N Brown - The brands

PUBLISHED: May 11 2017 @ 09:11 | Comments (0) |

N Brown (LSE:BWNG) creates very distinct images for its brands, signalling to potential customers they are there to serve particular needs, e.g. very large men who prefer to buy online, or older women who do not buy online.

I’ll start with some statistics:

Revenue by brand, £m	2017	2016	2015
J D Williams	158	151	144
Simply Be	114	104	90
Jacamo	65	63	55
Traditional segment	134	136	144
Secondary brands	155	153	150
Product total	627	607	583
Financial services	261	260	254
Total continuing revenue	888	866	837
Revenue by product type
Ladies	257	246	249
Men	86	82	81
Footwear and accessories	69	69	61
Home and Gift	216	210	192

Perhaps the first thing to note is the steady, if rather pedestrian, growth of sales. The traditional (mostly still catalogue) based sales are falling, while the “Power Brands” of JD Williams, Simply Be and Jacamo are moving ahead at a respectable rate.

Clearly, the main customer is female, especially considering that much that is bought for men or the home will be bought by a woman.

J D Williams

The target customer is a fashion conscious woman aged over 50. A fairly high proportion of these customers prefer to use a paper catalogue (about half), but of new customers two-thirds are online shoppers. Sizes range from 12 to 32.

As well as women’s fashion it stocks menswear, children’s clothes, home wear and gifts. It sells a wide variety of other brands including Hush Puppies, Clarks, Nike, Apple and Samsung.

Simply Be

This niche is that of the larger, not necessarily older, woman, “bringing fashion to all, regardless of size…..we understand shape and create fashionable collections that fit”.

This is definitely a digital-first brand with 89% online and 97% of new customers online.

Carries dozens of other brands, e.g. Adidas, Armani, Ann Summers.

Simply Be tentatively launched in US in 2010, but results so far are disappointing with losses of £1.3m on turnover of £15.5m The US operation is run from the UK, “ensuring that our offering is consistent across geographies and that we remain efficient.” The aim is to grow US turnover to £100m .

The £116m+ IT project currently being built, will, when finished “enable mass internationalisation on a consistent web platform, opening up a huge raft of potential new geographies and markets to us.”

A Simply Be euro website has been launched.

Jacamo

Men only fashion, and large men at that – up to 5XL. All online.

Traditional segment

Typically more mature customers who tend to prefer paper-based marketing such as catalogues and direct mail, “This segment is an attractive and accessible market and is underserved by other retailers”.

The brands within this group are,……………..To read the rest of this article, and more like it, subscribe to my premium newsletter Deep Value Shares – click here http://newsletters.advfn.com/deepvalueshares/subscribe-1

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