Rihanna and LVMH Hit Pause on Fenty Fashion Line
February 10 2021 - 3:07PM
Dow Jones News
By Matthew Dalton
PARIS -- Rihanna is finding that luxury fashion is a hard market
to crack, even with her gigawatt name recognition and the backing
of luxury-goods company LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton SE.
The pop star and the Paris-based conglomerate are putting their
fashion joint venture, launched in 2019, on hold after sales got
off to a slow start and then faltered during the pandemic.
LVMH on Wednesday said that, pending better conditions, it had
made the decision to pause the venture jointly with the pop
icon.
The fashion label, Fenty, failed to replicate the early success
of the cosmetics line that Rihanna and LVMH launched together in
2017. The singer, born Robyn Rihanna Fenty, promoted her eponymous
cosmetics brand to her vast social-media audience -- 91 million
followers on Instagram and 102 million on Twitter. That generated
huge exposure for products that stood out in the market for being
tailored to a range of different skin tones.
Fenty Beauty recently launched a new skin care line, which LVMH
said last month was selling well.
But the luxury fashion market is dominated by big, incumbent
labels such as LVMH's own Louis Vuitton, Chanel, Hermès and Gucci.
The industry's bread-and-butter products -- handbags and
accessories -- are much more expensive than cosmetics. Upstart
brands lack decades of heritage that give older fashion houses the
cachet to convince shoppers to spend hundreds of dollars and up on
a purchase.
"I would say it's still work in progress when it comes to really
defining what the offer would be," Jean Jacques Guiony, LVMH's
chief financial officer, said of Fenty fashion in October.
Fenty Beauty also gained significant exposure through Sephora,
the cosmetics retail company owned by LVMH with more than 2,600
stores around the world. Fenty fashion had a smaller retail
audience: e-commerce and pop-up stores.
A spokeswoman for Rihanna didn't respond to a request for
comment.
LVMH and Bernard Arnault, its billionaire chief executive and
controlling shareholder, say they are still eager to work with
Rihanna. Apart from the cosmetics line, Mr. Arnault has taken a
stake in Savage X Fenty, Rihanna's lingerie brand, LVMH said
Wednesday. The investment comes through L Catterton, the
private-equity fund partly controlled by Mr. Arnault.
"We in the LVMH family believe a lot in Rihanna," a person close
to Mr. Arnault said. "But we're focusing during the pandemic on
what's truly working well: beauty, skin care and Savage."
Breaking into the market has become even tougher during the
pandemic, when luxury shoppers have gravitated toward the biggest,
most established brands.
That trend has helped drive surging revenue at LVMH's two
biggest fashion brands, Louis Vuitton and Dior; revenue at LVMH's
fashion leather and goods division fell just 5% in 2020, despite
being forced to shut boutiques across the world in the spring
during pandemic lockdowns.
LVMH's shares have surged over the past year and are trading
near record highs. With a market cap of EUR267 billion, LVMH is now
the second-most valuable company in Europe, behind only Nestle
SA.
Write to Matthew Dalton at Matthew.Dalton@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
February 10, 2021 14:52 ET (19:52 GMT)
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