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Versace sold!

To be America's first-ever luxury conglomerate, Michael Kors Holdings, now renamed Capri Holdings, has acquired the world-famous Italian fashion house Versace for $2.1 Billion!

Michael Kors ( Capri Holding ) is in the process of buying Italian fashion house Versace for a value of approximately $2.12 billion, including debt, the company announced on Tuesday. That's 2.5 times the brand's current revenue. The primarily cash deal is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2019.

In a presentation released to investors, Capri Holdings, outlined its plans for Versace, including increasing its global retail footprint from 200 stores to 300, building out e-commerce and expanding men's and women's accessories and footwear.

Under the new organisation, John D Idol will remain chairman and chief executive of Capri Holdings and also chief executive of the Michael Kors brand. Versace chief executive Jonathan Akeroyd will continue on, as will creative director Donatella Versace.

“This is a very exciting moment for Versace,” she said in a statement, adding that her brother Santo and daughter Allegra's stake in Capri "demonstrates our belief in the long-term success of Versace and commitment to this new global fashion luxury group."

“I am proud that Versace remains very strong in both fashion and modern culture. Versace is not only synonymous with its iconic and unmistakable style, but with being inclusive and embracing of diversity, as well as empowering people to express themselves," she said. "Santo, Allegra and I recognise that this next step will allow Versace to reach its full potential."

This will position the accessible the conglomerate, which acquired high-end shoemaker Jimmy Choo in July 2017 for $1.2 billion, to take a bigger slice of the high-end luxury market.

Versace is a world-famous name part of popular culture, but has been struggling to grow its business of similar scale for years. With the brand running losses from the late 1990s to 2011, the family sold a 20 percent stake to Blackstone in 2014 — a deal that valued the fashion house at $1.4 billion.


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Condé Nast to put up 3 Magazines for Sale!

The brand behind Vogue, New Yorker and Vanity Fair are forced to take some austerity measures after losses of up to $120 Million last year. They have taken measures to cut spending and be more digitally savvy, but it is expected to adopt strategies to ensure that it does not disappear completely.

After Boston Consulting Group did a monthlong audit of their internal systems, Robert A. Sauerberg Jr., the chief executive of Condé Nast, plans to address senior staff members on August 8th.

The company having lost more than $120 million last year, plans to put three of its 14 magazines — Brides, Golf Digest and W — up for sale, three executives said. The marquee titles, including Vogue, Vanity Fair and The New Yorker are safe, for now.

The decades-long magazine boom that made the ostentatious possible, is a thing of the past. A shift in media-consumption has elevated Instagram, Snapchat and YouTube above the printed page. Before Time Inc. was sold to the Meredith Corporation, it experienced sharp declines in annual revenue. The ad buying firm Magna projects print magazine ad sales will fall by a double digit rate this year.

The $120 million loss in 2017 came about because of a sharp decline in ad revenue generated by the print magazines. Gains in the digital arena have helped offset the loss, but not enough to make the company profitable. Condé Nast reached its decision to entertain offers for Brides, Golf Digest and W partly on the recommendation of Boston Consulting Group.

This story appeared in the New York Times.

YouTube has a New Fashion and Beauty Partnerships Division, just like Instagram

YouTube is forming a new division dedicated to fashion and beauty content partnerships, led by Derek Blasberg. The appointment comes less than a week after Instagram launched its long-form video app, IGTV, in a clear bid to compete with the Google-owned platform.With him, YouTube has found a popular, well-connected frontman to court fashion and beauty leaders. A former columnist and editor for Style.com, Harper’s Bazaar and other fashion and lifestyle publications for over a decade, Blasberg is leaving his role as the host of CNN Style on CNN International after two years and heading to YouTube full time. He will retain a role as a contributing editor at Condé Nast’s Vanity Fair, where he was appointed the title of Our Man on the Street in 2015.

Blasberg will be based in New York and is tasked with cultivating relationships with brands and high-profile people in the industry so that they will use the platform more often, more effectively and build audiences there. A different division at YouTube will continue to focus on fashion and beauty influencers who built their followings on the platform.

Instagram hired Eva Chen, the former editor-in-chief of Lucky Magazine, in 2015 to play a similar role as head of fashion partnerships at Instagram. Since then, the platform has deepened its connection with the fashion and beauty sectors by working with designers, brands, stylists, makeup artists and influencers to ensure they get the most out of Instagram. Chen’s team assists in creating content and helps these industry players engage with their audiences.

Blasberg is a smart hire, but he has his work cut out for him. Instagram has an outsized influence in the highly visual fashion world. The platform and its fashion partnerships team have become an active part of the industry scene, most recently sponsoring a table at the Met Gala and supporting tentpole events like the CFDA Awards by installing and running Instagram-friendly photo sets. With the launch of IGTV, brands and influencers have a new outlet for vertically aligned videos for up to one hour in length, edging closer to something more typically found on YouTube.

