In the past week, Marc Jacobs was acquired by WHP Global, and Roberto Cavalli by Marquee Brands. They join the likes of Vera Wang, Off-White, Barneys, Vince, and Palm Angels — all upmarket brands that have been acquired by brand management groups such as WHP Global, Authentic, and Bluestar Alliance. It’s a sign of a growing trend: these groups make luxury and premium acquisitions in an effort to push upmarket and capitalize on brands’ cultural cachet — and the money to be made from it.

But luxury brands aren’t these management firms’ bread and butter. Their repertoire is wide, and tends to range from mall brands such as sportswear player Champion (Authentic) and toy store Toys R Us (WHP Global), to celebrity IP (Authentic owns the rights to David Beckham, Elvis Presley, and Muhammad Ali’s names), which sit alongside fashion labels including Hervé Léger (Authentic), Rag & Bone (WHP Global), and Scotch & Soda (Bluestar). The primary goal of these firms is to scale the IP that they own, via licensing agreements and collaborations.

The issue for luxury brands is that what they need is often at odds with what brand management firms do best. “Despite their name, brand management firms are usually focused on expansion and growing sales through licensing, wholesale, and partnerships,” says Neil Saunders, managing director of Globaldata’s retail division. “There’s nothing wrong with that per se. But it jars with the natural playbook of luxury, which is more about control to introduce an element of scarcity and exclusivity.”

Historically, brand management firms have seen more value in luxury brand names than the designs themselves, overindexing on licensing agreements and investing too little in design and creative talent to support the longevity of a given brand, Christina Binkley wrote in 2024, when Bluestar acquired Off-White. “It is very easy to destroy the culture of a luxury brand, which is often vital to its performance,” Saunders adds.

But the perception — and operations — of brand management firms are shifting, says Marissa Lepor, managing director of M&A firm The Sage Group. And it’s moving in a direction that should allow these groups to play more effectively in the luxury fashion sphere. “Brand management firms were once viewed primarily as operators of distressed or legacy IP,” she says. “Today, the largest platforms are competing for globally recognized brands with enduring cultural relevance, using sophisticated licensing, distribution, and category expansion strategies to unlock growth across multiple consumer segments.”

When making luxury brand acquisitions, management firm executives have recently focused on the legacy (and, thus, the potential) of these brand names — no matter how well they are doing at present. WHP Global founder, chair and CEO Yehuda Shmidman emphasized Marc Jacobs’s status as “one of fashion’s most influential brands”. Marquee Brands CEO Heath Golden lauded Cavalli as “one of luxury’s defining Italian houses, with a bold creative identity and enduring brand ethos”.

This doesn’t mean the way they operate is undergoing a 180. Brand management firms take a more practical, private equity-like approach to managing brands today, says Bernstein luxury goods analyst Luca Solca. “[They] make sure they have a low BEP [break-even point] and good profitability prospects,” he says. “They would not play in the premier league — 100% full price, 100% direct — but they would look for a middle ground made of licensing, wholesale (wherever still available), and off-price.” In this, the tension with luxury norms remains a barrier to success.

Still, that these brands won’t play in the top luxury league could actually be a positive, Solca flags. As the industry continues to price out shoppers who might once have splurged on top-end products, a white space has emerged where one-rung-lower — but still luxury-level brands — can take share. If done right, brand management firms could help steer their premium acquisitions into this arena. “There is a lot of demand orphaned by top-end brands and their price hikes that they could intercept,” Solca says. “It is a good coming back to reality.”

This may be so, but if the function and goals of brand management firms sits at odds with what makes luxury brands successful, can a marriage between the two ever really work?

Slow burn

Historically, the reason brand management firms have fumbled the luxury bag is because they’ve wanted too much, too soon. If these groups take a long-game approach, they could see success in the luxury space, experts agree.

To win, brand management firms need to build these brands more slowly — and at a smaller scale than they’re used to with the more mass brands in their portfolios. “Luxury brands derive value from scarcity, storytelling, and cultural relevance,” Lepor says. “The challenge for large brand management firms is scaling these businesses without diluting the very attributes that make them valuable in the first place; the brand should always be bigger than the business.”

You can’t simply flood the market with new products and categories to capitalize on short-term buzz, cautions Jessica Ramírez, retail consultant and founder of The Consumer Collective. Saunders wonders if the success of brands like Ralph Lauren and Coach — both of which have executed long-term, meticulously planned elevation strategies over the last five years — will encourage these firms to adapt their approach. It could happen, he says, but he’s skeptical.

These companies would also need to bring in the right people. Saunders is not sure firms would be willing to cede some of the day-to-day control to a luxury leader, but points to Brooks Brothers as an example that worked. “Catalyst Brands has done a very good job with Brooks Brothers. It has allowed the CEO of the division to drive the vision — but it is rare,” he says. (Catalyst is a 2025 joint venture between JCPenney and Sparc Group, the latter of which acquired Brooks Brothers in 2020. Under CEO Ken Ohashi, the brand returned to profitability in 2023.)

Experts are cautiously optimistic that the Marc Jacobs acquisition will bode well for the New York brand. That Jacobs is staying on board as creative director is a big win. “I was lucky to know Marc when he was building his business, and those same values he had then are still deeply relevant now,” fashion consultant Julie Gilhart, who was SVP and fashion director of Barneys for 18 years, told Vogue Business when news of the WHP Global acquisition broke. “From that foundation, the business side can evolve and develop multiple revenue streams while keeping the quality and creativity high across all price points.”

That this need to go slow to maintain quality and scarcity is also why Marquee Brands and Damac Group’s plans for Roberto Cavalli are raising some eyebrows, from their category expansion promise to the plans for further expansion via more branded residences and hospitality projects, adding to the existing Cavalli tower in Dubai.

This is why Ramírez believes Versace wound up with the best new home among the recent spate of acquisitions. “I like that home for it, not thinking about it from a perspective of [Prada’s] stock and what’s going to be criticized from the investor side, but long term for the health of that brand,” she says. “I think Cavalli could have benefited from something like that.”

It will be brand management groups’ openness — and ability — to adapt to a luxury house way of thinking that will determine their success as operators of luxury fashion brands. “Luxury brands are built over decades through cultural relevance, emotional resonance, and customer obsession,” Lepor says. “That kind of brand equity is incredibly difficult to create, which is why scaling luxury brands requires restraint as much as ambition. The strongest operators understand how to expand a brand without eroding the unique identity and positioning that gives it long-term value.”

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