Follow us

Menu
PARTNER WITH USFREE NEWSLETTER
VISIT TheIndustry.beauty

Sézane receives backing from L'Oréal founding family fund Téthys Invest

Lauretta Roberts
05 September 2022

Sézane, the sustainable French contemporary fashion brand, has secured financial backing from the L'Oréal founding family's fund Téthys Invest, which has taken a minority stake in the business.

Téthys Invest is a subsidiary of Téthys, which is the majority shareholder of the global beauty conglomerate L'Oréal. The investment fund was established in 2016 by Françoise Bettencourt Meyers (the granddaughter of the founder of L'Oréal and said to be the richest woman in the world) and Jean-Pierre Meyers to enable the family to support entrepreneurial businesses with Sézane marking its first move into fashion.

The investment was made alongside an additional injection of cash from existing backer, General Atlantic, which first invested in Sézane in 2018 when it acquired the stake previously held by Summit Partners.

Sézane was founded in 2013 by Morgane Sézalory and was initially a digital only entity, strongly driven by social media. This channel remains its most important but it has since branched into bricks & mortar retail with stores in Paris, Aix, Lille and Bordeaux in France, as well as in London, New York, Los Angeles and Madrid. It also has a presence in Le Bon Marché department store. In 2016 the brand added a menswear label to its portfolio called October Editions.

The amount of the investment by Téthys Invest has not been reported and nor does Sézane disclose any financial figures but reports suggest the brand has sales in the region of €250 million. 

Its business model of dropping regular capsule collections on specific days, which are heavily promoted on social media, has been emulated by a number of up and coming French labels. Typically Sézane drops new-in product and launches new collections on a Sunday with restocks and returns uploaded to the site on a Wednesday. Popular styles can sell out quickly and the brand does not carry out sales or promotions on current season stock. Instead twice a year it carries out archive sales of previous season stock.

The brand is B Corp certified and makes two thirds of its product in Europe. It also produces a monthly "Solidarity" creation with proceeds going to a local charity; in the UK it supports Young Women's Trust.

Free NewsletterVISIT TheIndustry.beauty
cross