EXCLUSIVE: LVMH Luxury Ventures Takes Minority Stake in Molli

PARIS — French knitwear brand Molli revealed Tuesday that it has received a minority investment from LVMH Luxury Ventures, an entity within LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton.

The terms of the investment were not disclosed.

This marks the first outside investment since the French brand was rebooted in 2014 by chief executive officer Charlotte de Fayet, a former L’Oréal marketing executive who revived this knitwear specialist best known for garter-stitch “newborn” wares created in 1886.

“It was the right moment to find a partner as the next step requires further means, both financial and human,” she told WWD exclusively.

From two stores when de Fayet took over, Molli has grown to a business with four stand-alone stores in Paris, a well-trafficked corner at Le Bon Marché Rive Gauche and just shy of 100 wholesale accounts worldwide. Stockists include Vanille & Lilas, the retail arm of luxury hospitality group Les Airelles; 10 Corso Como in Seoul, and Space 519 in Chicago.

The company passed the 8 million euro sales mark last year and is on track to exceed 10 million euros for the fiscal year 2025, which closes in August. It produces collections that include womenswear, a handful of accessories and its newborn sets in France and Italy, with long-standing partners.

In April, the brand opened a 1,100-square-foot flagship on Rue François 1er, a perpendicular to luxury shopping epicenter Avenue Montaigne. At the time, de Fayet said she planned to triple sales within four years.

The French knitwear specialist is “ideally positioned to become a lasting reference in the luxury sector, with its signature silhouette, its legacy craftmanship and its high-end workshop partners in France and Italy,” declared Julie Bercovy, CEO of LVMH Luxury Ventures Advisors.

De Fayet said the funds would go toward fueling Molli’s international retail expansion, including opening flagships modeled after the François 1er address in terms of size; push further its craftsmanship and creativity, both with the development of innovative knitting techniques and new products, and bolster its executive team with hires in coming months.

“We are on a small luxury house track,” she continued. “What describes it best is verticality, with in-depth mastery from its production to its distribution.”

At present, France still accounts for two-thirds of the company’s turnover. But international sales are growing strongly, particularly with e-commerce, which now accounts for 35 percent of the business.

While openings in European capitals may come first, de Fayet is also keen to rev up business in the U.S., currently accounting for 15 percent of sales overall and the largest single-country market outside France, and the Middle East, as a clientele from the region has emerged strongly since the new Paris flagship opened.

Plans also include reinforcing its omnichannel strategy.

LVMH Luxury Ventures was launched in 2017, and is an entity within the LVMH Group aimed at taking minority stakes in independent brands. The size of the investment allocated to each company ranges from 2 million euros to 15 million euros per deal. Its investments include French apothecary brand Officine Universelle Buly, Gabriela Hearst, Our Legacy and Aimé Leon Dore.