brand shot up 67% to 121.3 million euros, with the company noting the brand, one of France’s oldest couture houses, was drawing in younger customers with leather goods and sneakers.
Elsewhere in the portfolio, Wolford’s revenues rose 16% to 126.6 million euros last year, while St. John increased 17% to 85.8 million euros and Caruso rose 25% to 30.8 million euros.
Sergio Rossi produced sales of 61.9 million euros last year, up from the 28.7 million euros logged for 2021, after its acquisition that July.
Investors signaled their content and traded shares of the company up 0.7% to $7.20 in midday trading. The stock has traded as high as $22.81 shortly after completing its SPAC merger with Primavera Capital Acquisition Corp. in December, but has since had difficulty gaining traction on Wall Street.
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Despite the ups and downs of the stock market, Lanvin is clearly playing the long game as it squares off with the luxury giants.
On a conference call with analysts David Chan, executive president, interim CFO and co-chief operating officer, said investors can overlook just where the company is today and get caught up in the macro economics of the world.
“People tend to forget how small we are,” Chan said. “We have lower than 30 stores around the world. So globally [we] barely cover compared to some of the bigger brands or peers that we compare ourselves against. We are a fraction of where things are. So a lot of the bigger headlines don’t apply to us.
“We are just trying to focus on opening that next door or the next door or the one after,” he said. “It’s really trying to grow it. The strategy is pretty simple and straightforward. And then you can see our growth is not coming just from one brand. All our brands are very similar. You can see where all our brands are experiencing growth for all the markets. So growth is very diversified, the growth is very kind of organic in a way. A lot of investors are forgetting, the macro economical macro pressure — ‘Is it going to be beyond you?’ — I think some of the headline risk doesn’t apply that much directly to us.”
Joann Cheng, chairman and CEO of Lanvin, emphasized that the company has both deep heritage DNA in its brand portfolio and room to grow.
“We put a lot of effort in growth regions in the U.S. and in China,” Cheng said. “Look at China, we only have a 10% in Mainland [China] as a revenue percentage in the past several years. So China should be around at least 20, 25%. Same for the U.S. region, we have 5%, 10%, 15%, but it should be more than 25% since the U.S. is still the largest luxury consumption country.”
So the company can continue “grabbing low-hanging fruit,” opening stores and improving digitally in the U.S. and China.
By region, revenues in Europe, the Middle East and Africa rose 44% to 214 million euros last year, as North America grew 36% to 145 million euros and Greater China increased 13% to 48 million euros despite the COVID-19 lockdowns.
The company said one of its main drivers of growth for the year was a refocusing of brand strategies along with the “optimization of product categories and mix.”
“Not only did the brands introduce new capsules and product lines, but the refocus on core products and balancing the mix led to strong results,” the firm said. “The group’s push into accessories proved a strong driver of growth and margin.”
This story was reported by WWD and originally appeared on WWD.com.
