Wolford shrinks losses as sales rise, US and online are strong

By

Sandra Halliday

Published
Sep 8, 2017

Good news at last for Wolford as the beleaguered high-end bodywear and hosiery specialist turned in “stabilised” results for Q1, the three months from May to July. Not that the Austrian firm is out of the woods yet as the company was still lossmaking, although its losses were smaller this time.

That must be some relief for the business that has seen a succession of weak results in recent years. So what happened in Q1? Well let’s get the bad news out of the way first. Operating losses were €7.22 million and the net loss was €6.9 million, But given that those two figures were €8.08 million and €8.03 million a year ago, things are clearly improving, albeit not fast enough.

The company expects to remain lossmaking this financial year but to become profitable the year after.

It was a much better story on the turnover front. On a currency-neutral basis revenues were up 4.9% to €29.09 million and retail sales rose 6%. Wholesale was up too, albeit by a less impressive 2.2%.

But it was online where the best performance was seen with sales up a powerful 28% as improved product availability and “successful marketing campaigns” started to have an effect.

Also encouraging, the US market that is so important to the brand saw a “particularly strong” performance and enjoyed double-digit revenue growth with online sales being key here. That’s even more encouraging given that many higher-end European firms have cited the US as one of their weaker markets in recent periods.

Europe itself did well for the brand too, the company citing double-digit uplifts in  Spain, the Netherlands, and East European and single-digit rises in Italy, Scandinavia, Asia, Austria, Germany, and Switzerland.

But the UK was an under-performer (down in double-digits) as three store closures and the weak pound dented turnover, while both France and Belgium fell in single-digits.