Asics spins off Onitsuka Tiger, Chanel names new jewelry leader

ASICS is pulling Onitsuka Tiger out from under the parent-company shadow, and the timing is no accident. After a year when the label crossed ¥100 billion in sales for the first time, the sneaker brand is being reorganized into OT GROUP through a simplified absorption-type split, a cleaner structure that gives a cult name the kind of autonomy that can move faster and hit harder.

The June 10 ASICS decision follows months of momentum around Onitsuka Tiger, including the company’s own acknowledgment that it was considering a separation after media reports surfaced. Fiscal 2025 was the kind of numbers-heavy year that makes a spin-off look less like corporate housekeeping and more like common sense: Onitsuka Tiger and ASICS SportStyle both topped ¥100 billion in net sales for the first time, Onitsuka Tiger sales rose more than 40% year over year, and ASICS Japan net sales climbed 34.7%, helped by Onitsuka Tiger and performance running. ASICS itself posted fiscal 2025 consolidated net sales of 810,916 million yen, operating income of 142,519 million yen and net income attributable to owners of the parent of 98,719 million yen.

The brand was already being carved out operationally before the paperwork caught up. On July 7, 2025, ASICS said SANIN ASICS Industry Corporation would be renamed Onitsuka Innovative Factory Corporation effective January 1, 2026, turning the site into a dedicated production base for Onitsuka Tiger. That matters. In a market where sneaker labels live or die by identity, owning your own manufacturing rhythm is the difference between being a logo and being a world. Onitsuka Tiger has that old Kobe-born aura and the kind of global appetite that rewards precision, not bureaucracy.

Chanel’s move lands in a very different register, but it is just as telling. On June 9, 2026, the house named Marie-Laure Cérède director of its jewelry creation studio, with the appointment taking effect in October. She will oversee precious jewelry and high jewelry, report to Frédéric Grangié, Chanel’s president of watches and fine jewelry, and work with the brand’s teams in Paris and Geneva. Cérède comes from Cartier and also worked at Harry Winston, which gives Chanel exactly what it wants here: not a celebrity name, but someone who understands the rigour behind scale, stones and archive-level discipline.

She is stepping into a seat shaped by Patrice Leguéreau, who led Chanel jewelry for 15 years before his death in 2024. That succession tells you everything about the house’s mood right now. Chanel is not chasing a rupture in jewelry; it is protecting continuity, tightening authorship and making sure the craft still looks unmistakably Chanel even as the broader brand keeps reshuffling its creative leadership under Matthieu Blazy.