I’m not sure I get why people are fighting to buy these brands? Aren’t their best days very much behind them especially if they are going online only.

And the new buyers – BooHoo and ASOS are already massive online with the same customer who would have shopped at these places. Seems like they will end up competing against themselves or become like Sports Direct where all the old premium brands go to die! Like Pierre Cardin – from acclaimed fashion designer to his name being used to x4 Polos for £10!

Is there access to historic design rights that has value?

I guess they have done the math and think so.

If the old sites still have high numbers of daily hits, they can soak up all that traffic.

There will be a demographic who have shopped with Debenhams, Top Shop etc in store and on line but who wouldn’t think of looking on Boohoo, Asos, Missguided or wherever. So one of those buys the brand, use it as a front on line but fulfil using all your current infrastructure and you get access to new markets for relatively little cost. Hopefully (for them) they end up getting more dosh than they spent on the brand. Not so good for the empty high streets and former employees though.

All the out of work teams can work in fulfillment for the website all sorted.

One of the main reasons I saw given (from a retail expert on the tellybox) for BooHoo buying Debenhams was that they’d been looking for a while to expand and compliment their clothing by also offering large ranges in areas like perfumes and cosmetics etc.

Which makes perfect sense.

Debenhams was already a big player in this area with a recognised and established brand and contracts with all the big name suppliers in the industry

Isn’t this sort of what happened to Karrimor and Field and Trek?

Used to be very successful in their day. Once the business failed the names were still worth something as logos on cheap stuff peddled by Sports Direct.

Perhaps to do a Philip Green? – rout out the pension pots of the employees, asset strip the remnants of the brands before discarding the metaphorical carcas and passing the pension liability onto the tax payers. Once completed, pick up your OBE before swanning off to order a new massive yacht with your “earnings”.

And they may possibly have bought up lots of intellectual property, back-end systems, better infrastructure for future scaling with an established team (they are retaining quite a few jobs).

It’s like when Morrisons bought that babycare online brand – they didn’t care about getting into babycare, they were simply able to buy a business with an already well established eCommerce system in place for less than it would have cost in time and effort to do it themselves (at the time Morrisons had no online offering).

Isn’t this sort of what happened to Karrimor and Field and Trek?

No one could do as bad a job as Ashley, took decent brands and pulled them down to his level…

Perhaps to do a Philip Green?

Bit late, all the liabilities have been stripped off by the liquidation. You just buy the assets you want and leave the debts behind.

And they may possibly have bought up lots of intellectual property, back-end systems, better infrastructure for future scaling with an established team (they are retaining quite a few jobs).

BooHoo and Asos already have far better back end systems and online business supporting infrastructure. Being really crap at all that stuff was in (a fairly large) large part why Debenhams and Arcadia failed in the first place.

^^ I did say *may possibly* – businesses are often bought in order to gain access to established systems but what I said was merely an example of the kind of thing they may possibly want access to 😉

You’ve buying the marketing database and sales analysis, and any contracts with suppliers worth retaining, get some decent employees. Flog the remaining stock, get a third party to eBay it if you have to

I would never think of buying anything from ASOS but have bought many a suit and shirt from Debenhams.

Debenhams is a trusted brand that anyone 40 or over trusts and would turn to for clothing.

Thats why they bought it. Market domination

^^ I did say *may possibly* –

Yes you did, but in this case I don’t think you’re right, big billy bollocks business man that I am. 😁 Now if Debehams had been buying Boohoo, you’d have a strong argument! 👍

Strangely i havent bought anything from any of the brands , as theyre seen as older peoples brands/shops and bright young things internet stores, will stick to Sports direct and Primark

footflaps
No one could do as bad a job as Ashley, took decent brands and pulled them down to his level…

I think you mean took a failed brand, if Karrimor management hadn’t cocked it up in the first place then perhaps it would still be going.

Debenhams is a trusted brand that anyone 40 or over trusts and would turn to for clothing.

if Karrimor management hadn’t cocked it up in the first place then perhaps it would still be going.

Indeed. As with Debenhams.

Being just their target demographic, Debenhams was my default for clothes. The reason was because of the concessions they had in there… John Roscha, Jasper Conran, Jeff Banks, Ted Baker where you could buy really nice stuff at reasonable prices, particularly when they had sales on.

You could head to one shop and try a range of decent brands and always get sorted. Surely the whole point of a department store?

Then a few years ago, some bright spark in their management decided they were going to get rid of all that, boot the concessions out and just sell their own brand stuff instead and a small selection of crap brands

As business decisions go it was monumentally stupid and utterly inexplicable.

I’ve never set foot in the place since.

They went bust for a very good reason

You could head to one shop and try a range of decent brands and always get sorted. Surely the whole point of a department store?

See, that does nothing for me at all. If I want a shirt I want to go to the shirt section, not hunt around 10 different ones.

I think you’re massively overestimating the effort I’m prepared to put into clothes shopping. It’s not a half a mile walk between them. 😉

They’re literally next to each other in the same section of the same building.

That was the whole point. You could just go to one shop and be pretty much guaranteed to get sorted.

Not any more. After they got rid of them I just ordered stuff direct online from the people who used to have their concessions in Debenhams. Looks like everybody else did too