Lavish Alice wholesale enters administration, thriving webstore to continue

By

Nigel TAYLOR

Published
Feb 24, 2023

UK-based fashion brand Lavish Alice is set to go digital after its wholesale arm, Fashion Collections International (FCI), suffered a catalogue of operational issues, forcing it into administration.

The Manchester-based company, founded by Matthew Newton and Lee Bloor in 2011, will now operate as a pureplay digital brand following a restructure, reported BusinessLive.

Quantuma has been appointed to oversee the administration of FCI with the directors saying the move was made voluntarily, adding none of the 20 employees at its head office are impacted by the collapse.

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In a statement, Lavish Alice said that while its website has “experienced significant growth and revenue continues to thrive”, the wholesale arm of the business has “grappled” with historic global supply chain issues, increased freight costs, currency exchange losses, wholesale cancellations, and late delivery charges. The result was “squeezed” profit margins, causing “financial challenges”.

However, the company added it has now “streamlined its offering” as demand for the brand and website sales “are at a record high” with revenue up 71% year-on-year and by 76% on pre-pandemic levels, across 100,000 transactions.

It added: “[These] results are exceptional, and we’re excited to showcase our new SS23 RTW collection next week”.

It said that although wholesale revenue, through partnerships including Tessuti, Selfridges, Harvey Nichols, Saks Fifth Avenue, Bloomingdales, Nordstrom and ASOS, totalled more than £5 million and gross revenue reached over £17 million in 2022, “we took the difficult decision to prioritise our ongoing efforts and resource into the most profitable part of the business”.
 
The company added: “Our 'online-only' and 'online exclusive' proposition will bolster our D2C growth even further, with customers naturally crossing to us directly from our wholesale partners. The brand is now able to move forward with a renewed focus on our 600,000 strong D2C client list and we remain in a robust position to deliver on our significant growth plans for 2023.”