Thursday, September 19, 2024

LVMH’s Fendi Names New CEO Amid Management Reshuffle

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Former L’Oréal and Louis Vuitton executive Pierre-Emmanuel Angeloglou has been named CEO of Fendi, effective June 1, according to an internal announcement seen by BoF.

Angeloglou will take the helm of the Roman house in addition to his responsibilities as managing director of LVMH Fashion Group structure, under which Fendi is managed.

Serge Brunschwig, the brand’s CEO since 2018, will transition to a new role at LVMH that will be announced “in a near feature,” according to the announcement.

Angeloglou joined LVMH in 2019 as a strategic advisor to Louis Vuitton’s then-CEO Michael Burke, after two decades at L’Oréal Group culminating with a stint as global brand president of its flagship L’Oréal Paris unit.

Earlier this year Angeloglou followed Burke to LVMH Fashion Group, where the Franco-American fashion veteran succeeded Sidney Toledano as CEO in February.

LVMH has been working to restructure management of its sprawling portfolio of fashion brands in recent months, BoF reported in mid-May. Soon after Burke joined the Fashion Group unit — whose brands range from billion-per-year-plus businesses like Celine, Fendi and Loewe to much smaller brands like Pucci and Kenzo — sources familiar with the matter say the executive handed off key responsibilities to other group managers including Toledano, Angeloglou and Delphine Arnault, daughter of chairman Bernard Arnault.

LVMH denied the report, declining to elaborate.

While LVMH does not disclose performance for specific units, Fendi is the group’s fourth biggest fashion brand (having been overtaken by Hedi Slimane’s Celine) with 2023 revenues of €2.4 billion ($2.6 billion) and operating profit above €500 million, according to HSBC estimates.

That’s more than double the brand’s estimated revenues when Brunschwig joined the company in 2018, despite challenges including the 2019 death of Karl Lagerfeld, the brand’s womenswear creative director for over 50 years, and the coronavirus crisis.

After a transitional period, during which menswear and accessories creative director Silvia Venturini Fendi designed the brand’s women’s collections, designer Kim Jones was named Lagerfeld’s successor in 2020 in addition to his role as men’s creative director at Dior.

In recent years, Fendi has also had to grapple with a growing backlash to fur, long central to its identity, as well as exploding prices for the material. The brand continues to use fur, but has refashioned its “haute fourrure” (high fur) shows as haute couture outings, and accelerated the use of shearling.

Fendi is set to launch a new high fragrance range in June, returning to the category over a decade after discontinuing its “Fendi by Fendi” perfume.

Disclosure: LVMH is part of a group of investors who, together, hold a minority interest in The Business of Fashion. All investors have signed shareholders’ documentation guaranteeing BoF’s complete editorial independence.

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