Member Info for ragtrade

For sure, Jjoo, the potential of the expanded demographic is massive, hence the investment in people in buying and design, demand must be there because some of the quantities we are receiving for SS22 are impressive, weekly meetings happening with all recently acquired Brands, all at last starting to consistently re build, up until till last few weeks it has been very chaotic and ad hoc, now however closer to following industry standard for the buying patterns re the demographic of these Brands. BTW keep an eye for an Indian/UK early harvest trade deal looming prior to FTA, not yet at forefront of many people's radar but my Business partner was in meeting last week in Southern India with Secretary to Indian Trade Minister and other interested parties, in this meeting they were told that behind the scenes the much anticipated early harvest is being mooted to be signed off on Textiles poss Shoes as soon as March 2022, this should result in min 9% saving depending on Cat, it bodes well for the whole sector and will be a welcome respite for costs which as we all know are going in the other direction.

Pmoran also a reason why its a waste of time even engaging, stuff taken out of context reposted , gaslighting all the time to try and prove a point, i gave up trying to reason, all he does now is troll, fortunately you dont have to read his diatribe (which does sometimes come with valid accountantcy relatedpoints ) i thoroughly recommend green screening anyone who appears to have issues. Anyway just dropped my oldest (daughter) off at Uni as well today, just about squeezed half of Ikea into her room.

Lets not forget fleagate

Jjoo i have a screen of green , quite right just ignore, i just don't feed the gas lighting troll and for which he appears to be upset that's all you need to know, matter closed.

Coal Drops is an experience, i agree it has little relevance outside the luxury market and of course as you say who would pay £6 for parking to go shopping to buy a pair of pants or socks when we all know you can browse thousands of colours on line. I guess my point is that to make the major H Streets attractive once more you need a version of CDY in order to make them relevant once more, we have gone from niche independents making town centres desirable to multiples then piling into them and saturating these centres, forcing the indie out, to then in many cases the Multiples moving to out of the town centres and leaving them to the charity shops and discounters, bereft of any experience and the Town Centre being a shadow of its former self. We may see our kids kids think it's a novelty to actually go to a store and try stuff on!! it's a long way off (if it ever comes) but the likes of Coal Drop should be an inspiration of what can be achieved albeit on a much smaller scale, anything is better than the current major H St and i include Oxford St in this.

Jjoo
Couldn't agree more, places like Hudson Yard and Coal Drops Yard are great examples, retail needs to be about the narrative and it needs to inspire because the experience really matters, at the mo it sadly lacking, just about every major H St in the UK looks tired and generic.

Pmoran, moving on, thought you and others may want to impress your other halves with some SS22 Colour knowledge when they next ask "Does my bum look big in this" ? you can reply
"Errrrr no and i love the colour, i've heard that Coral Rose is the new Black"
The full spectrum for SS22 from Pantone is:- Pastels and airy, light colours. Pinks and purples are set to be key trends, with Bubblegum, Potpourri, Orchid Bloom and Coral Rose all making it onto the list. Other top colours were the teal-like Cascade, Popcorn, vivid yellow-green Fragile Sprout, Sudan Brown, Coffee Quartz and Supersonic, a mid blue.
Five classic colours that can transcend seasons. This year, White Alyssum, Humus, Fair Green, soft grey Northern Droplet and Poppy Seed.
Your Welcome

Kallu bit harsh but i hear ya, i know Nick pretty well, hearts in right place he is not great orator but i do agree with his sentiment Asos ahead of the pack for this and path is set, . I am botn a supplier and investor bought in at 22 sold at 52, bought back in today at 30 , absolute steal as is Boo Hoo atm.

I'm getting green again after my posts, which means the trolling gas lighting ginger midget has come out from under his bridge, of course i maybe wrong and he could possibly be adding constructive points to the Sustainability Race chat, errrr then again nah, perhaps not, LoL.

Asos -Been ahead of the pack for sometime
Primark -Chasing Asos, getting closer
Boo Hoo -Trying hard but must try much harder, it's still early days, the important thing is that the will is there and the people are coming.
Shein -Mmmmmmm, where to start, Child Labour, forced Uyghur cotton this is basic basic stuff, if they are found wanting on this then what is really going on behind the screens eg water discharging, poor worker conditions which take many many many forms , won't change anytime soon, should a US IPO take place will the institutional investors even care, they should,

Drapers Today.
Asos' 2030 "fashion with integrity" programme is focused on minimising the etailer's impact on the planet, delivering positive benefits for people who work in fashion and meeting increasing demands from customers for greater choice in responsible fashion
https://www.drapersonline.com/news/asos-unveils-sustainability-goals-for-2030

Drapers yesterday.

https://www.drapersonline.com/news/primark-sets-out-ambitious-sustainability-strategy

@Kal
Clothes - boo sells trend clothes to fashion conscious people. This is a different demographic to Primark (have you not understood that yet). Also some clothing items are staples and not trend""

The above makes no sense what so ever ???
Quote " Boo sells Clothes to fashion conscious people ? then goes on in same paragraph to say "some clothing items are staples not trend "

Boo Hoo and PLT are fast fashion they very very rarely do basics or staples (wrong wording) in fact its the total opposite, their customer looks for newness, they are constantly changing the blocks (fit) and washes to hit a trend.
Debs much slower and def a big part of the offer across some of the Brands is basics (staples) eg Maine, this is why getting these Brands was a real coup as they can now offer to just about every demographic in UK.

Kal , as you know the public is made up of many different tastes and incomes.

