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Dr Martens Slips into the Red; Says Festive Season Off to a Good Start

FILE PHOTO: People enter in a Dr. Martens store in Manchester, Britain, May 26, 2023. REUTERS/Jason Cairnduff/File Photo
FILE PHOTO: People enter in a Dr. Martens store in Manchester, Britain, May 26, 2023. REUTERS/Jason Cairnduff/File Photo
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Dr Martens Slips into the Red; Says Festive Season Off to a Good Start

FILE PHOTO: People enter in a Dr. Martens store in Manchester, Britain, May 26, 2023. REUTERS/Jason Cairnduff/File Photo
FILE PHOTO: People enter in a Dr. Martens store in Manchester, Britain, May 26, 2023. REUTERS/Jason Cairnduff/File Photo

Dr Martens said on Thursday that the autumn-winter festive season had got off to an encouraging start after the struggling bootmaker swung to a first-half pretax loss on weak demand in the United States, its biggest market.
Its shares, which have lost about a quarter of their value so far this year, rose 16% in early trade, Reuters reported.
The British company, whose chunky lace-up boots popularly known as "Docs" or "DMs" were originally made for workers before becoming a fashion statement in the 1960s, has been contending with a weak North American market and is betting on the festive season to shore up its sales and profit.
Dr Martens expects to make cost savings of about 25 million pounds ($31.64 million) in its fiscal year to end-March, 2026 with around two-thirds of that coming from job cuts.
The company reported a pretax loss of 28.7 million pounds for the six months ended Sept. 29, compared with a profit of 25.8 million pounds a year earlier. Revenue dropped 18% to 325 million pounds.
To halt the decline in profit at a time when consumers are shying away from pricy items such as the brand's $170 classic boots, Dr Martens has sought to cut costs while also increasing spending on US marketing.
"Our new marketing campaigns are showing encouraging early signs, with strong sales of new product, giving us confidence that we will return USA (direct-to-consumer) to positive growth in the second half," outgoing CEO Kenny Wilson said in a statement.
Wilson, who announced in April that he would step down, will be replaced by Chief Brand Officer Ije Nwokorie on Jan. 6, the company confirmed on Thursday.
It maintained its fiscal 2025 outlook of a single-digit percentage year-on-year revenue drop, with a worst-case scenario of pretax profit at around one-third of the previous year's.

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Fashion

Uniqlo’s Chief Says Fast Fashion Must Change with the Times

A woman walks past jumpers for sale at the latest flagship store to open by Fast Retailing clothing brand Uniqlo, in the Shinjuku district of central Tokyo on November 14, 2024. (AFP)
A woman walks past jumpers for sale at the latest flagship store to open by Fast Retailing clothing brand Uniqlo, in the Shinjuku district of central Tokyo on November 14, 2024. (AFP)
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Uniqlo’s Chief Says Fast Fashion Must Change with the Times

A woman walks past jumpers for sale at the latest flagship store to open by Fast Retailing clothing brand Uniqlo, in the Shinjuku district of central Tokyo on November 14, 2024. (AFP)
A woman walks past jumpers for sale at the latest flagship store to open by Fast Retailing clothing brand Uniqlo, in the Shinjuku district of central Tokyo on November 14, 2024. (AFP)

Forty years after its founding, Japanese clothing retailer Uniqlo has more than 2,500 stores worldwide. Sales at its parent company, Fast Retailing Co., recently topped 3 trillion yen ($20 billion) annually for the first time.

The name Uniqlo comes from joining the words for “unique” and “clothing.” The chain’s basic concept is “LifeWear,” or everyday clothing. Uniqlo parent Fast Retailing Co. Chief Executive Tadashi Yanai, ranked by Forbes as Japan’s richest man and estimated to be worth $48 billion, spoke recently to The Associated Press at the company’s Tokyo headquarters. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Q: What were the biggest challenges over the past 40 years?

A: Actually 40 years, upon reflection, went by so fast they feel more like three years. You know what they say in Japan: Time flies like an arrow. I started a regional business, then expanded nationwide.

When we became No. 2 or No. 3 in Japan’s casual wear, and being No. 1 was right within reach, we became a listed company in 1994. That was followed by our fleece boom, which doubled our revenue in one year to 400 billion yen ($2.6 billion).

I’d been thinking about going global when our revenue reached 300 billion yen ($2 billion) so we opened 50 stores in Great Britain, hoping to be a winner there just like we had conquered Japan.

Instead, we got totally knocked out.

We opened 21 outlets in a year and a half, but had to close 16 of them, leaving just five. We didn’t succeed as we had hoped. This is not an easy job. It’s very tough.

But these days, our sales are strongest in London, and also Paris. We made progress gradually.

Q: What are some of the sustainability and other key issues you have faced over the years?

A: We make clothes that last a long time. Not just clothes that last for one season.

The cashmere sweater I’m wearing today is $99. But please don’t say “cheap.” Please call it “reasonable.” We sell quality products at reasonable prices.

We’ve done various sustainability efforts, and we talk only about what we have really achieved.

Sustainability is crucial to our operations. And we’ve done just about everything — recycling, employing the disabled, support for refugees.

The prices may be cheaper at Wal-Mart, but our products offer real quality for the price. We take the greatest care and time, and involve a lot of people. Our rivals are more careless.

Q: What is behind Uniqlo’s success and what resonated with global buyers?

A: When we say Uniqlo is “made for all,” one might imagine products for the masses, like what’s at a Wal-Mart or a Target.

But what we mean is a high-quality product that appeals to all people, including the extremely rich, not only those with sophisticated taste and intelligence, but also people who don’t know that much about clothes, and the design is fine-tuned, the material fine quality, and sustainability concerns have been addressed.

We were first a retailer, then a manufacturer-cum-retailer. Now we are a digital consumer retailer. That is why we are successful. If we had stayed the same, then we can’t hope to succeed.

Being a digital consumer retail company means we utilize information at a high level to shape the way we do our work. We gain information about our customers, the workers at the store, the market, all that information.

Changing daily is the only way we can hope for stable growth. The world is changing every day.

Q: Are you confident you can keep it up another 40 years?

A: Of course. We’ve been preparing to reach 3 trillion yen ($20 billion) revenue all these years. And we are finally starting to be known. But we still have a long way to go.

We are just getting started, and we are going to keep growing. There is more potential for growth in Europe and the US, as well as China and India, given the 1.4 billion population in each country. Clothing is a necessity, so population size is key.