Ted Baker to close 11 stores
Ted Baker is set to close 11 underperforming stores, after the fashion retailer called in administrators last month.
Stores in Birmingham Bullring, Bristol, Bromley, Cambridge, Exeter, Leeds, Liverpool One, London Bridge, Milton Keynes, Nottingham, and Oxford are set to close by 19 April.
The Authentic Brands Group (ABG)-owned retailer has also cut 25 jobs within head office roles.
The closing stores are described as loss-making, and following review by the administrators, are deemed to have no prospect of returning to profitability.
Ted Baker’s administrators have thus deemed the closures to be a necessary step in ensuring the retailer can begin profitably trading in the future.
The retailer called in administrators from Teneo Financial Advisory last month.
Benji Dymant, joint administrator, said: “Ted Baker is an iconic British brand with strong partners around the world. These store closures, whilst with a regrettable impact on valued team members, will improve the performance of the business, as Authentic continues to progress discussions with potential UK and European operating partners for the Ted Baker brand to bring the business back to health.
“We would like to thank Ted Baker team members and partners for their ongoing efforts and support at this difficult time.”
Since Ted Baker’s founder, Ray Kelvin, left the company in 2019 amid claims of inappropriate behaviour, it has issued a number of profit warnings and went into the COVID-19 pandemic from a difficult financial position
The retailer was de-listed from the London Stock Exchange in 2022 after it was bought by ABG for about £210m. A subsequent brand licensing partnership with Dutch company AARC was also recently abandoned.
Last year, a restructuring process saw the retailer let go of around 200 members of its head office staff.
It then secured a long-term lending facility from asset-based lender Secure Trust Commercial Finance. It was hoped that the facility would have provided a “platform for growth” for Ted Baker.