Fourth quarter disappoints for Superdry brand
JULIAN DUNKERTON, chief executive of SuperGroup, yesterday insisted the brand remained strong and “was looking forward to the future” after reporting disappointing fourth quarter sales.
The owner of the SuperDry fashion label posted flat like-for-like sales in the 13 weeks to 29 April, blaming challenging retail conditions and poor weather in April.
Last month SuperGroup lost over a third of its market value after issuing its third profit warning in a year, which it attributed in part to “arithmetic errors” and lowered its profit guidance for the year from £50m to £43m.
This was yet another blow after warehousing issues last autumn that left stores short of stock.
SuperGroup has made recent efforts to bolster its management team by appointing retail veteran Susanne Given to the newly created role of chief operating officer, which Dunkerton yesterday said would “increase professionalism”.
“We have grown at 675 per cent over the last four years. We needed the structure of the company to catch up and we have made some key appointments to make sure that the growth is steady and solid,” he said.
Dunkerton said the retailer, which has 79 standalone stores, has been impacted by more consumers buying through discount, or “offprice”, outlets and sites like eBay, affecting its gross margin.
Wholesale sales growth slowed to 4.4 per cent in the quarter due to expansion of its retail estate in the UK and the acquisition of a franchise business in Europe. Total sales grew by 14 per cent to £75.2m boosted by new stores.