Redundancies planned at Joules HQ

Next teamed up with Tom Joule to buy Joules out of administration for £34 million last December

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Tom PegdenLeicester Mercury business editor

14:54, 25 APR 2023
Updated17:42, 25 APR 2023

Joules founder Tom Joule outside the Market Harborough High Street store

Redundancies are set to be made at the Joules headquarters in Market Harborough, under plans to absorb a number of key roles into the head office of joint owner Next.

Neither Next or Joules has said how many jobs are involved but affected workers will be invited to apply for replacement jobs at Next's Enderby headquarters, near Leicester.

Next teamed up with Tom Joule to buy Joules out of administration for £34 million last December. Mr Joule – who launched Joules in 1989 – formed a joint venture with the high street clothes giant to buy the business and its assets, at the time keeping around 100 stores open and protecting almost 1,500 jobs.

Next owns 74 per cent of the equity with the remaining 26 per cent owned by Mr Joule.

Next also acquired Joules’ Harborough head office – which opened in 2021 following a £20 million investment – for £7 million cash. The two headquarters are about 20 miles apart.

A spokeswoman for Joules said they would not be disclosing numbers, but said: “We have announced an accelerated and extended transition of many of Joules’ internal services to Next.

"This means that many of the Joules support functions will transition to Next at the end of October 2023.

"Whilst we are unfortunately making some redundancies, we have a very strong partnership with our friends at Next, not far away in Enderby and we’ll be exploring job opportunities there for our impacted colleagues. We hope to mitigate as many redundancies as possible in this way.”

In a statement to the Stock Exchange, Next said it was speeding up its plans to integrate Joules onto its Total Platform – which already provides it with website, warehousing, distribution, contact centre services, online advertising and retail services.

Next said the integration of things such as budgeting, contract management, imports and freight planning, as well as finance, payments, accounting and HR would now be brought forward from next March to this October.

Joules will remain a separate company, with its own board and management led by Tom Joule, but the central Joules team would be “entirely focused on product, marketing and brand development”. That will include design, buying, garment-technology and merchandising; photography, branding, social media and PR, shows and events; website content and design; wholesale and third party sales.

Next said delivering much broader Total Platform services to Joules meant savings would be significantly greater than originally anticipated.

It said: “As a result of these changes, a number of tasks performed by Joules personnel will be absorbed into Next teams or no longer be needed.

“Joules is in the process of consulting with colleagues to let them know how they will be affected.

“Where roles are no longer required, Next will be working with those affected to ensure that they are considered for any suitable vacancies at Next, whose head office is located close to Joules' headquarters in Market Harborough.

“It is anticipated that those remaining with Joules (i.e. the senior management, product and marketing teams) will continue to work from Joules' existing offices.”

Next was invited to comment.