Fast fashion retailer Missguided has reported sales of £117m in its latest financial year, 34% up on the same time last year, following a multichannel strategy of building global awareness and expanding its physical presence in stores. During the year it opened a 21,000 sq ft flagship store at Westfield, Stratford, and now has concessions in third-party stores including 60 branches of Nordstrom in the US, branches of Selfridges and Schuh. In today’s results statement Missguided said it the opening was the first in a pipeline of openings. It also grew awareness of its brand through wholesale partnerships with third-party retailers including Asos and Zalando, and is exploring further international opportunities.
Missguided, a Top150 retailer in IRUK Top500 research, said that investment in marketing, technology, infrastructure and team expansion had hit profits in the year just gone – earnings before tax, interest and asset depreciation fell to £2.6m in the year from £5.5m at the same time last year. But it said that that investment was now paying off, growing by 60% in the six months to September.
Nitin Passi, founder and chief executive of Missguided , said: “2015/2016 was a year of heavy investment for the company across all areas of the business. We continued to develop our systems and platform and made the strategic decision to outsource our fulfillment operation and to invest in a new warehouse and HQ.
“The business further invested in personnel adding 179 new employees to HQ. This has continued to date with 157 HQ staff added this financial year so far. We increased our product offering and launched a number of new categories including lingerie, nightwear, plus, petite and tall which have been received well.
“International growth has been strong with 40% of our business this year being driven through international markets. We have seen investment come to fruition for the start of this financial year where our current YoY growth is over 60% with a significant increase in EBITDA. We continue to invest in our omni channel offering with the recent launch of our first flagship store.”
Missguided said an aggressive marketing strategy had been paramount: a mix of above the line and below the line channels helped to drive growth. Social media was been particularly influential in helping to drive Missguided’s loyal client base, providing a platform for conversation between brand and customer.
The business now has over 3.3m followers across nine different channels – including more than 2m on Instagram, 995,000 on Facebook and 399,000 on Twitter.
A native app introduced during the year has so far been downloaded 1m times, while other strategic developments included localised German and Polish sites, the introduction of free UK returns, Apple Pay and new delivery programmes with Asda, Doddle and Collect Plus.
