Crate and Barrel Holdings

Who owns Crate and Barrel?

Crate and Barrel Holdings is wholly owned by the Otto Group, a family-controlled retail and services conglomerate headquartered in Hamburg, Germany. Otto Group took a majority stake in 1998 and acquired the remaining shares in 2011.

Is Crate and Barrel a public company?

No. The company is privately held by Otto Group and publishes no standalone financial statements. It has not been publicly traded under Otto ownership.

When was Crate and Barrel founded?

The first Crate & Barrel store opened in December 1962 in Chicago's Old Town. Founders Gordon and Carole Segal named it for the crates and barrels used to display their imported housewares.

What brands does Crate and Barrel own?

The group operates four retail brands: Crate & Barrel, CB2, Crate&kids, and Hudson Grace. The Land of Nod children's business, acquired in 2001, was rebranded as Crate&kids in 2018.

Where is Crate and Barrel headquartered?

Corporate headquarters is in Northbrook, Illinois, a suburb north of Chicago. The company operates more than 100 stores in the US and Canada plus franchise locations in nine countries.

Gordon and Carole Segal opened the first Crate & Barrel store in December 1962 on Wells Street in Chicago's Old Town, funded partly by their honeymoon savings. The couple had returned from a Caribbean honeymoon inspired by European housewares they had seen, and the original shop sold imported French and Scandinavian cookware and glassware displayed on the wooden crates and barrels the merchandise arrived in. That improvised display method gave the store its name.

The concept was unusual for its era: affordable continental design merchandised in an open, self-service environment. Through the 1960s and 1970s the chain expanded across the Chicago suburbs and then nationally, adding furniture to its housewares base. It became one of the first American retailers to make European contemporary design accessible at moderate prices, and its catalog operation, launched in the 1970s, extended its reach beyond store markets.

The 1990s brought the ownership transition that still defines the company. Otto Group, the German catalogue and ecommerce group, became majority shareholder in 1998. Gordon Segal remained as chief executive until his retirement in 2008, closing a 46-year run by the founding family. Otto Group completed its acquisition of the remaining shares in 2011, making Crate and Barrel a wholly owned subsidiary.

Brand building under Otto ownership followed a segmentation strategy. The company acquired The Land of Nod children's furnishings business in 2001, rebranding it Crate&kids in 2018. CB2 had been launched internally in 2000 as a modern-format sister brand and expanded across US and Canadian cities. In 2019 the group bought Hudson Grace, a San Francisco entertaining and tabletop brand founded in 2012, adding a boutique-tier nameplate.

Leadership has rotated several times in the 2010s and 2020s, with Neela Montgomery serving as CEO from 2017 and Janet Hayes appointed chief executive in 2020. The company has continued investing in omnichannel retail, opening flagship-format stores including a four-level location in New York's Flatiron district in 2024, while franchise partners operate stores in markets such as the Middle East, Southeast Asia, and Latin America.

The company publishes group-level commitments covering responsible sourcing of wood and other materials, packaging reduction, and supplier labor standards. Its vendor code requires compliance with labor and safety norms across its 40-plus sourcing countries. As with all private-company sustainability reporting, these are first-party disclosures without an independent certification umbrella such as B Corp status.

Crate and Barrel has no verified third-party sustainability certification at the corporate level as of November 2026. Consumers researching the company's claims should treat its published reports as self-reported data.