After a challenging year of consolidation, Aurora Fashions is focused on the task at hand – to take its portfolio of well-respected brands to a wide audience. RLI talks to Group Property Director Ian Dudley to talk about the group’s plans for international expansion

Owning and managing the performance of some of the UK’s most respected women’s fashion brands – Karen Millen, Coast, Warehouse and Oasis. Aurora Fashions is focused on providing an environment where each individual brand operates independently, whilst optimising economies of scale by sharing a common infrastructure.
Including concessions and own-stores, the group currently operate across some 1,500 stores in 45 countries worldwide, from Australia, right across the Middle East, to the UK, Europe and USA
2009 was very much a year of consolidation for Aurora, as it stripped out any loss-making UK stores to create a cleaner estate, rationalised its infrastructure, consolidated its distribution operations from three sites into one, migrated all of its four brands to a single IT platform and completed a comprehensive cost reduction programme.
In the first half of the year, there were 27 new UK openings, including six new standalone stores, with all four of the group’s brands opening in Aberdeen and Warehouse also opening stores in Livingstone and York.
The Group has also added a further 21 UK concessions in its major department store partners that include John Lewis, House of Fraser and Debenhams.

“We also moved four brands into St David’s in Cardiff towards the end of 2009, says Group Property Director Ian Dudley. “We chose to do some quite interesting shopfits as well, with a number of larger units than we normally undertake, and have been delighted with the results.
“Concessions are an important part of our business and are often a route for Aurora to gain entry into markets and then grow to standalone stores. In Spain, we started with three sites; we now have 20 sites in just six months – the brand is just flying out of the door over there. This is a way to effectively ‘pilot’ a new country,” he says.

Internationally, the aim is to focus on the growth and development of the Aurora brands. Of the 150 international outlets Aurora opened in 2009, 83 are company-owned stores and 67 are franchise stores. A substantial proportion of the company-owned expansion is in mainland Europe with 40 openings in Germany and a further 41 planned for 2010.

The Group’s international expansion will continue with two new standalone openings in the US taking Karen Millen to 14 stores in the market. “We have just signed for two new stores in Chicago and Seattle, and are also looking to expand Karen Millen across Central Europe,” says Dudley. “We are interested in opportunities in Holland Belgium, Germany and France. Of course we are also looking for similar opportunities for our other brands in those countries”
Aurora already has stores in Russia through its franchise partner, which have been very successful and trade extremely well, and continued growth is planned throughout Eastern Europe, in Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary.

For the full article please see the RLI March 2010 issue