Moss Bros is ‘Heading out of Fashion’

Julie Palmer

Regional Managing Partner

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Moss Bros is ‘Heading out of Fashion’

Updated: 26th March 2019

Moss Bros Fights For Survival

The menswear retailer Moss Bros is “heading out of fashion” with contemporary consumers and has a battle on its hands to turn around a deteriorating financial situation.

That’s the view of Julie Palmer from RBR Advisory, who comments that Moss Bros faces a tough challenge to increase its revenues and overall performance in the coming quarters.

“Moss Bros is currently out of fashion with today’s customers as 2018 saw a drop in revenue,” Ms Palmer has noted.

“With consumers tightening their belts while the uncertainty surrounding Brexit remains and competitors opt for a discount strategy, Moss Bros will struggle to regain its foothold on the high street.”

Moss Bros has cited unseasonable weather and the distracting success of the 2018 Football World Cup as factors that contributed to its posting of a £4.2 million pre-tax loss for the year to January 26th 2019.

There are close to 130 Moss Bros stores across the UK with profits across the business worth £6.7 million in its previous full year period.

“It has been an extremely challenging year for the business on many fronts,” Brian Brick, Moss Bros CEO, said in a statement alongside his company’s latest financial report.

“Looking forward, in common with many UK retailers, we continue to anticipate an extremely challenging retail landscape, particularly within our physical stores, as a result of reduced footfall and rising costs,” he added.

Ms Palmer from RBR Advisory – part of Begbies Traynor Group plc – said that while some retailers benefited from the long hot summer of 2018, that was not the case for Moss Bros which issued three profit warnings over the course of last year.

She added that Moss Bros could also be losing out on sales in part as a result of the trend towards more casual dress among the UK’s young professionals.

Having appointed a new non-executive director and chairman, a key challenge for Moss Bros going forward is to offer a “multi-channel experience” that enables it to compete more effectively with the UK’s leading menswear retailers.

“Whatever it does next Moss Bros needs to recover its recent loss of custom before the retailer starts to come apart at the seams,” Ms Palmer concludes.