The boss of premium department store chain Fenwick is working to make his stores luxury experiences for customers despite the company making a loss in the tough retail climate.
Fenwick has struggled to come to grips with the changing retail environment, which has led to sales in its stores falling from £411m to £355m for the year ending January 25.
According to CEO Robbie Feather, the drop in sales was caused by customers preferring to shop online. This has hit the firm hard in the past as until recently Fenwick did not operate an online store.
Last year the company embarked on a three-year transformation plan that aims to bring the company up-to-date with an all new sales website, as well as learning from the past by introducing new experiences in store. The changes are underway, with the company’s website going live in April.
Mr Feather said: “We have great content on the website and we are very excited about that. Customers are giving us positive feedback on being online.
“Because we are late to the party our website now talks to our store system so customer come online to check if something is available in store.”
Fenwick operates nine stores across the 海角视频, with each shop selling different ranges of products. The addition of the website means that the retailer is now able to sell these brands to new customers located in different areas, though the website launch came after the end of Fenwick’s financial year so failed to improve sales figures.
Before taking into account exceptional items and the value of the company’s properties, Fenwick made and operating loss of £17.3m. This compares with a profit figure of £6.5m during the previous year.
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But after taking in these other costs Fenwick’s ultimate loss after tax came in at £42.2m.
The company was hit by exceptional costs of £16.4m last year, which was largely attributed to its investment in IT system and website, as well as redundancy costs. The company made around 400 people redundant last year after it introduced plans to centralise much of its business operations.
The accounts also suffered from a £3.15m cost relating to a fall in the value of its stores, thought was slightly offset by an increase in the value of its investment properties, which grew by £25m.
Mr Feather explained that he expected the company to make a loss while it worked through its three-year transformation plans but was still wants to invest in the company’s stores, creating experiences that people will travel to enjoy.
He pointed to the food hall in Newcastle as an example, saying: “Strategically I don’t want to put in other people’s brands, I want to have our own experiences.
“That puts us back to what department stores were originally. They were unique, there were things of awe and wonder and the main attraction in the city. We are going back to the future and we need to go our own way, as we have proved in Newcastle with the food hall.”
He added: “It is not about bringing in other people’s high street experiences, we want to build on what we have created in the food hall. We are trialing a new restaurant concept on Bond Street that will open at the of October and we will hopefully bring that to Newcastle as well.
“It’s called the Brook Street Café. It is a new restaurant and a new creation. It has been created by our Newcastle team and Rhys McKinnell (Fenwick’s director of restaurants). We have Newcastle teaching Bond Street how to do restaurants.”