The EU fined Pierre Cardin and its largest licensee Ahlers EUR 5.7 million Thursday for breaching EU antitrust rules by restricting cross-border sales of Pierre Cardin-branded clothing.
French fashion house Pierre Cardin licenses its trademark to allow third parties to manufacture and distribute Pierre Cardin branded clothing. Ahlers was the largest licensee of Pierre Cardin clothing in the European Economic Area (‘EEA’) during the infringement.
The Commission’s investigation found that between 2008 and 2021 Pierre Cardin and Ahlers entered into anticompetitive agreements and engaged in concerted practices to shield Ahlers from competition in those EEA countries where the company held a Pierre Cardin licence, in breach of Article 101 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (‘TFEU’) and Article 53 of the EEA Agreement.
This restricted EU cross-border trade in clothing, in breach of competition rules, said EC vice-president Margrethe Vestager, and “prevented consumers from shopping around for a better deal and from benefiting from greater choice”.
The EU executive found that such anticompetitive agreements and concerted practices were aimed at preventing other Pierre Cardin licensees and their customers from selling Pierre Cardin-branded clothing, both offline and online: (i) outside their licensed territories; and/or (ii) to low-price retailers (such as discounters) that offered the clothing to consumers at lower prices.
The ultimate objective of such coordination between Pierre Cardin and Ahlers was to ensure Ahlers’ absolute territorial protection in the countries covered by its licensing agreements with Pierre Cardin in the EEA.
These illegal practices prevent retailers from being able to freely source products in Member States with lower prices and artificially partition the internal market.
More information on this case will be available on the Commission’s competition website, in the public case register under the case number AT.40642.
