PARIS — Groupe Chantelle is pressing reset.
The French lingerie-maker will now focus on selling all of its labels under the Chantelle masterbrand and launch a new brand under the Chantelle X moniker in the fall.
The move is intended to capitalize on work that has been ongoing since 2017 for the group, based just south of Paris, and profit from the renown of the Chantelle brand in international markets.
It follows the sale, last October, of the Orcanta multibrand lingerie retail network and of the Chantal Thomass brand, revealed last week.
“We wanted to develop an offer that could capitalize on the notoriety of the Chantelle brand internationally, which was harder with Chantal Thomass, and that explains the birth of this new brand,” explained Renaud Cambuzat, the group’s image director.
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“We attempted to evolve and grow Chantal Thomass and to seduce new customers, especially internationally, but in parallel, Chantelle’s strength internationally, linked to its repositioning over the past four or five years, has encouraged us to develop, in the high-end seduction segment, this new brand with a creative, original and innovative vision.”
Chantelle X will debut in September, and will offer a high-end selection of lingerie as well as a few ready-to-wear pieces with a positioning centered on a contemporary vision of seduction, Cambuzat said.
“With Chantelle X, we wanted to go in a new direction, with a specific territory that will seduce some of our existing consumers, but will also allow us to attract new consumers,” he explained. “It has a distinctive artistic universe that will take root in the Chantelle ecosystem and notably benefit from the brand’s strengths and reputation internationally.”
Chantelle X will offer three ranges — Essential, Signature and Couture — with prices ranging from around 70 euros to upward of 120 euros for the most expensive pieces.
Fashion photographer Cambuzat joined the company, which was founded in 1876, in 2018, charged with updating its marketing and positioning to appeal to a broader array of consumers and address changing mind-sets around lingerie.
“We repositioned the brands to address all women,” he explained. “We were quite brave, we touched the representation of women in lingerie. We were a precursor. Since then, that has filtered into our collections. We are trying, with certain of our launches, to offer inclusive products that can accompany women in the different life stages, like pregnancy, maternity and periods, and we’re starting to look at menopause,” Cambuzat said. “That’s driving our innovation processes.”
In 2017, the company grouped all of its brands together under the CL nameplate (for Chantelle Lingerie), which was used on store signage (it revamped 24 former Orcanta stores under the new banner, and these were not part of the sale last year) and on its website. Last year these took on the Chantelle sign, as did the Passionata and Femilet brands, with the new masterbrand now featuring under each one’s logo.
“The aim was always for Chantelle to have that role in the long term, like an umbrella brand as well as a product brand,” Cambuzat explained. “To do that necessitated an intermediate stage where we could evolve Chantelle so it could live in that broader world, and the results of that have paid off. It’s now mature, and we can replace CL.”
Groupe Chantelle registers annual sales of around 350 million euros (not including the activities that were sold last year), Cambuzat said, a figure that has been relatively stable since 2019.
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