Richemont History

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The Company Description of Its Time

Compagnie Financière Richemont SA owns several of the world's leading companies in the field of luxury goods, with particular strengths in jewelry, luxury watches and premium accessories. The group's luxury interests encompass several of the most prestigious names in the industry, including Cartier, Van Cleef & Arpels, Piaget, Vacheron Constantin, Jaeger-LeCoultre, IWC Schaffhausen, Panerai and Montblanc. The heritage of Richemont's Maisons is rooted deep in the knowledge, experience and tradition of the luxury goods industry, and the group's stated method is long-term: the Maisons have almost all been in existence for over a century, each keeps its independence within the group, and products are sold through the group's own boutiques, franchise operations and third-party boutiques.

Assembling the Maisons: 1994-2010

The timeline this profile keeps is a catalogue of luxury consolidation. Richemont acquired Purdey in 1994 and bought out the Rothmans International minorities in 1995. Vacheron Constantin joined the Vendôme Luxury Group in 1996; Officine Panerai and the leather goods brand Lancel followed in 1997, the year Richemont also merged its NetHold pay television group with Canal+ of France. In 1998 the buyout of the Vendôme minorities gave Richemont 100 per cent of its luxury goods interests. In 1999 Rothmans International merged with British American Tobacco, and Richemont acquired a controlling 60 per cent interest in Van Cleef & Arpels, one of the world's most renowned jewellery Maisons - taking a further 20 per cent in 2001 and the remaining 20 per cent in 2003. The year 2000 brought Jaeger-LeCoultre, IWC Schaffhausen and A. Lange & Söhne, and the exit from pay television.

The 2000s added manufacturing depth and two fashion connections this directory cares about. Richemont acquired Fabrique d'Horlogerie Minerva and a long-term partnership with Greubel Forsey in 2006; in 2007 it and Polo Ralph Lauren announced a 50/50 joint venture, the Ralph Lauren Watch and Jewelry Company - whose first watch collection launched at SIHH Geneva in January 2009 - and it acquired an interest in Azzedine Alaïa, the Parisian fashion house, component operations of Manufacture Roger Dubuis and the watch case manufacturer Donzé-Baume. A 60 per cent interest in Roger Dubuis followed in 2008, alongside the restructuring that separated the luxury business from other interests into the separately traded Reinet Investments. In 2010 Richemont acquired the majority of NET-A-PORTER, the premier online luxury fashion retailer, which operated as an independent entity alongside the other luxury businesses.

The Record to 2015

The final entries in the kept timeline are industrial and American. In 2012 Richemont acquired 100 per cent of Varin-Etampage & Varinor, a high-end manufacturer of stamped exterior components for watches and a gold refiner producing semi-finished precious metal products for the watch and jewellery industry, and it acquired Peter Millar LLC, the US-based international luxury apparel business - one of the group's few direct apparel purchases. In 2015 Richemont merged The Net-A-Porter Group with YOOX Group in an all-share transaction; the combined YOOX Net-A-Porter Group traded on Borsa Italiana, with Richemont holding 50 per cent of the share capital and voting rights limited to 25 per cent. The profile closes there, noting the list continues on the group's own site - the honest end of a timeline that had already run from a 1988 spin-off to the defining luxury e-commerce merger of its decade.

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