Founded in February 2026 and headquartered in Miami, OctoFox is a private investment firm that acquires and rebuilds founder-led businesses — industrial, consumer, heritage — and invests its own capital in public markets. The firm consolidates under a single name 15+ years of work spent buying, restructuring and operating iconic businesses across Europe and the United States, and channels it toward the U.S. market — where heritage names remain underserved by patient, operationally-credible capital.
Operator · Investor · Heritage Brand Restructurer
Edouard Burrus is an entrepreneur and operator who has spent more than 15 years buying companies that most people had given up on, and putting them back on their feet. His path runs through corporate finance, private equity, and the kind of hands-on operating work that only happens when your own capital is in the deal.
He bought into Borsalino, the Italian hat house founded in 1857, when it was losing money and drifting without direction. He served as Vice Chairman and helped redesign the company from the inside — the balance sheet, the organisation, the brand, the U.S. business. The company returned to profit and more than doubled its revenue.
He then acquired the assets of Fogal of Switzerland, the century-old Swiss hosiery maison, out of bankruptcy. As Executive Chairman, he rebuilt the company from the ground up — product, retail network, brand, and a deliberate push back into the United States — through what turned out to be the most difficult few years modern retail has lived through. Revenue eventually reached roughly three times the pre-bankruptcy baseline.
Those investments were originated and held through La Praly SAS, the Paris-based investment vehicle he has chaired since 2013. OctoFox — founded in Miami in February 2026 — is the next chapter: the same operator-led approach, brought to the United States, focused on founder-led businesses — industrial, consumer, heritage — at the lower end of the mid-market, where a hands-on owner at the helm can recover the value the market has stopped pricing in.
He holds a Master's degree in Strategy and International Business Engineering from ESSEC Business School (Paris & Singapore) and a Bachelor's degree from Northeastern University in Boston. He is a native French speaker, fluent in English, with working knowledge of Italian and Spanish.
These aren't slogans. They are the conditions under which we engage, invest, and operate, and the standards by which we expect to be measured.
Every investment is senior-led. Counterparties speak directly with the decision-makers, from first call through close.
We have run companies. We have made the payroll, negotiated with distributors, signed the term sheets, and lived with the consequences. Our judgment carries the weight of having done the thing.
We are not building toward a five-year fund deadline. We hold what works. We rebuild what is broken. We exit only when the company is materially better than the one we bought, or we don't exit at all.
The interesting opportunities sit between the United States and Europe. We are fluent in both, culturally, operationally, and structurally, and most of our value creation has come from bridging the two.
We have a particular affection for companies with history. Brands that have earned their place over decades but lost their way in the present. Reviving them is harder than building from zero. It is also more meaningful.
The most important conversations happen privately. We protect our counterparties, our portfolio, and our process. What we say publicly is a fraction of what we do.
Specificity filters everything. We share concrete parameters so brokers, intermediaries, and founders can self-qualify in thirty seconds.
Outside these parameters? Reach out anyway. The right transaction usually fits the criteria. The unusual one occasionally rewrites them.
A selected history of executive roles, acquisitions, and operating mandates across Europe and North America.
An institution. Italy's oldest hat house, founded in 1857, with a global reputation that the company itself had stopped living up to. We bought in when it was losing money, redesigned the organisation, repositioned the brand toward luxury, and rebuilt the U.S. business piece by piece. The company came back to profit and more than doubled its revenue.
A century-old Swiss maison — one of those names that meant something to a generation of women and risked meaning nothing to the next. We acquired the assets out of bankruptcy and rebuilt the company from the ground up. New product, new retail footprint, new brand, a real return to the United States. We did it through the hardest stretch the retail industry has lived through, and the business eventually reached roughly three times the size it was before it failed.
The European investment vehicle through which the Borsalino and Fogal investments were originated and held. Founded in 2013, La Praly SAS has spent more than a decade backing businesses that other investors had walked away from — not as a portfolio exercise, but as a place to put real time, real capital, and a real point of view. It is where the OctoFox playbook was first written.
Director at a cross-border M&A and corporate advisory firm headquartered in Geneva, with offices in Toronto and Milan. Six years executing buy-side and sell-side mandates for private equity clients across lifestyle and industrial sectors — the years that taught me what a deal looks like from every seat at the table before I started sitting in the operator's.
Whether you're considering a sale, representing a business that needs an operator at the helm, or exploring a co-investment, start with a conversation.
Notes
OctoFox is not a blind-pool fund. The firm invests from its own balance sheet and, on select deals, co-invests alongside aligned partners in the operating company — with OctoFox as the sole operator and control party, and no fund-life pressure on hold periods. The firm carries direct operational responsibility for every business it acquires and holds for as long as the situation requires.
OctoFox is founded and operated by Edouard Burrus, who brings 15+ years of acquiring, restructuring, and operating heritage brands across Europe and the United States, through ownership and board-level leadership.
OctoFox is headquartered in Miami, Florida, with active operations across the United States and an established network in Europe.
OctoFox was founded in February 2026 in Miami.
OctoFox is a Miami-based private investment firm that acquires majority positions in founder-led companies — industrial, consumer, heritage — at the lower end of the mid-market, then takes direct operating responsibility to rebuild them over time. The firm consolidates 15+ years of cross-border restructuring experience between the United States and Europe under one name.
