Shop Closures and Job Losses: Debenhams Is Purchased By Boohoo
It was announced yesterday that the online fashion retailer Boohoo has purchased the Debenhams brand and website for £55m. However, the agreed deal will still put up to 12,000 jobs at risk— with Boohoo stipulating that they only wanted the labels, not the Debenhams high street units. As a retail brand that traces its roots back to 1778, many will be sad to see Debenhams disappear from our local high streets. This poses yet another threat to the survival of traditional bricks-and-mortar retail in the UK.
Mahmud Kamani, Boohoo’s Executive Chairman, remarked: "This is a transformational deal for the group, which allows us to capture the fantastic opportunity as ecommerce continues to grow. Our ambition is to create the UK's largest marketplace. Our acquisition of the Debenhams brand is strategically significant as it represents a huge step which accelerates our ambition to be a leader, not just in fashion ecommerce, but in new categories including beauty, sport and homeware."
Debenhams’ online business is one of the top retail websites in the UK, taking £400m a year from a total of 300 million visitors. As Kamani says, the acquisition of Debenhams’ web platform will take Boohoo to the next level, broadening its age demographic and giving it access to new markets like beauty, homewares and sportswear.
At Fashion Roundtable we are incredibly concerned to hear of the continued loss of fashion retail jobs. This unemployment situation will disproportionately affect women due to the higher number female retail workers— retail’s gender profile is 58:42 women and men, whilst almost a third of retail employees are under 25 years old.
Boohoo have already bought a number of high street brands out of administration. It snapped up Oasis, Coast and Karen Millen, but not the associated stores adding to concerns about the diminishing number of retail jobs. Their latest acquisition coincides with the news that another online fashion retailer, Asos, is in talks to buy Topshop, Topman, Miss Selfridge and the athleisure label HIIT from Arcadia, which collapsed into administration late last year and employs around 13,000 workers.