“Vertical video is ideal for fashion and it’s a format that younger audiences are really comfortable with,” said Jim O’Neill, principal analyst at Ooyala, a video and analytics technology company. “The whole idea of up to an hour-long option is potentially really big for Instagram influencers, more so than even brands.”

YouTube has some advantages, including a larger user base — 1.8 billion unique monthly visitors to Instagram’s 1 billion — who are already trained to search for videos on the platform. On YouTube, Chanel has 1.1 million subscribers; a recent campaign video for its Bleu de Chanel Parfum was seen 3.8 million times. On Instagram, where the house has 28.5 million followers, the same commercial was viewed 250,000 times in the feed post format.

“In this newly created role, Derek will collaborate with our incredible creators and diverse portfolio of brands to achieve even more success," said Merryman in a statement.

YouTube already has some fashion trailblazers: model Karlie Kloss launched her own channel, Klossy, in 2015 and now has over 700,000 subscribers. She recently released a series sponsored by Ford as part of a partnership with her nonprofit Kode with Klossy, that features her interviewing trailblazers in science and technology.

The platform is also more popular with younger users. According to a recent Pew Center study of teens ages 13 to 17, 85 percent of teens said they use YouTube — the most commonly used platform — while 72 percent said they use Instagram. In terms of frequency of use, 35 percent of respondents said they use Snapchat more than other social media platforms, while 32 percent use YouTube the most and only 15 percent use Instagram the most.

Chriselle Lim, a fashion and beauty influencer who is often found in the front row at fashion shows around the world, said YouTube is a better platform for her tutorials and narrative videos. She’s been posting on the platform for almost 10 years and said her Instagram audience (1.1 million followers) and YouTube audience (761,000 subscribers) are completely different, with the latter being younger.

“I don’t see YouTube going away because it has such a separate audience and community there,” she said.

Lim is interested to see if Instagram users actually watch longer videos on the platform, because she knows that many users flip through Instagram Stories quickly. “We are so used to quick, bite-sized content on Instagram and YouTube really is for the long-form,” said Lim. She is going to save her more highly produced content for YouTube for now, but adds that it’s too early to say how she will approach IGTV.

Deepica Mutyala, an influencer who got her start after a YouTube beauty tutorial she posted in 2015 went viral, said her audiences on both platforms are about the same size. But her YouTube viewers are more global and younger, and brands pay higher rates for branded video on the service than on Instagram, in part because the platform is better suited for high production quality content. (She has 192,000 subscribers on YouTube and 168,000 followers on Instagram.)

“[For brands], it’s not always about getting the views,” said Mutyala, adding that this might change with the launch of IGTV. But she hopes the vertical video format, which resembles a FaceTime video call, will be a place for looser, more experimental videos. “I naturally film with my phone vertically anyways.”

“[IGTV] is sort of making [Instagram] a one-stop shop,” she continued. “You’re getting YouTube, Snapchat and Facebook all in one.”

Marc Jacobs to close London Store

Struggling brand Marc Jacobs is shrinking its presence in Europe as other direct to consumer brands expand. While you will still be able to find the brand at multi brand retailers like Selfridges or Harvey Nichols, the brands own store at Mount street will be no more. Business of Fashion sources claim that presently only a handful of store remain throughout the world, a far cry from its glory years.

Tiffany Sold!

Luxury conglomerate LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton SE has reached a $16.2 billion deal to buy American jewellery giant Tiffany & Co.

The companies announced that they had entered an agreement for LVMH to acquire Tiffany for $135 a share.

“We strongly believe that LVMH is not only an ideal owner for Tiffany but also that this iconic brand is a perfect addition to our portfolio and perfect complement to our existing model,” LVMH Chief Financial Officer Jean-Jacques Guiony.

The all-cash acquisition is one of the largest ever for the French conglomerate known for its hard-charging deal making and surpasses its $13 billion deal for Christian Dior in 2017.

The storied American brand has resisted acquisition for years, but as one of the few independent global jewellery houses remaining in the market, analysts had long speculated that it would make an attractive, if expensive, target.

But Tiffany has had a difficult time lately. In the first half of 2019, worldwide net sales at Tiffany decreased 3 percent to $2.1 billion. The American jeweller is facing weak demand at home and abroad, and will likely need heavy investment to re-energise its brand and business.

The deal will bring LVMH’s substantial financial and market clout to help support Tiffany’s ongoing transformation efforts. At the same time, it boosts the French company’s presence in the US market.

The deal also allows LVMH to gain further ground on Swiss conglomerate Richemont, which has long dominated hard luxury with its ownership of Cartier and Van Cleef & Arpels. Jewellery was one of the best-performing luxury categories in 2018, according to Bain & Co, which predicts that the global $20 billion market will grow 7 percent this year.

Tiffany employs more than 5,000 artisans to cut diamonds and craft its jewellery, rather than buying from middlemen.


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