Mergers & Acquisitions · Outdoor Industry
7 min read
Five years after Jacobs Capital took over a struggling icon, the 164‑year‑old ropemaker‑turned‑outdoor‑giant Mammut is being sold to CPE, a Beijing‑linked asset manager on a consumer‑brand buying spree — testing whether a Swiss heritage label can go global under Chinese ownership without losing its identity.
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London: Mammut Sports Group AG, the Swiss mountain-performance brand that traces its roots to a 19th-century rope works, is being sold for the second time in five years. The company confirmed Thursday that CPE, a Chinese alternative asset manager with a fast-growing stable of international consumer brands, has signed an agreement to acquire Mammut from Jacobs Capital, the London-based private equity firm that has controlled the business since 2021.
The transaction caps a five-year turnaround that Jacobs Capital and Mammut’s own management describe as one of the most significant transformations in the outdoor industry — and hands the next chapter to an owner whose recent shopping list runs through some of the most closely watched consumer names in China.
Deal Sheet
Transaction: CPE (China) to acquire Mammut Sports Group AG from Jacobs Capital
Announced: July 30, 2026
Seller: Jacobs Capital (formerly Telemos Capital), London — owner since April 2021
Target: Mammut Sports Group AG, Seon/Lenzburg, Switzerland — founded 1862
Footprint: 900 employees; active in 55 countries
Reported asking valuation: North of €500 million, per earlier market reports
Leadership: CEO Heiko Schäfer and existing management team to remain in place
Five Years of Rebuilding
When Jacobs Capital — then still operating as Telemos Capital — bought Mammut in April 2021, it inherited a 159-year-old label with strong mountaineering credentials but an operating model in need of modernization. The private equity firm’s stated ambition was to unlock the value sitting inside one of the most respected brands in the outdoor industry.
Over the following five years, the firm poured investment into supply-chain capability, operating processes, technology, brand-building and talent, while broadening the product range across apparel, footwear and hardware. The results, as described by the company, were substantial: total revenue grew at a double-digit compound annual rate, sales outside Europe climbed past 50 percent of the total — with particularly strong gains in China and Japan — and operating profit margins more than doubled.
Operating margin, five-year gain
50%+Sales now outside Europe
€500M+Reported asking valuation
“We have modernised the company from the inside out: investing in its people, technology and systems; elevating its products and brand; accelerating its international development; and materially improving its operating model.”
— Philippe Jacobs, Co-Chairman & Founder, Jacobs Capital
CEO Heiko Schäfer, who stays on under the new ownership, credited the partnership with putting Mammut in a stronger position heading into its next phase, framing the past five years as having built the financial and operational strength — and global relevance — the company now carries into its next chapter.
“Mammut today is stronger, financially and operationally, and more globally relevant than ever before. Our strategy is on track, and our global journey is only just beginning.”
— Heiko Schäfer, CEO, Mammut Sports Group AG
Jacobs Capital’s exit follows a sale process that had been underway for some time: reports earlier this year indicated the firm was seeking a valuation north of €500 million for the business, a figure that, if achieved, would mark a considerable uplift from the 2021 purchase price and validate the private-equity playbook of operational investment ahead of a strategic sale.
The New Owner: CPE’s Consumer-Brand Playbook
CPE describes itself as a China-based alternative asset manager taking a long-term, value-oriented approach across sectors including the full AI value chain, advanced manufacturing, consumer goods, healthcare and infrastructure. Its pitch to Mammut centers on using its expertise, capital and networks to help the brand accelerate growth — particularly across Asia and North America — while also, in the firm’s telling, supporting global brands in strengthening their footing in China and the wider Asia-Pacific region.
The Mammut deal extends a portfolio of consumer names that has drawn considerable outside attention in recent years. CPE’s holdings include stakes in Mixue Group, the bubble-tea and ice-cream chain that has become one of the largest food-and-beverage retailers in the world by store count; Laopu Gold, the fast-growing Chinese jewelry brand; and Pop Mart, the collectible-toy company behind the globally popular Labubu figures.
Earlier this year, CPE also took control of Burger King’s China operations. Mammut becomes the newest addition to that list — and one of the firm’s most prominent bets yet on a Western heritage brand rather than a China-grown or China-market-focused one.
“It is both a privilege and a responsibility to become the next steward of Mammut. CPE is fully committed to preserving and building upon the brand equity, technical excellence and authentic heritage that have made Mammut one of the world’s most respected outdoor brands, while supporting its continued global expansion.”
— Mark Mao, Managing Director, CPE
What Doesn’t Change — On Paper
Both sides have gone out of their way to frame the transaction as continuity rather than disruption. Mammut’s headquarters — including its core innovation, design and development functions — will stay anchored in Seon/Lenzburg, Switzerland. Schäfer and the existing leadership team remain in place, and the company says its commitment to Swiss roots, technical performance, product quality, sustainability and the mountain-sports community is unchanged.
That continuity messaging matters commercially as much as culturally: Mammut’s positioning rests heavily on its Alpine heritage and 160-plus years of safety-first engineering, from climbing ropes to avalanche transceivers. Any perception that Chinese ownership might dilute that Swiss identity would cut against the brand equity CPE is explicitly paying to acquire.
Ropemaker’s Long Road: Mammut Through the Decades
Mammut’s evolution from a single rope works in a small Swiss village to a head-to-toe outdoor supplier spans more than 160 years and several changes of ownership, name and core business.
1862: Kaspar Tanner founds a small ropemaking works in the Swiss village of Dintikon — the company’s origin as a rope manufacturer.
