Calida

Calida is a Swiss underwear, nightwear and loungewear brand founded in 1941 in Sursee, in the canton of Lucerne. It began as a knitwear factory set up by Max Kellenberger and Hans Joachim Palmers, and it is now the core brand of the listed Calida Group, which also owns the French lingerie house Aubade.

A knitting mill with a borrowed name

The company did not start out as Calida. It was registered in 1941 as Strickwarenfabrik Sursee AG, the Sursee knitwear factory. The Calida trademark already existed: it had been registered in 1929, twelve years before the factory opened. In 1946 the mark was transferred to the Sursee company, which then renamed itself Calida AG.

The word is close to the Latin "calidus", warm, and for a maker of knitted underwear and nightwear in an Alpine country the fit is obvious. But since the name predates the company, any story about the founders choosing it to describe their mission is a later gloss.

The Kellenberger family has stayed involved for more than eighty years. In August 2021 it still held 34.1% of the shares.

Cotton jersey, made to last

Calida's product is plain on purpose. The range covers women's, men's and children's underwear, pajamas and nightdresses, loungewear, and smaller lines in wool and silk and in temperature-regulating functional fabrics. Much of it is knitted cotton in fine jersey and rib constructions. The brand's current pitch is underwear that supports everyday life, built from good materials and designed to stay presentable for years.

That is a different market from fashion lingerie. A Calida customer is buying a nightshirt or a pack of briefs to replace the same thing bought three years earlier. Durability, fit after washing and the feel of the waistband carry more weight than seasonal color. Collections are still developed at the headquarters in the Sursee area, with the corporate address in neighboring Oberkirch.

Production moves east

Calida stopped manufacturing in Switzerland in 2005. Its garments now come from the company's own production platform in Hungary and other facilities in Eastern Europe, along with suppliers in the Far East. The brand still presents itself as Swiss, which it is in ownership, design and headquarters, though not in the sewing.

Building a group, then trimming it

Calida went public on the Swiss stock exchange in 1987. Over the next three decades it used that listing to buy.

The first big purchase was Aubade in 2005. The French brand, founded in 1958, brought something Calida lacked: fashion lingerie with a strong image and premium prices. In 2014 Calida took a 60% stake in Lafuma, a French outdoor group whose brands included Millet, Eider, Oxbow and Lafuma Mobilier, the garden-furniture maker. By 2018 the group reported revenue of 409 million Swiss francs and nearly 3,000 employees.

Then it reversed course. Millet Mountain Group was sold in 2022 and Lafuma Mobilier in 2024. In 2022 Calida bought the German textile company Erlich Textil, then abandoned it in 2023. The same year it acquired the American label Cosabella, founded in Miami in 1983.

Cosabella did not stay long. On July 23, 2026, Calida completed the sale of the brand, its trademarks and its inventory to Crown Brands Group of New York for an undisclosed price. In the first half of that year Cosabella's revenue had fallen 36.6%, to 4.3 million francs. The company said the sale simplified its portfolio and let it concentrate on Calida and Aubade.

Calida at 85

The group that remains is much smaller than its peak. Revenue in 2025 was 215.9 million francs, with 1,883 employees, and by mid-2026 staff numbers were around 1,810. Two brands are left: a Swiss maker of everyday cotton underwear and nightwear, and a French lingerie house it has owned for over twenty years. In 2026 Calida marked 85 years since the Sursee knitting mill opened, selling much the same kind of product it began with.

Last updated October 1, 2026