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L Catterton buys stake in down jacket label JOTT
After 10 years in business, Marseilles-based down jacket label JOTT (the acronym of ‘Just over the top’) is a fine example of a successful French fashion SME, with buoyant annual growth rates and an international footprint. JOTT’s success has won over investment fund L Catterton, already a shareholder in labels like Ba&sh and Ganni.
JOTT, founded by the Gourdikian family and recognisable for its scooter rider logo, is distributed via over 1,500 retailers worldwide, and operates some 200 JOTT-branded stores and concessions (85 of which are monobrand stores), half of them outside France. JOTT has notably developed a strong presence in airports. At the start of 2020, the label was busy on multiple expansion projects outside France, and indicated it was present on some 40 markets internationally, generating a revenue of approximately €70 million. Matthieu and Nicolas Gourdikian and their staff reached this dimension without help from external investors.
It seems that the situation changed in 2020, and JOTT has been receptive to L Catterton’s advances. The private equity giant, born from the merger of the Catterton investment fund and Bernard Arnault’s L Capital, has invested approximately €20 billion in assets around the world, and owns stakes in labels like Ganni, Ba&sh and Dondup, as well as in the skincare brand by actress Jessica Alba.
While previously neither party was willing to confirm the operation, the deal was given the green light on January 19 by the French competition authority, which indicated that L Catterton has taken full control of the companies which until then managed JOTT’s commercial, administrative and logistics operations. The value of the transaction hasn’t been disclosed officially so far. Last September, French business daily Les Echos-Capital Finance reported that JOTT’s EBITDA was €25 million. It will be interesting to find out by which factor the figure was multiplied, to arrive at a valuation.
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