British fashion brand Ted Baker has announced it is planning to close the remainder of its UK stores this week, putting more than 500 jobs at risk.
This comes after the holding company for the brand’s European retail arm, No Ordinary Designer Label Limited, fell into administration in March.
Taneo, the appointed administrator for the retailer, closed 15 UK shops in April, leading to 245 redundancies. Now, all the remaining stores will close – including department store and airport concession stores.
On Sunday, Ted Baker’s UK retail website read “Goodbye for now”; it is allowing customers 14 days to initiate returns. It also added that it’s “not taking orders right now”.
Authentic Brands, the US group behind brands including David Beckham, Reebok and Hunter, owns Ted Baker’s intellectual property and has been looking for a new partner to run the brand’s retail and online business in the UK and Europe.
Next and Frasers had been in the running but Authentic Brands reported that talks of a potential future licensing partnership had broken down and said that “the damage done was too much to overcome”.
Clive Black from Shore Capital told the BBC: “Ted Baker is a rags to riches to rags story of the British rag-trade, a great shame. From a modern, aspirational and distinctly British snazzy brand, it never recovered from allegations of inappropriate behaviour, leading to a prolonged period of withering on the vine.”
Before the insolvency proceedings, Ted Baker had 46 UK stores and employed about 975 people. The brand started out as a menswear brand in Glasgow in 1988 and grew to have shops across the UK and in the USA, with licensing agreements in place for stores across Asia and the Middle East.
