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Lagging digitally, Ted Baker is reeling from a year of closed stores

By Don-Alvin Adegeest

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Business

Image: Ted Baker

Department stores, airport concessions and high street boutiques were once the strength of Ted Baker’s bottom line. But as the pandemic ravished the retail industry, companies like Ted Baker, without a solid digital first strategy, were the first to suffer.

“If you set out to design a shop to do badly under coronavirus restrictions, you’d end up with something a lot like Ted Baker,” James Andrew, Personal Finance Expert at money.co.uk told FashionUnited.

“It’s reliance on physical stores - not infrequently in airports - while shops were shut and holidays outlawed. Concessions in department stores that are now in insolvency or closing branches. A focus on workwear as people set up home offices and special occasion outfits while weddings and other parties were banned.

The fashion retailer currently operates 182 stores and concession in the UK, taking its total to 521. Despite the drop in trading during lockdown when its stores were shuttered, the reopening of economies and wedding season has seen demand increase for its occasionwear.

Financial reporting after a nearly a full year of coronavirus implications saw Ted Baker’s revenue plummet 44 percent to 352 million pounds. Chief executive Rachel Osborne in a statement said: “While the impact of Covid-19 is clear in our results and has amplified some of the legacy issues impacting the business, Ted Baker has responded proactively and is in a much stronger place than it was a year ago.”

But as Andrews argues, Ted Baker was hardly thriving before the coronavirus, “issuing four profit warnings in 2019, not to mention the 58 million pound accounting error, and had already resolved to make changes to its business to rise again after a torrid few years saw its share price collapse by more than 90 percent between 2015 and the start of the pandemic.”

“The past 18 months have seen it accelerate its plans - launching partnerships with Next, reducing costs where possible, and pushing its online offering.“In order to restore faith and confidence in the company Ted Baker needs to keep going with its plans, and demonstrate they are working to make clear it still has a place in the post-pandemic world.”

Coronavirus
Ted Baker