I think we can all agree that we are entering another difficult decade, just when we thought we were emerging from the Banking crisis decade along comes another massive event to disrupt Government spending, borrowing and inflation, hindsight is a great thing and looking backwards requires no talent, all i know is that the fittest firms of clothing industry have survived both banking collapse and covid, the ones that have a clear message and generally speaking low borrowing (btw how New Look is still here is a miracle) have come through.
Primark now has less competition and being part of ABF managed to weather the Covid Storm but it is not without it's own issues, most of the stock you mention is from first lockdown, it's been in dry storage and was Spring stock at country of origin, this stock has a shelf life, if there is any left for SS22 it will be from 2 seasons ago, not ideal in the extremely competitive World of Fashion, this AW will by and large be Brand new stock and open to same issues as everyone else.
All business needs to remain pin sharp and both Paul Marchant and John Lyttle, who are pretty much from the same stable, can deliver this. I see room for both retail and o/l , especially given that market has consolidated.
Jon Bennett has moved across from Arcadia as sourcing Director to fill Andrew Reaneys old shoes at Primark, Jon will make waves, he will bring in a more directional supply base, still of course price driven but with emphasis on keeping it on trend which has been a massive challenge with old stock and long lead times. The Beauty of BH Group now is it's appeal to a incredibly wide cross section of society, most of whom are clueless as to who even owns these Brands now.

And to add and this is crucial, i said Q3/Q4 we will see impact because Debs was never oven ready, since i looked at the Womans Clothing offer figs today it's gone up twice!!! I mentioned AW21 would see inventory levels start to rise, this is now happening as it takes time and teams of people, on Debs Group Brands at least you will see a steady rise from now on in. Interestingly Next Womans offer totals some 36.5k odd lines over double that of Debs and of the 36,500 product lines on Next site only 3609 lines are pure Next Woman's, so in fact Debs actually has a bigger amount of own buy Brands by some considerable amount over x3, Next are having to hit the other Demographic Groups by other means, buying in or marketplace offer, in this outside Brand regard it also competes with other online players eg the Brand itself, Very etc and of course BH Group, Next outside Brand offer is really deep, Debs will be working to address this.

Just to emphasise my point about the offer and time it takes, have a look at the total Debs clothing offer on Woman's, today it sits at 16,240 products, of this appx total 12,468 is BH Group, the balance 3772 products will be made up of residual stock, Brands that Debs have bought and Marketplace fulfilment Model, total no of Brands is 75, Boo Group 17 Brands, at absolute most that leaves 58 Brands supplying 3772 products, or to put very simplistically another way appx 65 pcs per Brand. This has to and will def change because at mo they are barely making a impact.

Pmoran, spot on re shop front, you wouldn't put a Mannequin that's falling apart in a shop window, what you do is pay a professional window dresser to make your window look better than any of your competitors, in fact if you really want to attract people into your shop you employ the best most innovative window dresser to project your image not just showcase product. This is exactly what Asos learnt, poor photography means poor conversion rate and bad return rates, who would have thought a few years back that on many lines on Asos you would be seeing an actual Video with model wearing it and walking around in it to see how fabric moves and looks, as AoD said it's the micro levels that make a difference or as a say the sum of many many parts. BH are getting there and the people they are employing fully u/s this and buying in Hasselblad Cameras will be on their radar but i suspect list is a long one but from what i'm seeing at the mo they will get there, in fairness the day they bought Debs/ Burtons /DP's they had to start the BH/PLT journey all over again as a Group and currently i'm seeing they have just left Base Camp but at least they have most of the Kit now required to get to Camp 1 and 2 before going on to the summit, it's a long bloody journey with few more Camps and a ton of crevices !!

Just want to reiterate my opinion on BH Group, obviously this is not the company it was this time last year, this can be quite hard to get your head around if you still see BH / PLT as the main money drivers, the Brands they now have mean the demographic they can attract is huge and add in the Marketplace Brands then you can see how it has the means to attract a very very wide audience , however if you take a quick look at lets say, Mens Jeans, then you will see that of the 307 lines on offer at mo only 25 are non BH Group Brands, that 25 is made up of just 4 outside Brands, of these outside Brands Lee and Wrangler will have been bought by BH to full fill, the other two maybe full filled by the actual Brand themselves but this totals just 5 lines!!! So why is this important, well it shows that out of 307 lines only possibly 5 (at a push) are so called Marketplace fulfilment model, to conclude my point, everything takes a ton of time in this industry a massive amount of patience is required for anyone going LT on this, they are taking on people in all areas, i mentioned back in spring that this was essential, it's happening and it is now having an impact on buying inventories. I do think this company has massive potential but it will not happen overnight and was never oven ready. In Q4 we should start to see how much traction each area is achieving , if this BH Group can start firing on all cylinders on all micro levels then it start to really eat into the likes of Next, which is overdue !! . Finally costs are def a problem, this is true for every part of the industry tho, key point here is that BH Group now has the Brands to at least mitigate some of this, where as the real value sector e.g. likes of Primark in short term at least are def more vulnerable.

Arrrr yes Pjf i have a screen of green from the Troller Danman , ignore him, he's just bitter amongst many other things.

For the record i supply BH Group and have long term faith in the Brands that they are building, as i said back when they did deal with the admin's it will take time, what worried me was the recruitment but teams they are putting together looking pretty strong and as AoD has said it's all the micro that will make up these Brands and so far so good from my meets with them.

Or Bob Coote, Miles Gray?