Moncler buys Stone Island, will accelerate expansion

By

Sandra Halliday

Published
Dec 7, 2020

Moncler is to acquire Stone Island’s parent company with the outerwear specialist aiming to eventually take over the entire share capital of the business in a deal that values Moncler’s smaller peer at €1.15 billion.

The first step will see Moncler buying a 50%+ stake from Stone Island CEO Carlo Rivetti and an extra 19.9% from other members of his family in an all-cash deal.

Other shareholders will be part of the next stage. The Temasek fund owns around 30% and Moncler wants to buy that stake too. Interestingly, Temasek is also a Moncler minority shareholder and it will be offered the same price as Rivetti, but will also have the option of being paid in newly-issued Moncler shares for up to 50% of the money that’s due to it.

Moncler chairman and CEO Remo Ruffini said: “We are coming together at a challenging moment both for Italy and the world, when everything seems uncertain and unpredictable. But I believe it is precisely in these moments that we need new energy and new inspiration to build our tomorrow.”

The two Italian firms said Monday that they will jointly develop a new luxury vision and that the merger will strength their ability to tap into what new generations of consumers want to buy and wear.

Ruffini and Rivetti will be bringing together a creative and entrepreneurial approach to managing the brands as well as the strongly technical profile that both labels have. They’re also aiming to strengthen the ability of both brands to compete as standalone labels.

Moncler said Stone Island would be able to use its new owner’s knowledge and experience to maximise its growth potential in key markets such as the Americas and Asia, as well as in the direct-to-consumer (D2C) channel.

And the two firms will have a heavy sustainability focus too, something Moncler has maximised particularly well given that it topped the Dow Jones Sustainability World and Europe Indexes for Textile, Apparel & Luxury Goods this year.

Moncler is known as one of the most profitable luxury names and its Genius multi-drop strategy of recent years has been a major success for it.

Rivetti said Stone Island will retain its strong brand identity, its research and experimentation culture and its own independent HQ. 

He believes that Stone Island will be able to accelerate its growth under new ownership.

The company has already been focusing on growth in key markets. it opened a new store in Beijing this autumn and is opening in Miami this month. The UK is also a key market for the label. That comes at the same time as it said its sales should be broadly level with 2019’s this year (despite the pandemic), that it will be profitable and that SS21 orders are running higher than SS20’s.