One of the UK’s fastest growing and most profitable fashion retailers, New Look offers desirable and affordable own-label clothing to its core target audience of fashion-conscious women and men. Its product range translates the latest fashions from the catwalk, from celebrities and from the street into wearable clothes for the mass market, and includes a broad range of fashion-led garments, complementary footwear, and accessories such as bags, jewellery, sunglasses, belts as well as swimwear and lingerie.

This year is the brand’s 40th anniversary and in October, it celebrated with a cocktail party at its new, bespoke London showroom at Wells and More HQ. Here, the company entertained guests including celebrities such as face of AW 2009, Kimberley Walsh of Girls Aloud fame; Giles Deacon, who designs the exclusive ‘Gold’ collection and ex-Atomic Kitten Liz McClarnon.

The company is advantaged at mitigating the perceived ‘fashion risk’ in the sector given a unique brand positioning based around fashion excitement, value and newness, whilst possessing best-in-class sourcing and a world-leading supply chain. It also maintains a ruthless focus on simple and clear levers to deliver success.

Operating via a multi-channel infrastructure that includes 589 owned stores in the UK (excluding Eire), 359 in international markets, as well as 32 franchise stores, and a leading
e-commerce site, New Look is a leading financial performer, as evidenced by best-in-class profit growth over the last five years.

Internationally, it operates 54 owned stores under the New Look brand in Eire (26), France (20), Belgium (7) and Holland (1), and 305 under the Mim banner in France (298) and Belgium (7).

Its franchise operations are predominantly located in the Middle East, and New Look currently has 32 franchise stores throughout seven countries (UAE, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Egypt, Russia and Singapore).

“We seek to follow the franchise development route for clusters of international markets where we perceive that we lack some of the required skills and experience necessary for success in the market, or higher risk during the development phase,” explains New Look CEO, Carl McPhail. “We may look to convert some franchises to owned stores over time if the market cluster develops significant long-term profit potential.”

The company has opened 23 new stores so far this year (since April 2009), three in the UK, 13 internationally and seven new franchises. Most recently, it has opened its first new store in Rotterdam, Holland and entered the new franchise markets of Russia, Egypt and Singapore.

“We anticipate opening another 30-35 stores over the remainder of our financial year (to March 2010), of which around 20-25 will be owned and around ten franchises,” says McPhail. “Most notably, we intend to enter the Polish market for the first time as part of our franchise expansion plans.”

RLI asked McPhail if there was any one store that he considered to be the company’s ‘flagship’?

“Our store at Westfield London represents us best at the moment,” he replied. “This was the store we did immediately after our concept store in Liverpool last year and is the template for the 50-store ‘look and feel’ investment that is currently taking place.” Other stores that reflect the brand particularly well at the moment include Les Halles
in Paris and the Dubai Mall.

The company believes there remains significant capacity in the UK for further retail space under the New Look brand, in part through openings in new markets, but most significantly through relocations in existing markets to right size stores for the market potential, supported by continued range development in exciting growth areas such as Menswear and Kidswear.

Similar to its experience in the UK, New Look is increasingly focused on a property development strategy which targets broadly prime locations in the top retail venues within a geographic market, with store formats designed to allow the full brand proposition to be delivered to local customers. McPhail is confident that this will allow even stronger growth to be driven out of these markets going forwards.

For the full article please see the RLI November 09 issue