British fashion retailer Sosandar is to open 50 bricks and mortar stores in a kiss of life for high streets around the country.
The retailer is targeting affluent market towns and some city centres as it expands its successful virtual store to the real world.
Sosandar styles itself as the British fashion brand ‘that everyone is talking about’ and specifically targets fashion conscious women over 30.
And its dresses have won many fans after being worn by famous TV faces such as Fearne Cotton and Holly Willoughby.
It will be opening is first two physical shops in September. One will be on Bond Street in Chelmsford, Essex, and the other will open on Marlow’s High Street in Buckinghamshire.
Sosandar was founded in 2016 by Alison Hall, a former editor of Look magazine, and Julie Lavington, Look’s former publishing director, who believed that the high street was not providing what women wanted to buy.
They said: “We launched Sosandar after hearing the same complaints from women time and time again. Women like us who wanted fashion to make them feel simultaneously sexy, feminine and chic.”
Unlike the big online fashion retailers and names like Primark, Sosandar says, it has its own in-house design studio and it specialises in limited runs.
Importantly, it has expanded its appeal and sales through partnerships with Next, Marks & Spencer and Sainsbury’s.
Julie Lavington, its co-chief executive, said the company had a pipeline of store openings planned for the next three to five years. “We’re targeting around 50 in total,” she said.
Demand for online-only fashion is slowing. Asos and Boohoo have struggled since the pandemic boom, while Next and Marks & Spencer have reported a resurgence as shoppers return to physical stores.
The store openings will offer a much-needed boost to the UK high street, which has struggled amid the collapses of The Body Shop, Wilko and Paperchase. More store closures are likely to be on the horizon after Carpetright lined up administrators.
Hall, 49, said Sosandar was venturing into physical shops because figures showed that about 60 percent of British fashion purchases were now made in stores.
“It makes sense for us now not to just play in the 40 per cent that’s online,” she told the Times.
Lavington said the company had asked its customers if they wanted the brand to open shops and “virtually 100 per cent of them want us to because they like being able to do both”.
Revenue at the brand rose by 9 per cent to £46.3 million in the year to the end of March, thanks to strong demand for partywear, dresses, tailoring and knitwear.
Sosandar returned to the black in the second half of the year, to £1 million, having made a loss of £1.3 million in the first half. Shares in Sosandar, which peaked at 34p in August 2021, closed last week at 10¼p.