Three business lessons we can learn from the Coperni crisis The brand could soon be acquired by one of three potential buyers, but the picture is very complex

The Coperni legal saga has been one of the most curious in fashion in recent years. A saga that, if nothing else, offers us a glimpse of how complicated the game has become for independent labels and how a highly conceptual brand must come to grips with the reality of a market that is, to say the least, unforgiving. But, as MF Fashion reports, there have been developments in this saga, and now Coperni's future will be decided in the courtrooms of the Paris Commercial Court.

There are in fact three acquisition proposals on the table for Coperni SAS, the entity that brings together the creative and operational teams of the brand founded by Sébastien Meyer and Arnaud Vaillant. Vying for the label are Hong Kong-based fund Aa Investments and two private investors, Victor Bughin and Philippe Sayada. These offers were submitted just a few months after the opening of the judicial reorganization proceedings, initiated last June 11, during which the brand is said to have resolved the severe financial and corporate tensions that had persisted for over a year. But how did we get to this point?

From glory to crisis

At the start of the year, Coperni had opted out of showing at the Paris Fashion Week in March due to tensions with Tomorrow London, its exclusive distributor and majority shareholder, which had left the company without the means needed to support its growth. At the root of these problems lay a dual issue: on one hand, difficulties stemming from the parent group, and on the other, the fact that the brand's sales were in sharp decline. As it happened, in March Tomorrow Group was acquired by Progetto 11, an Italian holding company.

But the deal, which seemed like a turning point, failed to resolve the problems, and in June the Paris Commercial Court granted the request for the opening of judicial reorganization proceedings for Coperni SAS. According to the founders, Tomorrow had stopped making the payments owed for months, leaving the brand without resources. The proceedings, which stripped Tomorrow of its decision-making power over the company, were intended to freeze debts, protect the 26 employees, and ensure operational continuity, while also providing an opportunity to seek a new buyer. The figures presented in the proceedings' documentation make for grim reading.

The brand's total turnover — that is, the total value of Coperni's sales on the market (in other words, how much retailers and multi-brand stores actually purchased and sold) — fell from €15.2 million in 2023 to €13 million in 2024 and to €10.9 million in 2025. The picture is different, however, for the operating company Coperni SAS, which brings together the creative and management teams: its revenues actually increased, rising from €3.5 million in both 2023 and 2024 to €4.7 million in 2025.

This increase is explained by the structure of the relationship with Tomorrow: the exclusive distributor collected the bulk of wholesale revenues and passed on to Coperni SAS primarily royalties, licensing fees, and a share of the margins. Even as the brand's total sales were declining, the flows coming directly into the French company therefore grew. But the truly telling figure is the operational one: in 2023 the company closed with a profit of €679,000, which fell to €112,000 in 2024 and turned into a loss of over €300,000 in 2025. A veritable bloodbath.

Even though Coperni SAS's revenues had increased, the costs for personnel, infrastructure, production, and marketing were far higher, completely eroding the margin and pushing the business into the red. In essence, the brand was selling less on the market; the operating company was still managing to grow its revenues thanks to royalties and fees, but could no longer cover its fixed costs. When Tomorrow's payments then stopped altogether, the circuit closed and the brand's finances "blew up." Hence the judicial reorganization. And while the details of the offers have been thoroughly covered by Fashion Network, what is truly interesting is understanding what lessons can be drawn from this complicated affair.

Three lessons to learn from the Coperni case

From this affair, three lessons can be drawn that independent designers, or indeed anyone running a fashion business, would do well to keep in mind. The first concerns the control of cash flows, the second the sustainability equation between social media virality and actual growth, and the third the ownership structure of the brand itself — which, as the Coperni case illustrates, is a kind of Russian nesting doll split between England and France.

As for cash flows, Tomorrow Group was both the controlling shareholder and the distributor, meaning that sales revenues passed through it and the brand received essentially only royalties and fees. It was entirely dependent on its partner. When Tomorrow's payments stopped, the brand found itself without liquidity even though it was theoretically generating sales. In general, then, it is always better to ensure direct control over cash flows, even when partners and investors are involved, limiting one's dependence on partners who can simply turn off the tap.

The perhaps most obvious lesson, however, concerns the balance between virality and sales — in other words, business sustainability. Coperni was an extraordinarily viral brand: it spent money to have Bella Hadid and Naomi walk its shows, to rent out Disneyland Paris, and to create prototype bags made from meteorites. The trouble was that people said the bags were impractical and the clothes forgettable. That is why the brand lost five million euros in sales over three years while fixed costs kept rising. The lesson here is less about business than about common sense: never overextend yourself, never bite off more than you can chew, and never invest in ventures whose cost exceeds the return.

Finally, the third point that the Coperni affair prompts us to reflect on is more technical in nature. The French Coperni SAS handled operations, but the trademark belonged to Coperni UK Ltd, a British entity also controlled by Tomorrow Group. Now that judicial proceedings are underway, the owners are selling the French operational assets — but the brand as intellectual property, and therefore as a source of licensing revenue, was registered to a company over which French law has no jurisdiction. The current situation would have been far simpler had the intellectual property and corporate structure been protected from the outset and kept together, because regaining control is now considerably more complicated given that these are two separate negotiations in two different countries.