PARIS — PPR is on the way out. The Paris luxury group, whose stable of brands includes Gucci, Balenciaga and Puma, said Friday that it was changing its name to Kering.
Kering is pronounced as the English “caring,” according to François-Henri Pinault, the chairman and chief executive of the family-controlled company. “Ker” is a Breton word meaning “home,” making the new name also “a proud reminder of our origins in the Brittany region of France,” Mr. Pinault said in a statement.
The rebranding comes as the house is completing its transformation into a “pure” apparel and accessories group, shedding some of the broader collection of businesses on which it once depended. Mr. Pinault said in February that PPR planned a public stock offering this year of its Fnac entertainment retailing chain, which, like Virgin Megastores and HMV, has struggled as much of its core business has moved online.
The company also plans to divest itself of the Redcats online clothing and furniture business. That will allow it to focus exclusively on its luxury and sports-lifestyle brands, which also include Saint Laurent and Bottega Veneta.
The new name “expresses the group’s new identity and our corporate culture,” said Mr. Pinault, 50, the son of the founder, François Pinault, 76. A marketing campaign, to be carried out largely though print advertisements and social media, is planned to help to get the word out before the name change takes effect in June.
PPR reported revenue of €9.7 billion, or $12.6 billion, for last year.
Manfredi Ricca, the managing director at Interbrand in Milan, said the name change reflected an awareness that companies needed “a strong angle on what they stand for,” both for consumers and for employees, to demonstrate their “overarching vision” and values.
With PPR, “I think it’s a case where the name needs to tell the story of the business,” he said. “The former name contained things that are no longer relevant to the group.”
Kering will actually be the company’s fifth name.
It began in 1963 as a timber-trading business run by François Pinault, who called it simply Pinault. After expanding into distribution, the company took control of the venerable Printemps department store in 1992, and changed its name to Pinault-Printemps. With the acquisition of La Redoute, a mail-order shopping business, it changed its name to Pinault-Printemps-Redoute, before eventually opting for the simpler PPR.
The company achieved global prominence in 2001, when the elder Mr. Pinault won a highly public and drawn out battle with Bernard Arnault, the chief of LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton, for control of Gucci Group.
Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/23/business/global/ppr-to-show-breton-roots-with-rebranding-as-kering.html?partner=rss&emc=rss