Administrators are now in charge at Missguided after the fashion retailer failed in the face of mounting costs and softening consumer confidence.
Teneo Financial Advisory was appointed yesterday to run the company, which is continuing to trade as administrators look for a buyer. Teneo says there is a high level of interest in buying the company, which it says has suffered from “increased supply chain costs, general cost inflation and softening consumer confidence in an increasingly competitive market”.
The retail brand will continue to trade while the joint administrators – Dan Smith, Daniel Butters and Benji Dymant – look to complete a sale of the business and its assets.
Gavin Maher, senior managing director of Teneo, says: “As we continue to see, the retail trading environment in the UK remains extremely challenging. The joint administrators will now seek to conclude a sale of the business and assets, for which there continues to be a high level of interest from a number of strategic buyers. We thank all employees and other key stakeholders for their support at this difficult time.”
Missguided was founded by Nitin Passi in 2009 to sell fashion to women aged between 18 and 34. The fast fashion retailer sells exclusively own brand clothing, with about 400 new lines a week developed by an in-house design team to reflect emerging new trends. Today it serves 3m active customers online, delivering to more than 180 countries around the world.
The Manchester-based retailer previously went through a restructuring process at the end of 2021 as it looked to better match its costs to its performance.
News of Missguided’s failure comes amid warnings that many small and medium-sized businesses could be at risk. The Federation of Small Businesses warned on Monday that almost half a million businesses could fail within weeks without government support. Consumer inflation hit 9% in April, as energy and petrol prices rose along with food prices.
Missguided is a Top250 retailer in RXUK Top500 research.
