Flos B&B Italia Group Confirms Selling Assets, Danish Firms Together

MILAN — Piero Gandini, executive chairman of Italy’s largest luxury furnishings group, Flos B&B Italia, admitted he isn’t keen on big conglomerates.

After all, he initially left Flos as its longtime chief executive officer and chairman in 2019 due to disagreements over strategy. Flos joined Design Holding in 2018 when funds Investindustrial and the Carlyle Group formed the holding company. The idea from the beginning on the part of the funds was to exit, he explained. He returned earlier this year, but it took some convincing, he said. The idea is to take the time needed to fortify each firm, before selling them off.

“What I’ve agreed with the investors is that as we stabilize each business, they can sell them according to their model. We’ll do this company by company, based on readiness and quality,” Gandini said. He added that some investors might want to buy two businesses “because there are two Danish brands,” he said, directly referring to Copenhagen-based Audo Copenhagen and Louis Poulsen. The interview was published on Milan-based consultancy Pambianco’s website on Friday.

Gandini’s comments were made during a panel discussion at the 11th edition of the Pambianco Design Summit here. At the event, he confirmed that the group is open to offers for its galaxy of brands that includes heritage furnishing firms B&B Italia, Maxalto, Arclinea, Azucena, Audo Copenhagen and lighting firms Flos and Louis Poulsen.

The executive said that being a part of an Italian brand like lighting firm Flos, which was stewarded into a global era by his father, comes with a great deal of “cultural responsibility” and that each firm’s heritage and history needs to be respected.

Gandini took the helm of the firm after luxury veteran Daniel Lalonde left his post as CEO in January. Lalonde joined Vita, a division of Finland’s Fiskars Group and which owns brands Georg Jensen, Royal Copenhagen, Wedgwood, Waterford and Iittala.

Lalonde was key in developing a unique strategy that brought the group’s vanguard brands B&B Italia, Flos, Louis Poulsen, Maxalto, Arclinea and Azucena under one roof. This culminated in the opening of a 25,000-square-foot space on New York City’s 135 Madison Avenue last year. At the time, he told WWD the group was on track to meet its near term goal of 1 billion euros in sales. In 2024, Flos B&B Italia posted 768 million euros, down from 867.6 million in 2022.

WWD first reported that the group entertained informal offers in February. Among those offers was Haworth. According to a source, Holland, Mich.-based Haworth — which owns fellow furniture and lighting brands Poltrona Frau, Cappellini, Cassina, Janus et Cie, Luminaire, Ceccotti Collezioni, Karakter, Luxury Living Group, Interni and Zanotta — made an offer of between 800 million euros and 1 billion euros for Flos B&B Italia’s furniture division. That offer was deemed too low.

During the discussion, he reflected on the challenges of the funds’ strategy to ultimately sell off the firms heritage brands.

“The reason I left was precisely because I didn’t agree with their strategy. It was your typical private equity strategy with an exit plan. You know, funds work well with you at the beginning, but as you approach the end, it’s harder to align. Their idea of an exit was based on this concept of ‘luxury’ as a paradigm, which I absolutely don’t agree with — to the extent that it applies to this sector,” he said.

He is the son of the lighting firm’s first manager Sergio Gandini, who started at the helm in its early heyday in 1963 and later bought it in 1964. Flos was founded in Merano, Italy, in 1962 and boasts an extensive catalogue of iconic lamps created by legendary design names — Philippe Starck, Patricia Urquiola, Ron Gilad, Michael Anastassiades and Vincent Van Duysen among them.