The Marc Jacobs American homecoming is going to have to wait.
Three sources told WWD that talks to sell the business to Jamie Salter’s Authentic Brands Group have fallen apart.
For now, the brand remains in the portfolio of LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton, where it’s been since Jacobs became creative director of Louis Vuitton in 1997.
But it’s not clear just how long that status quo will reign. Dealmakers rarely say die and talks sometimes start and stop over years before a transaction actually gets done — or not.
LVMH declined to comment and Authentic could not immediately be reached.
While a dozen years ago LVMH looked to stand up Marc Jacobs on its own with an initial public offering, that is not in the cards now and the luxury giant has been said to be considering some other exit in recent years.
Those rumors became a reality this year when LVMH was said to have hired bankers to shop the business with a $1 billion price tag.
There were fewer interested buyers than there once would have been as big multibrand fashion houses have fallen out of favor in the U.S., but a potential Marc Jacobs sale did cause a flurry of excitement among the brand management crowd.
And in that crowd, Salter’s Authentic is the leader.
The New York-based company owns scores of brands — from Reebok and Quiksilver to Brooks Brothers and Ted Baker — and works with licensing partners to produce the goods, driving more than $32 billion in annual sales at retail.
Salter has said the company is on the glide path to get to $50 billion in sales, but to get to his goal of $100 billion, Authentic is going to have to keep buying brands of scale.
Marc Jacobs wouldn’t have been the largest of Authentic’s brands, but it would have been among the most fashionable. If the acquisition had gone through it would have amounted to a kind of test of the brand management business model for designers, alongside WHP Global’s acquisition this year of Vera Wang.
While it’s not clear exactly why the talks with Authentic struggled, it was something of a complex transaction. Jacobs himself is believed to still hold a stake in the business and his involvement would have had to have been worked out. Brand management companies also make their money through their licensees and sources said LVMH was not releasing the kind of data that Authentic’s partners needed to fully understand the brand’s potential.
Additionally, the luxury giant was said to have come into the talks with a firm position on the price, limiting negotiations.
Salter, as usual, also has several deals underway.
In August, Authentic inked a deal to buy a 51 percent stake in a company owning all of Guess’ intellectual property, valuing Guess Inc. at $1.4 billion.
