Battered Lanvin hopes for better 2025 as executive revolving door keeps turning

China’s answer to global luxury brand operators has named a new top executive, as it struggles with frequent departures and the worst global luxury goods market in 15 years

Key Takeaways:

• Lanvin Group has named Andy Lew as its new chief, replacing Fosun Group veteran Eric Chan after just one year
• The luxury brand operator’s Lanvin and Sergio Rossi labels both got new creative directors last year, as the CEO for its Wolford label left after just six months

By Edith Terry

When Lanvin Group (LANV.US) announced leadership changes a week ago, shares of the New York-listed company shot up by more than 40% over the next three trading days, adding about $70 million to its market cap that climbed to $270 million.

The market seemed to applaud the news. The company said that Andy Lew, CEO of St. John Knits, one of its five portfolio brands, would take over a new role as group executive president, while Eric Chan would “transition” from his role as CEO to join the company’s board as a director. The company also announced that it would set up a second global headquarters in Europe, to be led by Lew, complementing its Shanghai base.

“Leading the establishment of our European headquarters is a tremendous opportunity to expand our global footprint and elevate our brands,” Lew said.

The stock rally returned Lanvin’s share price to just below what it was a year ago, even as the company remains a long way from becoming China’s answer to global names like LVMH Moët Hennessy (MC.PA) and Compagnie Financière Richement SA (CFR.SW), which also operate multiple luxury brands.

Lanvin’s price to sales (P/S) ratio of 0.72 looks quite meager compared with those peers, well behind the 4.10 for LVMH and 5.04 for Richemont. The company may be hoping that Lew can help turn Lanvin around by bringing its management closer to its European customers, and by slowing down a revolving door of talent that has plagued it lately.

Lanvin Group’s worst-performing market in the first half of last year was Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA), where its revenues dropped 27.1%, compared to a 24.2% decline for Greater China. But Greater China was a relatively small part of the company’s business, accounting for only 11.6% of revenues during the period, while EMEA accounted for roughly four times that amount at 44.3%.

St. John Knits veteran

A four-year veteran of Lanvin Group, Lew joined St. John Knits in May 2021, after stints as president of Brooks Brothers and Authentic Brands Group, as well as executive roles with Ermenegildo Zegna and Nordstrom. He has also witnessed much of the company’s constant recent management turnover. Eric Chan’s departure as CEO comes just a little over a year after his appointment. Chan took the company’s reins from Joann Cheng, who had been CEO since the company’s founding in 2017.

At St. John Knits, creative director Zoe Turner, who made a name for herself by dressing celebrities, left the brand in October 2022, not long after Lew arrived. Although Lew used Turner’s departure to bring the brand back to its American roots – it was the first U.S. fashion brand to be founded by a woman, Marie Gray, in 1962 – he was unable to stop the continuing management drama there.

Lew brought in industry veteran Enrico Chiarparin to replace Turner as executive president of design in 2023, together with celebrity stylist Karla Welch as creative advisor and Shonda Rhimes, the Hollywood producer of “Bridgerton” and other hits, as brand ambassador. But Chiarparin has already left, according to industry publication Women’s Wear Daily.

While the fashion industry is famous for such turnover, Lanvin’s case seems worse than most when it comes to keeping talent. At Wolford, Lanvin’s hosiery brand, Regis Rimbert became CEO in June 2024 only to leave after six months. At Sergio Rossi, Lanvin’s footwear brand, Paul Andrew joined in July 2024 after the brand spent four years without a creative director.

The company’s flagship Lanvin brand also went without a creative director for more than a year, until it hired Peter Copping as creative director in June 2024. Its last creative director, Bruno Sialelli, was dismissed after four years in April 2023.

Tanking performance

While such turnover is good tabloid fodder, the real test for Lew will be reversing Lanvin’s tanking performance. While Lew can potentially control some of that, there are also factors beyond his reach.

Outside the company’s own shop, the broader global luxury market in 2024 had one of its worst years since the global financial crisis of 2008, according to the Bain-Altagamma Luxury Goods Worldwide Market Study published in January. The market for personal luxury goods, including fashion, dipped by 2% last year to 363 billion euros ($379 billion), with only one-third of brands experiencing growth. Lanvin was clearly not in the growth category, reporting an overall revenue decline of 20% to 171 million euros in the first half of last year.

One of its problems was overestimating the China market. In 2021 the Bain-Altagamma study projected that China would represent 25% to 27% of the global personal luxury goods market by 2025. But in its 2025 analysis China represented less than half that amount at 12% of the global market.

Originally called Fosun Fashion Group, and 62.3% owned by Fosun International (0656.HK), the company was renamed after its flagship portfolio company, Lanvin, in October 2021. At the time of its IPO through a merger with a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) in December 2022, Lanvin Group was valued at $1.3 billion. At that time, Joann Cheng talked about becoming a billion-dollar group by buying new brands to create the scale needed to compete with the global giants.

She conveniently ignored discussion of the losses at both the brand and group level at the time of the listing, choosing instead to focus on a future filled with hopes of big profits. Things looked promising early on, with the company reporting its revenue grew 73% year-over-year to 202 million euros in the first half of 2022, even though it lost 68.6 million euros for the period.

Three years after the IPO, the only constants have been frequent management changes and continuing losses, while revenues have been flat and are now even falling. Analysts aren’t too positive on the company, with the pair polled by Yahoo Finance both rating it a “hold.”

As the company’s parent, Fosun didn’t have much time to think about Lanvin for much of the last two years as it grappled with its own credit crunch. But it now appears the worst of that is in the past, and the company has become more active in M&A with recent privatization bids for its separately listed Henlius (2696.HK) and Fosun Tourism (1992.HK) units. Given that new activism, perhaps Fosun may try to privatize the hapless Lanvin as well, allowing Lew to try to clean up the company out of the public eye that comes with the world of high fashion.

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