While longer-established names like Marks & Spencer, John Lewis and Next are often taken as good barometers of UK retailing, there is a case for saying that no one company better provides a snapshot of how the sector is faring than Frasers Group.
Mike Ashley‘s combine owns more than 40 consumer-facing brands, including Sports Direct – still the biggest part of the business – House of Fraser, Flannels, Game, Evans Cycles, Jack Wills, Gieves & Hawkes, Agent Provocateur, Cruise, Van Mildert and Sofa.com, not to mention a clutch of sports equipment and sports and leisurewear brands including Slazenger, Sondico, No Fear, Donnay, Everlast and Karrimor.
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A key retail bellwether
It also owns stakes in a host of other retailers and fashion brands, including Hugo Boss, AO World, Currys, ASOS, and Boohoo.com.
Not content with operating stores and retail brands, the group – which occupies more than 20 million square feet of stores, warehouses and office space – has increasingly been buying property in recent years, including Luton’s Mall shopping centre, Dundee’s Overgate Centre and the CBS Arena, home to Coventry City FC.
More recently, it has been linked with the acquisition of a 50% stake in Exeter’s Princesshay estate, which would make it a joint venture partner with the Crown Estate for the first time.
All of these moving parts make Frasers, arguably, just as much a retail bellwether as the likes of M&S.
The ‘multi-retailer’ – a hard-to-assess company
So many different retailing propositions, delivered over so many different platforms and formats, also make it a difficult business to assess at times.
As Clive Black, head of consumer research at investment bank Shore Capital and the City’s most renowned retail-watcher, put it in a client note this morning: “How does one describe Frasers succinctly? Multi-faceted, multi-asset, multi-investment, the ‘multi-retailer’.”
That said, as Mr Black noted,…
