Kering: Company Profile, History and Key Figures

Kering SA is a French luxury group that owns fashion, leather goods and jewellery houses including Gucci, Saint Laurent, Bottega Veneta, Balenciaga and Boucheron. Its head office is at 40 rue de Sevres in Paris, and its shares are listed on the Paris stock exchange.

The group is in the middle of a reset. Revenue fell 13% to 14.7 billion euros in 2025, and a new chief executive, Luca de Meo, took office in September 2025 with a plan to restore growth.

Kering: Paris Luxury Group Behind Gucci, Saint Laurent and Bottega Veneta — The courtyard of the former Laennec Hospital, Kering's head office, in Paris, 2017. Photo: Chatsam, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Overview and Founding

Kering’s origins go back to 1963, when the Pinault group was set up as a timber trading business. It was listed on the Paris stock exchange as Pinault SA in 1988.

In the 1990s the group moved into retail. It bought control of the furniture chain Conforama in 1991, took over the department store group Au Printemps in 1992 and acquired the retailer Fnac in 1994, when it took the name Pinault-Printemps-Redoute.

The step into luxury came in 1999, when it bought a 42% stake in Gucci Group. It raised that holding in stages to 99.4% by 2004.

The company became PPR in 2005 and Kering in 2013. After selling its retail chains and handing its PUMA shares to shareholders in 2018, it has described itself as a pure player in luxury.

Key Milestones

1963: The Pinault group is founded as a timber trading business.
1994: The group is renamed Pinault-Printemps-Redoute and takes over Fnac.
1999: It buys a 42% stake in Gucci Group, its entry into luxury.
2001: Gucci Group acquires Bottega Veneta and Balenciaga.
2005: Pinault-Printemps-Redoute becomes PPR.
2013: PPR changes its name to Kering.
2018: PUMA shares are distributed to Kering shareholders.
2023: Kering buys a 30% stake in Valentino and the fragrance house Creed.
2025: The roles of chairman and chief executive are separated.

What It Does

Kering develops a group of houses in fashion, leather goods and jewellery. Its brands today include Gucci, Saint Laurent, Bottega Veneta, Balenciaga, McQueen, Brioni, Boucheron, Pomellato, Dodo, Qeelin and Ginori 1735.

Gucci is by far the largest house, with 6.0 billion euros of revenue in 2025. Saint Laurent brought in 2.6 billion euros and Bottega Veneta 1.7 billion euros, the only one of the three to grow on a comparable basis.

Kering Eyewear designs and distributes glasses for the group’s houses and for other brands, including Cartier under a partnership signed in 2017. It added the Danish brand Lindberg in 2021 and the American brand Maui Jim in 2022, and its revenue reached 1.6 billion euros in 2025.

In beauty, the group sold Kering Beaute, which included Creed, to the French cosmetics company L’Oreal in a deal valued at 4 billion euros that closed on 31 March 2026. L’Oreal is controlled by the family of Françoise Bettencourt Meyers.

Most sales come from the group’s own stores. Kering had 1,719 directly operated stores at the end of 2025, with the largest numbers in Asia-Pacific outside Japan and in Western Europe.

Asia-Pacific accounted for 29% of 2025 revenue, Western Europe for 30% and North America for 24%. Japan made up 8% and the rest of the world 9%.

Kering competes with LVMH, the group led by Bernard Arnault, and with independent houses such as Hermès and Chanel.

The group also runs the Kering Generation Awards, a start-up competition on sustainable innovation in fashion and luxury. In 2024 it extended the awards to Saudi Arabia in partnership with the Saudi Fashion Commission, and the first winners in the Kingdom received their awards in 2025.

The commission’s work is part of the wider growth of Saudi Arabia’s fashion and retail sector.