Birger Christensen Collective Profits Soar, Denise Christensen Plans 2026 Growth
LONDON — Birger Christensen Collective, the parent company of Danish brands Rotate, Remain and Cannari, have reported a 28 percent growth in gross profit to 8.4 million euros and a turnover of more than 27 million euros for 2022.
The company has had a 16 percent increase in revenue compared to 2021 according to the annual report.
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Chief executive officer Denise Christensen took over in 2017 and has been planning her strategy since.
As of 2023, the company has 70 full-time employees between the head office in Copenhagen and others in London and Milan. Fifty percent of the employees identify as female with 81 percent women at executive level.
“We want to move ahead with investing in retail a lot more as we’ve invested a lot of money in our digital appearance through our e-commerce websites,” said Christensen.
“I definitely believe in retail, but online presence is definitely there to stay,” she added.
The collective has a presence in several department stores with their own in-store shops, from Magasin du Nord in Denmark; Printemps in Paris, which opens in September with an 80-square meter space; Harvey Nichols and Bloomingdale’s in the Middle East via Al Tayer Group, a private holding company; La Rinascente in Milan and Selfridges in London. This is part of the strategy to move away from the old retail model to a wholesale structure.
Rotate has been the crème de la crème of the collective.
“When we launched it, there was this very sweet spot in the market with having the two influencers, all the street-style photographers, and then everything about Instagram also happening really picking up at that time,” explained Christensen about the success and strategy of Rotate’s roadmap.
Following the growth of the collective, the next step is to double the turnover by 2026.
Christensen is already on the lookout for expanding into new categories for the brands on the collective and pulling in new brands into her portfolio.
“We have the piggyback model, which means that it needs to cater to the same buyers [as the rest of the brands she oversees],” she said about her decision making process.
“It cannot cannibalize any of the other brands we have. All the relationships that we’ve been building up with buyers and our partners for the past four years, it definitely needs to be something that sits within their range,” she added, hinting that they’re not moving into sports for the time being.
Christensen wants her collective to sit along with the high fashion conglomerates such as LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton and Kering.
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