(Bloomberg)-Authentic Brands Group LLC, the owner of five brands ranked in the 2021 Digital Commerce 360 Top 1000 such as Brooks Brothers (No. 205) and Nine West Holdings (No. 300), agreed to buy the heritage brands unit of PVH Corp. (No. 109) in a $220 million deal.
The cash transaction includes brands such as Izod, Geoffrey Beene and PVH’s namesake Van Heusen, the companies said last week in a statement. The deal is expected to close in the third quarter of PVH’s current fiscal year. PVH will still own some of its brands, including Tommy Hilfiger and Calvin Klein.
New York-based Authentic has made a name for itself buying well-known consumer brands, often through bankruptcy sales, and revitalizing the intellectual property, online presence and brick-and-mortar portfolio. Among the company’s familiar brand names are Nautica (acquired in March 2018), Forever 21 (No. 131, acquired in February 2020) and Aeropostale (No. 280, acquired in September 2016).
Since last year, Authentic CEO Jamie Salter added new retailers to the roster including Eddie Bauer (No. 159) and Lucky Brand LLC (No. 658) to its family of more than 30 apparel, celebrity and sports brands. Its recent growth has Authentic considering an initial public offering, Bloomberg News reported.
Last July, PVH said it would close its 162 heritage-brand outlet stores that are expected to operate through mid-2021, the company said at the time. It said the decision was accelerated by Covid-19.
In other news:
- Ride-hailing service Uber Technologies Inc. this month agreed to buy the remaining 47% stake in Chile’s online grocer Cornershop in exchange for 29 million shares. Uber first took a majority stake in Cornershop, the largest home delivery platform in Mexico and Chile, in 2019 in a bid designed to extend its geographic reach and bolster profit by bundling food delivery with rides. Before that, Walmart Inc. (No. 2) was set to acquire the grocer before Mexican regulators stopped the merger on antitrust grounds. Uber bought delivery service Postmates last summer.
- Payment services vendor Klarna launched a comparison-shopping service earlier this month that integrates with Google’s product listing ads. Klarna, which provides a buy-now-pay-later service to 56 Top 1000 retailers, is debuting the service in Europe. Retailers will be able to simultaneously list products on Google shopping pages and Klarna’s comparison shopping pages. Plus, because Klarna is hosting the product listing ad, the vendor claims retailers will be able to save money over having Google host it.
- Another pay-in-installment vendor, Affirm, is partnering with Shopify to allow more retailers to offer the flexible payment option. Retailers using the Shopify platform and offering Shop Pay payment options will now have Shop Pay Installments turned on automatically. While the consumer experience will look mostly like a Shop Pay transaction, Affirm will work on the back-end to handle the installment portion, such as checking eligibility and maintaining the loan. Shop Pay is currently available for 83 Top 1000 retailers, while Affirm is an option at 126 retailers in the rankings.
- Ecommerce personalization provider Nosto acquired visual content marketing platform Stackla this month. Merging Stackla’s content tools will allow Nosto’s clients to keep all digital assets like pictures and video in one place to make them available for personalization to include those assets on retailers’ sites. Acquisition terms were not disclosed. Nosto is the sixth-most popular personalization vendor among Top 1000 retailers, with 24 of them engaging Nosto’s services.