In response to falling sales and EBITDA for the year to August 30th, 2014, Monsoon Accessorize, which saw John Browett resign from its CEO role in February, drafted in former Jacques Vert chief executive Paul Allen with the remit to overhaul the business. The focus is on closing unprofitable stores, range improvements and developing ecommerce revenues.
Unusually for a retailer of its size, Monsoon has no external borrowings but seeing sales fall 7.8 per cent to £509.1 million and EBITDA drop b 18.7 per cent to £50.6 million, before exceptionals, has been deeply disappointing for founder Peter Simon who commented “Paul Allen has set about a group-wide performance improvement programme aimed at strengthening our brand and ranges, reducing costs, improving the returns from our store investment programme, and tackling under-performance in parts of our international business. We will also strengthen our digital and ecommerce offering.” He added “We expect these actions to bear fruit over the next two years, although there will be an inevitable cost in the current year, when we expect a further fall in profitability.”
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