IN DECEMBER 2003, Robert Burke, then fashion director of Bergdorf Goodman, was in Paris giving a talk on the booming business of fur accessories when he looked around the ballroom at the Hotel George V and noticed that a quarter of the seats were filled with men in business suits. During dinner and coffee breaks at the two-day luxury conference, the suits from places like Bear, Stearns cornered Burke and bombarded him with questions about luxury businesses—which ones had potential to add secondary lines and which ones could expand with worldwide licensing.
For years the luxury sector, now a $140 billion business growing at approximately 7% a year, according to the Telsey Advisory Group (TAG), an independent research firm based in Manhattan, has been populated by a handful of familiar faces: Bernard Arnault of LVMH, François-Henri Pinault of PPR and the odd manager of Gucci or president of Chanel. But cash-rich private-equity firms have taken note of the impressive numbers those companies are posting. Gross profit margins for apparel are 50%, and for leather goods they can be as high as 77%, according to TAG. So it's not surprising that in the past two years dealmaking in this sector has shifted into overdrive. Since February alone, Jil Sander was snapped up by London-based Change Capital Partners, English luxury retailer Asprey was bought by New York City--based Sciens Capital Management and a U.S. hedge fund, and the Italian apparel brand Piazza Sempione was acquired by Paris- and Milan-based L Capital. More deals are rumored to be in the works.
"I get calls every day," says Robert Bensoussan, CEO of Jimmy Choo, who, with funding from private equity, took the brand from $20 million to $140 million in sales in five years. "Whether they are managers asking for advice on how to speak to private equity, family-owned companies asking what working with private equity is like or private-equity people saying, We're interested in your success story."
Bensoussan, who had orchestrated the sale of British apparel firm Joseph to a Belgian investment group and before that had been president of Christian Lacroix at LVMH, ultimately sold Jimmy Choo in 2004 to Lion Capital for five times what he and his partners at Phoenix Equity Partners originally paid in 2001. "It gave a lot of people a wake-up call," he says.
Most analysts say the attraction of luxury these days is the growth opportunity. TAG's Dana Telsey, who has tracked retail for 21 years, attributes the increased interest to "how profitable these businesses can be when run well." Companies like L Capital have earned five times their investment in firms like retail clothier Gant and three to four times their investment with Antichi Pellettieri SpA, an Italian apparel and accessories company—in just over three years.
Investors see the possibility of expanding the brands in China, India and Russia, adding secondary lines and product extensions. "All companies we get involved with have attractive growth characteristics," says John Megrue, a co- CEO of Apax Partners, which just bought Tommy Hilfiger. "Well-run consumer companies ought to grow way north of the GDP."