“No comment”, replied Max Azria, thus not denying the news reported by Challenges magazine regarding the sale of his company Alain Manoukian, which he bought end of 2005. “That’s just daily life in business”, he commented. A mandate has been entrusted to Easton Corporate Finance.

At the time, the president had announced big plans for Franco-American company that was going through difficult times. Different strategies were put into practice. By the end of 2009, the whole of the managing board of Alain Manoukian had been replaced. The goal was to bring in a younger team, focus on a target audience of women aged 40-50 and also put Max Azria’s collections for sale in the boutiques. In the same way, the best-located Alain Manoukian stores were slowly transformed into BCBG ones.
The result was unfortunately not what he expected. For its fiscal year 2009/2010, the BCBG Max Azria Group announced a turnover of 112 million euros, which meant a loss of nearly 39 million. The previous fiscal year had reported sales of more than 185 million euros, with a loss of 19.5 million.

Bruno Joly and Jean-Paul Leroy