SuperGroup

SuperGroup
Public company
Traded as LSE: SGP
Industry Retail
Founded 1985
Headquarters Cheltenham, United Kingdom
Key people
 Peter Bamford, chairman
Euan Sutherland, CEO
Products Clothing
Revenue £597.5 million (2016)[1]
£73.1 million (2016)[1]
Profit £41.3 million (2016)[1]
Website supergroup.co.uk

SuperGroup plc is a British international branded clothing company, and owner of the Superdry label.

Superdry products combine vintage Americana styling with Japanese inspired graphics. It is listed on the London Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the FTSE 250 Index.

History

Flag over the Regent Street Superdry Store in London

Cult Clothing Co was established by Ian Hibbs and Julian Dunkerton in Cheltenham in 1985, at which time it was trading as "Cult Clothing".[2][3] It expanded during the 1990s and established stores in a number of UK university towns and cities, from Oxford and Cambridge to Edinburgh and Belfast. It opened its first store under the Superdry name in Covent Garden in London in 2004.[4]

Under Theo Karpathios, a nationwide then global expansion of Superdry took place.[5] The business floated on the London Stock Exchange in March 2010.[6] Dunkerton appeared in the Sunday Times Rich List 2010, and was estimated to be worth £180m.[7] The company issued a profits warning and placed its store opening plans under review in February 2012; the share price quickly dropped by 18%.[8]

On 22 October 2014, it was announced that Dunkerton stepped down as CEO of Superdry and was replaced by Euan Sutherland, the ex-CEO of The Co-operative Group.[9] In February 2016 Dunkerton sold four million shares at £12 per share (for a total of £48 Million), but remained the largest shareholder with a 27% stake in the group.[10]

Image

Superdry does not overtly advertise and does not actively pursue celebrity endorsement except their recent deal with Idris Elba. With this said, a Brad leather jacket worn by football player David Beckham sold 70,000 from 2007 to mid-2009, becoming one of the best-sellers for the company.[11][12]

The company's products include frequently meaningless excerpts of Japanese text, inspired by the common Japanese practice of placing decorative English text on items to increase their fashionability and appeal, a phenomenon known as Engrish. The company explained to a Japanese television crew in 2011 that they deliberately use simple machine translation to generate Japanese text, and that they are aware that the texts often have no meaning.[13] The Japanese text incorporated in the brand's logo—極度乾燥(しなさい) (kyokudo kansō (shinasai))—literally translates as "Extreme dry (Do it)", the text in brackets being due to the translation software used offering alternatives depending on whether dry is intended as a noun (e.g., super dryness) or an imperative, (e.g., dry this shirt out).[14]

References

  1. 1 2 3 "Annual Report 2016" (PDF). SuperGroup. Retrieved 28 April 2017.
  2. ↑ "SuperGroup has super first quarter after implementation of new growth strategy". Retail Gazette. 5 September 2014. Retrieved 29 March 2015.
  3. ↑ "Cheltenham staff to become millionaires overnight". 17 November 2009. Archived from the original on 1 October 2015.
  4. ↑ "Fashion retailer aims to build on the opening of its biggest UK store". Property Week. November 2009.(registration required)
  5. ↑ "SuperGroup co-founder Theo Karpathios quits". The Independent. 14 August 2012. Retrieved 28 April 2017.
  6. ↑ Investors Snap Up Superdry Owner's Shares Sky News, 23 March 2010
  7. ↑ Sunday Times Rich List: Who's up? This is money, 26 April 2010
  8. ↑ Simon Bowers. "SuperGroup issues profits warning after Superdry's tough January". The Guardian. Retrieved 3 April 2015.
  9. ↑ "Superdry founder replaced as CEO role by ex-Co-op boss". BBC News. 22 October 2014.
  10. ↑ BBC News Superdry founder sells shares to fund his divorce 12 February 2016
  11. ↑ Guardian (28 May 2009), "David Beckham jacket tussle ends with rap on the knuckles for Primark", The Guardian, London, retrieved 10 August 2009
  12. ↑ Daily Mail (30 May 2009), Primark settle Beckham leather jacket tussle with Brit designers Superdry, London, retrieved 10 August 2009
  13. ↑ "Superdry: Popular UK Fashion Brand Uses Gibberish Japanese". Japan Probe. Retrieved 1 October 2014.
  14. ↑ Wells, John. "Superdry". John Wells' Phonetics Blog.
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