Kering began as a Breton timber yard before owning Gucci
The group behind Gucci, Balenciaga and Yves Saint Laurent started in 1962 as a timber business in Brittany, launched by François Pinault with a 100,000-franc bank loan. Over four decades it morphed from wood to department stores to luxury fashion, finally renaming itself Kering in 2013.
Pinault grew by snapping up local timber operations until his firm led the French trade in the 1980s; by 1988 it owned 180 companies and 33 factories. Listing on the Paris exchange that year funded a push into retail. It bought into CFAO, a distribution group active across Africa, took over the furniture chain Conforama and the Printemps department stores, and by 1994 had become the retail conglomerate Pinault-Printemps-Redoute, or PPR.
The pivot to luxury came in 1999, when PPR paid $3 billion for a controlling 42% of Gucci and bought Yves Saint Laurent outright. Through Gucci it added the jeweller Boucheron in 2000 and Bottega Veneta and Balenciaga in 2001, and struck partnerships with Alexander McQueen and Stella McCartney. The founder's son, François-Henri Pinault, took charge of the family holding company in 2003 and became head of PPR in 2005, the year after it reached 99.4% ownership of Gucci.
After the 2013 rename, the group built its own eyewear business, Kering Eyewear, buying the brands Lindberg and Maui Jim, and in 2023 acquired the perfumer Creed and 30% of Valentino. Gucci's slowdown pulled revenue down 4% that year. In 2025 the former carmaker executive Luca de Meo was appointed chief executive to revive momentum, and in July 2026 Kering ended its Gucci Beauty licence with Coty early, paying about $400 million, ahead of a 50-year deal with L'Oréal starting in 2027.
Kering is headquartered in the former Hôpital Laennec in Paris's 7th arrondissement, controlled by the family's Groupe Artémis, and has sat in the CAC 40 index since 1995. In 2025 it reported 14.67 billion euros of revenue, with 43,731 employees and 1,719 stores.
Source: Kering
