Asos to close US distribution centre with customers served from Barnsley instead
Online fashion retailer Asos will close its distribution centre in Georgia, USA, in another effort to boost profitability and streamline operations.
From late this year, US customers will be served from Asos’ automated UK fulfilment centre in Barnsley, and through a “smaller, more flexible local US site”, the company said.
The Atlanta warehouse will be shut in the second half of the year and then sold following a multi-year warehouse automation project.
It expected a £10m-20m benefit to pre-tax earnings from 2026, but noted a £190m impairment this year. Its share price rose 1.7 per cent in early trades, although it has fallen by more than 11 per cent since the start of this year.
The seven directly affected Asos employees will be “offered alternative roles where feasible”, while the firms’s logistics partners will “make efforts” to redeploy several hundred staff to nearby sites.
The fashion giant said the move will improve the variety of clothes on offer to its US customers, as well as lowering the total fulfilment cost per order.
“Asos remains excited about the opportunity in the US market and believes that its new operating model will better serve its US customer-base, while generating a better return on investment,” the company said.
The move comes after Boohoo made a similar decision last year.
Asos’ streamlining continues
The e-commerce giant reported an operating loss of £331.9m for the year to 1 September, 2024, widening its year-on-year loss.
In its results, Asos said its long restructuring process had been completed, with the “foundations of more agile and profitable business now in place.”
This included jobs cuts, inventory reductions and streamlining. It also refinanced hundreds of millions in debt and sold its stake in Topshop into a joint venture.
José Antonio Ramos Calamonte, Asos’s chief executive officer, said the company was in “the strongest position it has been in years.”
But this move suggests there may be more to do.