What to Know About Supreme's New Owner, EssilorLuxottica
The French-Italian conglomerate has agreed to purchase Supreme from VF Corp for $1.5 billion. Here's what you need to know.
Supreme is entering a new era. Again.
The streetwear brand has been acquired by French-Italian eyewear conglomerate EssilorLuxottica for $1.5 billion cash. The move comes just four years after Supreme was bought by Colorado-based VF Corp, whose portfolio includes heritage labels such The North Face and Vans, for $2.1 billion.
EssilorLuxottica has a high-profile brand portfolio of its own, which includes the likes of Oakley and Ray-Ban. While it also has numerous eyewear licensing deals with luxury houses–Chanel, Prada, and Moncler to name a few—it does not own any apparel-focused companies outright. Supreme will be the first.
The move is also telling for VF Corp. This is the latest example of the company’s strategic restructuring in an attempt to improve its declining financial performance. Last year, it also announced plans to sell JanSport, Eastpak, and Kipling (they are still currently listed under VF Corp). Whether Supreme’s new home will help or hurt the brand remains to be seen.
Did you expect Supreme’s new home to be a European company that specializes in eyewear? If you're like us, you probably didn't know a ton about EssilorLuxottica until you saw the name peppered around social media this morning. Here's what you should know.
How Did Supreme Get Here?
We’ll spare you the full history of Supreme. Rather than take it all the way back to 1994, let’s start in 2017. That year, Supreme underwent its first acquisition by a major corporation, when the private equity firm Carlyle Group purchased a 50% stake of the brand for $500 million. Three years later in 2020, Supreme was sold to VF Corp for $2.1 billion.
During its four years under the VF Corp umbrella, Supreme saw aggressive retail expansion that included flagship store openings in Milan, Berlin, Chicago, Los Angeles, Seoul, and Shanghai. The brand also appointed its first-ever front-facing creative director, Denim Tears founder Tremaine Emory, in February 2022. Emory stepped away from the role in August 2023 after just two seasons citing systemic racism within the company as the main reason for his departure.
By May 2024, reports surfaced that VF Corp was shopping Supreme to potential buyers to try and right its ship financially. Despite the rumors, VF Corp financial director Matthew Puckett said Supreme’s “sales were strong across all product categories, helping to improve profitability” during its February 2024 earnings call. Given today’s acquisition news, the rumors of Supreme’s imminent sale were obviously true.
VF Corp’s pivot away from Supreme is even more shocking when you look at the lifespans of some of the company’s other big-name brands. JanSport, The North Face, and Timberland have respectively been under VF Corp since 1986, 2000, and 2011, averaging at least one to almost four decades. The company’s decision to sell Supreme after just four years seems unprecedentedly short.
Who Is EssilorLuxottica?
EssilorLuxottica is a Paris-based multinational conglomerate specializing in prescription lens technology and eyewear production. In 2018, France’s Essilor vertically merged with Italy’s Luxottica, essentially taking ownership over the latter company’s portfolio of commercial and luxury eyewear brands, most notably Oakley, Ray-Ban, and Sunglass Hut. Essilor was founded in 1849 as Association Fraternelle des Ouvriers Lunetiers, or “The Fraternal Association of Eyewear Workers.”
Now, the French-Italian eyewear giant is one of largest companies to be publicly traded in Europe, standing as one of the top 40 in the Paris Stock Exchange, as well as the top 50 in the entire Eurozone. Its net worth has more than doubled in the last year, currently valued at a cool $95 billion. Comparing that to VF Corp’s market cap of $5.5 billion, Supreme’s new owner is more than 17 times the size.
In addition to investing heavily in prescription labs across Europe and South America, EssilorLuxottica has been dipping its corporate toes in hearing technology and medical diagnostic solutions. On the same day as the company’s announcement of its Supreme acquisition, it also announced a 80% stake acquisition of Germany’s Heidelberg Engineering, a healthcare IT specialist for clinical ophthalmology.
What Other Brands Does EssilorLuxottica Own?
Some of EssilorLuxottica’s other recognizable brands include Persol, Arnette, and Oliver Peoples, as well as retail chains LensCrafters and Target Optical. Most famously, it has been executing decades-long eyewear licensing deals with Chanel, Prada, Miu Miu, Armani, Burberry, Versace, Moncler, Dolce&Gabbana, Tiffany & Co., Swarovski, and more. Most recently, it entered into a 10-year eyewear partnership deal with Diesel. EssilorLuxottica also acts as the eyewear manufacturer for Ralph Lauren and Ferrari. Supreme is its first-ever foray into apparel, let alone any product category beyond glasses and lenses.
Details About the Acquisition
Over the four years Supreme was under VF Corp, its value plummeted by almost a third—down $600 million—from $2.1 billion to $1.5 billion. EssilorLuxottica agreed to an all-cash deal expected to close by the end of 2024, which at this point seems like chump change for the spectacles specialist.
Despite EssilorLuxottica’s historically strong performance, its shares were down by 2.5% at the time of its Supreme announcement. According to Reuters, analysts have attributed the decline to the fact that Supreme is not only outside of EssilorLuxottica’s area of expertise, but also a struggling business category overall.
Is This Good for Supreme?
In an official press release, Francesco Milleri and Paul du Saillant—the CEO and Deputy CEO of EssilorLuxottica—stated that the company intends to “preserve” Supreme’s “unique brand identity [and] fully-direct commercial approach and customer experience,” and that “Supreme will be well-positioned to leverage our Group’s expertise, capabilities, and operating platform.”
For now, it’s hard to pinpoint exactly what effect EssilorLuxottica will have on Supreme, but our initial thoughts are that the move is certainly confusing. Sure, EssilorLuxottica is a massive company with tons of cash capital, which could bode well if Supreme intends to continue growing its presence and penetrating new markets around the globe. EssilorLuxottica also has a robust retail and distribution network, especially within Europe and the Americas.
Maybe Supreme’s Summer 2025 eyewear lineup will be its most desirable to date, but there’s no evidence that EssilorLuxottica is ready to handle what comes along with a brand like Supreme. It has no experience or track record producing and marketing a fashion brand, let alone a streetwear and skate label, whose cultural ties and relevance are crucial, to say the least.
Longtime Supreme stans seem skeptical. Some fans are already worried about a dip in quality, or joke that the brand might eventually start selling at LensCrafters. While we don’t expect this, and Supreme has been able to hold off on wholesaling thus far (except at the expertly curated Dover Street Market), there’s no way to really predict a brand’s future when it’s owned by such a massive (and foreign) entity.
“Supreme is dead” is an overused sentiment, but getting passed around by these corporations that seem entirely removed from the cultural element of streetwear isn’t exactly helping Supreme’s image. Let’s just hope EssilorLuxottica doesn’t strip away what Supreme has built over the past three decades.
