Seven Sells Out To Corporate America

Seven For All Mankind, the L.A. based jean designer who first popularized $200+ ultra luxury denim, have decided to sell their business to VF Corp., owners of Reef and The North Face, for $775 million. This marks a windfall for Bear Stearns Merchant Banking, who bought half of Seven for $100 million just three years ago, with the sale now earning them a tidy profit of $287.5 million. Though Seven really engineered the explosion of ultra luxury denim, do they have the cachet to maintain their position in the marketplace in the face of strong competition from Citizens of Humanity, Rock and Republic, and True Religion?

Clearly, Seven has carved out a corner of the luxury denim market with its classic fits and trademark indigo blues. The risk here comes from being the classic “incumbent” brand: competition, and indeed innovation, could lead to this ‘classic’ denimsmith going out of vogue.

Article at NYT via FashionInvestor.com

Nordstrom Sells Façonnable to….the Lebanese?

Seattle-based Nordstom (NYSE:JWN) has decided to sell its Façonnable brand to the Lebanese investment firm M1 Group for $210 million. As part of the deal, Nordstrom agrees to sell Façonnable clothing for a further 3 years, and will use the proceeds to focus on its main business, retailing, as opposed to brand-building. Façonnable, a conservative luxury clothier that competes against the likes of Brooks Brothers, was long known to be on the auction block; the acquirer, however, is the surprise here. M1 Group (formerly Investcom) was the first company to IPO on the recently-opened Dubai International Finance Exchange and primarily owns wireless networks in third world countries like Guinea Bissau, Liberia, Afghanistan, Guinea Republic, and Sudan. Wait a minute….REWIND. Sudan? As in Darfur’s federal overlord? A third-world cellular operator buying falling-star luxury marque? Something smells fishy here. Upon further inspection, the real owner is Mauritius-based MTN Group, which bought Investcom (and hence M1 Group) last year. MTN Group operates mostly in South Africa, and is also in the cellular business. It’s all a tangled mess of ownership from there, involving shady tax shelters in the Virgin Islands. Could this get any weirder?

Anyone have any idea why a cellular business in the third world would want to buy a slightly-lagging shirtmaker? Is this deal really even going to go through?

Article at PSBJ via FashionInvestor.com

Fearless Cliff Dog

Link to Flickr photo.

Christina took me on a hike to a peak that looks out over North Bend, Washington, and looks across to Mount Si. We ran into this fearless dog on the cliff lookout up top.