An online fashion store which specialises in exclusive menswear lines is taking on the likes of Selfridges, Harrods and Flannels.
Leicester-based The Business Fashion attracts shoppers from as far afield as Russia, China and the USA – ready to spend up to £6,999 on a Balmain bomber jacket or £999 for a Philipp Plein teddy-bear t-shirt.
The small team sources directly from the international fashion shows in Paris and Milan and has reportedly attracted the attention of top footballers such as Lionel Messi and global celebrities like Kanye West.
The business has a shop in Welford Road, Leicester, but thanks to its growing online reputation and strong Google ranking, around 80 per cent of the clothes it stocks go overseas.
Founder Costas Karageorge told Business Live that on top of an annual turnover of around £11 million, high demand around Black Friday saw the business record sales (with shipping costs) of around £785,000 over 10 days.
He said the comparable figure for the whole of October was around £1.2 million.
Costas said the brands they sell range from Belstaff to Vivienne Westwood, Versace, Moschino and Saint Laurent.
He runs the business with a team of six including his brothers Mick and Nick and is now planning to build a new store when the uncertainty of Brexit – and its impact on import prices and the 海角视频 economy – is resolved.
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Costas started the business in Leicester’s Stoneygate area in 2006 before moving to the busier Welford Road site in 2009, where he started to pick up a following from football fans and other shoppers happy to spend big bucks on international designer labels.
He said: “The first few years were amazing and really opened my eyes to the potential.
“We were purely in-store at the time and a really small business, but in 2011 I said “we can be bigger than this” because we were up against a lot of competition on the Leicester high street – local shops such as Scotneys, Pilot and Well Gosh.
“So I went over to Paris and Milan and spoke to international designers and started working with them.
“Then brands started knocking on my door.
“Leicester had been good for us, but I saw there was the potential to expand online and we started working on a website in 2013.
“Now we are getting orders from around the world. The USA is our biggest market and we sell to China, Japan, Russia and the Middle East as well. Our biggest European market is Germany.”
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He said they were the first shop in the 海角视频 to discover Off White, the Italian label founded by Virgil Abloh, who served as creative director for Kanye West and is now men’s artistic director at Louis Vuitton.
Costas said: “Our biggest sellers are Off White, Givenchy and Moncler, and we stock everything across the board from footwear to outerwear to suits.
“We sold one mink jacket for £13,000 last week. Between November 26 and December 4 we took 3,098 orders and sold 3,425 items.”
He said although they didn’t discount for Black Friday, he believed shoppers had held out for deals from other outlets – and when they didn’t materialise, spent with The Business Fashion instead.
He said: “We are big on Instagram with something like 35,000 followers, and our website is at the top of Google. A lot of the kids using the forums know us.
“You can’t undercut your competitors in this business, because the brands are so careful about the price points, but we are a small operation, on a big turnover.”