Can’t knock the hustle: LVHM’s Moet Hennessy takes 50 per cent stake in Jay-Z’s champagne brand
Luxury goods company LVHM is buying a 50 per cent stake in rap star Jay-Z’s champagne brand, Armand de Brignac.
Jay-Z’s champagne brand is high-end, and known for its metallic bottles that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars each.
The investment, LVMH and Jay-Z said, is aimed at growing Armand de Brignac through LVMH’s global distribution networks while drawing upon the conglomerate’s vast resources within champagne wine country.
It comes at a difficult moment for champagne: The pandemic cancelled weddings, soirees and other occasions to pop corks, cutting sales of the wine by around 20 per cent last year. The two sides did not disclose the value of the transaction.
“We were working really hard to maintain a brand that was growing faster than the staff we had and bigger than some of the expertise we had,” Jay-Z, born Shawn Carter, said in an interview. “We’d been in this 15 years, not a hundred.”
Last year was tough for LVHM. Revenue at the business declined 17 per cent after the coronavirus pandemic caused serious disruption.
In the second half of the year the group enjoyed double-digit growth at Louis Vuitton and Christian Dior.
The group’s recovery in the second half of the year was delivered mostly from Asia, with improvement also seen in the United States and Japan.