Kering has plans to keep the recent exponential growth of Saint Laurent going, targeting almost double the revenue by 2021.
At an investor day dedicated to Saint Laurent, Kering touted the brand’s 14 consecutive quarters of 20-plus percent growth, and said it’s on track to go from 1.2 billion euros in sales in 2016 to about two billion euros in sales by 2021.
Kering’s longer term plan for Saint Laurent, which now has Versus Versace alum Anthony Vaccarello at the design helm after a commercially successful four years led by Hedi Slimane, includes three billion euros in sales.
Given Kering’s plans for store expansion of Saint Laurent, Barclays analyst Julian Easthope said in a note that the two billion euros sales target “should be attainable,” with admitting the three billion euros goal is “more aspirational, but suggests the group aims to invest and growth the brand in the long-term.”
“Overall, this was a very upbeat investor day,” Easthope added.
In terms of retail, Kering said it plans to hit 200 Saint Laurent stores over the next two years, a roughly 25 percent increase over the 159 stores operating at the end of 2016.
Barclay’s pointed out that many “major brands” have somewhere around 350 stores, leaving “plenty of white space” for longer term expansion, which will be necessary to hit to three billion euros in sales.
Kering has already begun investing more heavily in retail for Saint Laurent. The company said the brand’s business is now 68 percent retail, 27 percent wholesale and 5 percent royalties, compared to 60 percent retail. Thirty-one percent wholesale and 9 percent royalties in 2012, when Slimane joined the brand.
“The investment in retail is clearly paying off,” Easthope said.
The company also broke down Saint Laurent sales by age, revealing 65 percent of its sales come mostly from women between the ages of 18 and 34, with 52 percent coming from those between the ages of 25 and 34.
Saint Laurent is also favored by locals, which account for 63 percent of its customers, while only 37 percent are tourists. Kering said it intends to invest more in travel retail, which accounted for just 1.8 percent of Saint Laurent’s sales last year.
The brand is doing well with much-coveted Millennials, despite only 22 percent of its marketing spend going toward social media, but that’s likely to change in the near-term.
Marketing was a “big theme” of the investor day, according to Barclays, which said Kering is planning to further cultivate “desire” for Saint Laurent through various advertising moves and is set to more than double its spend in digital marketing this year.
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