1878: The business relocates to nearby Lenzburg, the town that remains its home base today.
1898: Kaspar Tanner’s son, Oscar, takes over; the company expands markedly in the following decades, including through the World War I years.
1919: The firm is renamed Seilwarenfabrik AG Lenzburg (“Lenzburg Rope Works Ltd.”).
1924: Oscar Tanner departs the company he had run for a quarter-century.
1968: Swiss textile group Heberlein acquires the company and renames it Arova Lenzburg AG. “Mammut” — German for mammoth — enters the naming lineage around this period.
1982: Heberlein sells Arova Lenzburg AG to Swiss industrial conglomerate Conzzeta.
1984: Conzzeta renames the business Arova Mammut AG.
1970s–80s: As demand for industrial rope declines and rival rope-makers shut down, the company pivots into outdoor clothing; its first outdoor apparel collection reaches the market in 1981.
1989: Acquisition of backpack maker Fürst broadens the product range beyond apparel.
2003: The company adopts the name Mammut Sports Group AG and acquires Swiss footwear maker Raichle Sportartikel (founded 1909), known for the Raichle Flexon ski boot, adding mountain, trekking and multifunctional footwear to the portfolio.
2009: The Raichle brand is retired in favor of a single, unified Mammut identity across footwear and apparel.
2016: Rope production in Seon is closed as a strong Swiss franc makes domestic manufacturing uneconomical — the final break from the company’s founding trade.
Dec. 2019: Conzzeta announces plans to divest Mammut Sports Group.
Apr. 2021: Sale completes to London-based Telemos Capital, later rebranded Jacobs Capital — the first private-equity owner in the brand’s history.
2021–26: Under Jacobs Capital, Mammut posts double-digit compound annual revenue growth, lifts operating margins, and pushes sales outside Europe past the halfway mark of total revenue.
2023: Expansion into South Korea extends the Asia push already under way in China and Japan.
2024: The Fair Wear Foundation notes Mammut has begun production in Ethiopia, diversifying its manufacturing base.
Jul. 2026: Jacobs Capital agrees to sell Mammut to Chinese alternative asset manager CPE, opening a new ownership chapter.
Sources: Mammut company disclosures and historical company records.
The pattern that emerges is one of repeated reinvention forced by economic necessity — first the shift from industrial rope into outdoor apparel as the rope trade collapsed, then a consolidation of acquired footwear and equipment brands under one identity, then the final closure of Swiss rope manufacturing in 2016 as currency pressures made it uneconomical. By the time Jacobs Capital arrived in 2021, Mammut was already a diversified, multi-category outdoor company; what the private-equity period added was scale, international balance and profitability.
The Competitive Frame: Arc’teryx, Anta, and the Deal That Didn’t Happen
Mammut is widely viewed in the industry as a direct competitor to Arc’teryx, the Canadian technical-apparel brand that has become a favorite of both mountaineers and streetwear-influenced urban shoppers. That comparison sharpens the stakes around who ends up owning Mammut, because Arc’teryx itself sits inside a Chinese-controlled empire: Anta Sports, the Chinese sportswear giant, owns Arc’teryx and other Amer Sports brands including Salomon, Descente and Kolon Sport, and completed a full acquisition of Jack Wolfskin in 2025.
Given that backdrop, speculation had circulated that Anta itself might be a contender to acquire Mammut, which would have consolidated an even larger share of the premium outdoor and technical-apparel category under a single Chinese parent. That scenario did not materialize; CPE — a financial investor rather than a strategic industry competitor — signed the agreement instead. For Mammut, the distinction matters: an Anta-owned Mammut would have sat inside a rival’s house alongside Arc’teryx, while a CPE-owned Mammut instead becomes part of a diversified investment portfolio with no direct outdoor-industry sibling brands to compete or share resources with.
Reading the Deal: Value, Strategy and Open Questions
Judged against the numbers disclosed, the Jacobs Capital era looks like a clear operational success: double-digit compound revenue growth, a majority of sales now generated outside Europe, and operating margins more than doubling over five years are the kind of metrics that justify a premium exit valuation, and the reported ask of north of €500 million reflects that. The strategy — investing in supply chain, technology, brand and talent rather than simply cutting costs — is a relatively conventional but effective private-equity approach for a heritage brand with underused potential, and it appears to have worked broadly as designed.
Where the picture is less settled is on what happens next. CPE’s own portfolio — Mixue, Laopu Gold, Pop Mart, Burger King China — is heavily weighted toward consumer brands built for or already scaled within China; Mammut is CPE’s most prominent bet on the reverse trade, using Chinese capital and market access to grow a Western heritage brand internationally. Whether that combination of a China-based owner and a Swiss Alpine identity resonates with Mammut’s traditional European and North American mountaineering customer base — as opposed to potentially newer, fashion-oriented Asian buyers — is an open question the transaction itself does not answer.
A second uncertainty concerns manufacturing and cost strategy. Mammut has already diversified production beyond Switzerland, including a newer Ethiopian manufacturing presence flagged by the Fair Wear Foundation in 2024. How CPE balances further cost efficiency against the technical-performance and “Swiss-made” cues central to the brand’s premium positioning will be one of the clearer tests of whether the new ownership preserves — or gradually erodes — the authenticity both companies say they intend to protect.
Finally, the deal underscores a broader pattern in the outdoor and sportswear industry: Chinese capital, whether strategic (Anta) or financial (CPE), now sits behind an increasingly large share of the premium mountain and technical-apparel category. For competitors, suppliers and retailers, Mammut’s sale is less a single company’s story than another data point in that broader consolidation.