Arcadia plans foreign store closures - report

By

Sandra Halliday

Published
Apr 8, 2019

As Arcadia looks at store closures in its key UK market, the company is also planning to close a raft of stores abroad, setting the seal on the failure of its once-ambitious global expansion plan, according to reports.

The firm’s international ops had already run into trouble with the much-publicised failure of its Australian operation in 2017 and last year’s exit from China having come at a time when other fashion retailers such as Inditex and H&M were continuing to grow abroad.

But the Sunday Telegraph reported that Arcadia boss Sir Philip Green is mulling the closure of stores in the US, Australia, Germany, Holland and Ireland. The company has 1,170 shops in 36 countries outside the UK, a large number of them department store concessions and franchises. 

The company has been in the US for a decade and in 2012 sold 25% of the American operation to investment house Leonard Green. The fact that there are still only 15 US stores suggests that the operation hasn’t achieved what had been hoped in that country.

Arcadia doesn’t break out sales by country but said in its last set of available results (for 2017) that international sales dropped by almost 20% to £241.5 million. The environment since then has only got tougher.

The Australian operation currently has only three stores (in Sydney, Melbourne and Bondi Junction) compared to the nine it previously had. The company had already closed its Japanese stores four years ago and last summer ended its Chinese franchise deal that had been signed with a view to opening a large chain in the country.