The story of Francois Pinault, Fashion Industry Billionaire | Hustle Hub Billionaire Biography

Francois Pinault Is the founder of one of the largest holdings in the fashion and luxury business. He started from extremely humble beginnings and now owns worldwide recognized brands such as Gucci and Balenciaga. He was born in 1936 in Champs-Géraux, a small town in the extreme north west of France. He started from his rural town. His father was involved in the timber trading business. He went to school until 16, when he dropped out and started getting more involved in the family business. In 1956 he enlisted in the army and left France to go combat the Algerian war. Where Algerians fought for independence from colonial France. He later got back and sold the family business after his father passed away. In 1962 he had his first marriage which finished in 1967. He had three sons and one of these is Francois-Henry, the current CEO of Kering. He later got re-married in 1970. He started his first business in 1963: a wood trading business. It did well and started acquiring several businesses in the same field, mostly troubled ones and fixed them. He started a pricing war in order to face less competition. Due to the leverage, he was pushed by the bank Credit Lyonnaise to sell his business in 1973 for 25 million francs. After the sale he invested big in commodities, especially in sugar. Sugar in that period saw an enormous price surge and he was able to buy back his company, Pinault SA. In the oil shock times, his strategies to decrease prices worked because many of his competitors either suffered or went bankrupt. He also got the possibility to buy furniture producer Bruynzell. In 1986 he got the chance to buy panels producer company Isoroy for the simbolic amount of one franc, invested in the troubled company and fixed it. He invested around 270 million of his own and 130 of public money. In 1988 Pinault SA got listed on the Paris stock market. In 1989 he bought the company CFAO, a company onvolved in the trading of industrial products in the former French colonies. I