French luxury house founded in 1837 by Thierry Hermès, who opened a shop selling horse harnesses in Paris's ninth arrondissement. The business took off in the 1850s after Napoleon III modernised the capital into a city of wide boulevards and horse-drawn carriages. Empress Eugénie became an unofficial brand ambassador.
Each generation steered the firm in a new direction. Thierry's son Charles-Emile began making saddles; his son Emile-Maurice designed an oversized leather bag for carrying boots. In the early 1980s Emile-Maurice's grandson Jean-Louis Dumas sat next to Jane Birkin on an aeroplane and sketched what would become the Birkin bag, now priced upwards of £10,000 in shops and a multiple of that on the resale market.
In 2024 Hermès generated €15bn in sales. In 2025 it overtook LVMH as the most valuable company in the luxury industry, despite being far smaller by revenue. Its market value as a multiple of net profit is more than twice as high as LVMH's. The Hermès family displaced the Arnault family at the top of France's rich list in 2025. Its share price rose roughly 150% over the five years to 2025, while other luxury stocks rose by 50% at most.
The firm is more than 65% family-owned, split into three branches descended from Emile-Maurice's daughters. The Dumases hold the top jobs—Axel Dumas is the current chief executive. The Puechs have largely stayed out of operations. The Guerrands are spread across Morocco, America and elsewhere. The company runs like a small atelier: production expands only marginally each year despite lengthy waiting lists, and each workshop is capped at 300 staff. A single artisan produces each of its priciest handbags, including the Birkin, from start to finish. Sales of leather goods rose by 13% year on year in the quarter from July to September 2025, even as the wider luxury-handbag market slumped. Selling mainly to the very rich—unlike, say, Gucci (owned by Kering), which also sells to the aspirational middle classes—insulates Hermès from the ups and downs of the luxury industry.
In 2001 and 2002, while Hermès chief executive Jean-Louis Dumas was ill with Parkinson's and the company lacked a clear succession plan, LVMH began quietly buying Hermès stock, staying just under the 5% disclosure threshold. In 2008 LVMH entered into swap contracts with three French banks, betting on the future price of Hermès shares; the banks bought Hermès stock to hedge the risk, and the deal was restructured so they paid out in shares rather than cash. On October 23rd 2010 LVMH announced it held 14.2% of Hermès, rising to over 20% before the year was out. Hermès's share price jumped more than 15%.
The Hermès family rallied. On December 5th 2010 dozens of heirs created H51, a family holding company into which they deposited more than 50% of the firm's capital, locking up their equity for 20 years (extended to 2041 in 2022). France's financial regulator, the AMF, fined LVMH €8m for providing information that was insufficiently accurate, precise and sincere—a penalty that paled beside the €3.8bn in capital gains LVMH reported on its Hermès investment. In 2014 LVMH and Hermès reached a truce: LVMH distributed all its Hermès stock to its own shareholders.
Nicolas Puech, a great-great-grandson of the founder, held nearly 6% of Hermès from 2004—a stake that would have been worth €13bn ($15bn). His Swiss banker Eric Freymond, whom Puech had entrusted with near-total control of his finances, secretly sold millions of Puech's bearer shares, many to LVMH in 2008, in some cases for less than €100 per share (the stock later traded at more than 20 times that). Freymond funnelled over €100m of Puech's assets, often to benefit himself and his circle. By 2021 Puech had no shares left in his family firm. Puech filed criminal complaints in Geneva and Paris; Freymond killed himself in July 2025, two days after his 67th birthday, shortly after testifying before Parisian magistrates. The case continues.
No matter what happens, there is always someone who knew it would.