The UK’s third largest retailer for women’s clothing, New Look, today bought 34 former Littlewooods stores in a £11m deal that will give it an additional 350,000 sq ft.
The supplementary floor space will be used for its children’s-wear range and newly introduced menswear line.
New Look had withdrawn from bidding for the same Litlewoods stores in July which were then bought by Associated British Foods who runs the hugely successful Primark chain.
Chief executive Phil Wrigley was happy with the deal saying a deal for such big spaces came on the market “very, very rarely”.
The company was looking to expand its total floor space (1.6m sq ft in 2004) to 2.4m sq ft.So far the fashion chain has already enhanced its trading space by 50 percent.
Each of the new stores is a lot bigger than most of the sites New Look already owned. Wrigley said the group planned to increase the number of shops that are bigger than 8,000 sq ft.
By March at least half of the chain’s total stores would have such large spaces allowing more room for new merchandise including new ranges and accessories, he said. In today’s deal, at least 40 percent of properties were bigger than 8,000 sq ft.
The group has 541 stores in the UK and also operates in France where it has 211 stores under the brand name Mim.
In the UK, it has been growing rapidly since a year and half ago when it was taken private by founder and now biggest shareholder Tom Singh.
Posted
on : Sat, 22 Oct 2005 12:10 GMT | Business News
By : Salim Patel
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