Sandbridge buys minority stake in Rossignol

By

Sarah Ahssen

Published
Nov 19, 2014

Rossignol, whose majority shareholder is private equity firm Altor, which notably brought the Helly Hansen brand back to life, has bought a minority stake in Sandbridge Capital. A new arrival who, in addition to Altor, joins current shareholders Weber Investissement, the Boix-Vives family (historical owners of the Rossignol group, from 1955 to 2005) and the management team, including President Bruno Cercley.

Created about a year ago, Sandbridge is one of Rossignol's main advisors specialised in fashion, along with Tommy Hilfiger and former CEO of Gucci and current President of Tom Ford, Domenico De Sole. Tommy Hilfiger, the man, is actually a shareholder through Star Branding Group. A blessing for Rossignol, who is focusing on the development of its textile activities.
 
"Other than the capital injected, the arrival of Sandbridge among Rossignol's shareholders will make it possible to bring about a veritable textile and fashion culture. Moreover, we are going to take measures to better distribute our Casual collections (the brand's textile collections) in North America," explains Jean Holvoet, Managing Director of the textile department at Rossignol. He also specifies that Rossignol is currently working with a distributor for North America, but that distribution could be directly taken over.

The Rossignol group has also created a new company called Rossignol Apparel Sas. An entity that will lead the textile development.

For its 2013 financial year, the Rossignol group (Rossignol, Dynastar, Lange, Look, Risport and Kerma) recorded 230 million euros in revenue, with the textile section representing 20 million.
 
1 EUR = 0.800642 GBP
1 EUR = 1.25214 USD