When VF Corp, the owner of brands like The North Face and Vans, announced in late 2020 that it was buying Supreme, it touted how the cool streetwear brand would teach the other labels in VF's portfolio how to be more nimble and sell more directly to consumers via their own stores and websites. Instead, the company learned the hard way how dangerous style-over-substance dealmaking really is.
VF announced Wednesday it had reach a deal to sell Supreme to Ray-Ban maker EssilorLuxottica for $1.5 billion, admitting the acquisition initially considered transformative had been a bust. By 2023, the company had taken a couple of big write-downs amounting to two-thirds of Supreme's value since the acquisition, reflecting its dramatic brand erosion in three short years. The hoped-for hipness-by-osmosis didn't materialize, and worse, it diverted management's attention at a time its other mega-brands were starting to falter.
