Office Holdings

Office Holdings
Industry Fashion
Founded 1981
Headquarters London, England
Number of locations
 105
Products Shoes
Parent Truworths
Website http://www.office.co.uk
An Office store in the Southside Wandsworth shopping center in London.
An Office store in the Putney Exchange shopping center in London.

Office Holdings is a South African-owned company that operates the "Office" chain of shoe shops in the UK, Ireland, and Germany, and concessions in Las Vegas, New York City, and Chicago. Office Holdings has a little brother Sports Trainer chain, Offspring.

History

The company's first store opened in 1981 under the name 'Office London' with a concession in Hyper Hyper on Kensington High Street. The name came from the fact that the shop was constructed using second-hand office furniture. The first stand-alone Office store opened on Kings Road in 1984; as of 2014, the company has 105 stand alone stores in the UK and more than 47 concessions.

In 1996, Office launched its Offspring brand, a fashion sports footwear concept, which currently has 5 stores in the UK. Poste, an upmarket men's boutique, was launched in 2000; it is styled after a typical gentleman's club. This was followed by Poste Mistress in 2001, a ladies' footwear boutique selling labels such as Vivien Westwood and Dries van Noten.

In 2015 Office was warned by the Information Commissioner's Office to improve its data security practices, after the personal details of more than a million customers, including passwords, were found to be stored in an insecure unencrypted database outside the company's core systems. Remedial measures included enforcing a revised data retention policy to ensure data was only kept for as long as actually necessary.[1]

The company is privately held, and was purchased by Tom Hunter of the West Coast Capital Group, whose portfolio includes High Street shops Qube and USC and low-cost hotel chain Travelodge. West Coast subsequently sold to Silverfleet Capital in 2010.

In December 2015, South African clothing retailer Truworths acquired Office Holdings for £256 million.[2]

References

  1. ↑ "Shoe retailer Office warned on data breach". BBC News. 20 January 2015. Retrieved 20 March 2015.
  2. ↑ https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/mar/24/whistles-bought-by-south-africas-foschini-group
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