After Piombo and Stefanel Ovs she adds a new pearl to her fashion brand necklace. After taking over the Stefanel brand in 2021 and announcing its intention to launch a due diligence to bring the historic brand and Coin stores back home, Ovs is now taking over Les Copains. A brand founded by Mario Bandiera in the 1950s inspired by a radio program of the time, “salut Les Copains”. The goal of the clothing chain led by the CEO, Stefano Beraldo, is to relaunch the Emilian brand after this 1.4 million transaction as a result of the court filing for bankruptcy and the auctioning of the brand . A process that saw Ovs as the only buyer. The Bolognese trade unions complain that 25 workers on layoffs and machinery valued at € 1.9 million are not included in the scope of the operation.
Les Copains established itself above all in the seventies and nineties and became known among the young audience for its iconic striped minipulls and cold wool jackets. Since 2019 it has been owned by Super, a company of the Zambellio family. The acquisition, explains the company, “is part of Ovs’ strategy to strengthen its product development and distribution platform, with the aim of expanding the audience of visitors and being ever closer to the different lifestyles of customers”.
The Les Copains collection will be included in one of the group’s brands. A strategy that could follow the one followed for the relaunch of Stefanel through a different positioning of the group’s brands on the different customer segments.
At the end of June, OVS announced the signing with Coin’s shareholders of a letter of intent that gives it the right to initiate and conduct an exclusive due diligence phase, during which the board of directors will make use of external consultants with the is aiming to close the deal by November.
Given the presence of Beraldo among the shareholders of Coin, the acquisition would fall under the discipline of transactions with related parties. Coin is the most widespread department store chain in Italy, with under brand sales of around 400 million euros, a network of 37 “full format” stores in the most prestigious city center locations and 100 Coincasa branded stores.
Ovs, which in the courses and appeals of finance was born as a division of the Coin group, in 1972, heir to the small Coinette chain that carried the unsold items of the big brand to the suburbs, since March 2018 is controlled by Centenary, a newco formed by a group of managers and entrepreneurs, in which Beraldo also participates. It has over 2,000 stores in Italy and abroad and in 2021 it recorded sales of 1,359 million euros and an EBITDA of 147.2 million.