Selfridges Enters Consultation Period, Looking to Save Cash and Reorganize Head Office
LONDON — Staff at Selfridges are undergoing a summer reshuffle as the luxury department store tries to reduce costs.
Its new owners, Thailand’s Central Group and the Austrian property company Signa, bought Selfridges in 2021 for 4 billion pounds from the Weston family, but have since loaded up the business with more than 1.7 billion pounds in debt as a result of rising interest rates.
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“We are in the process of reviewing how best to structure our head office to best deliver for customers. We will work through the details of this with our teams through the consultation process,” a spokesperson from Selfridges told WWD over email.
“Specifically, we’ve been reviewing how [our] head office, including some small teams in retail who support our stores, are organized to best deliver for our customers. Our store and restaurant team members are not part of this review,” the spokesperson added.
Store staff are understood to be unaffected by the consultation period, which is expected to run for 45 days. Jobs cuts are expected to happen in the coming weeks. Usdaw, a trade union, said it would be getting in touch with Selfridges.
At the end of 2022, the business had filled around 2,800 jobs across its office and stores.
According to figures filed on Companies House in August last year, Selfridges was provided with a 1.7 billion pound loan from the London branch of Bangkok Bank.
The department store also received another loan from EFG Bank, a Swiss-registered bank, for an undisclosed amount.
For the year ending in January 2022, Selfridges revenue sat at 653.4 million pounds, an increase of 28 percent from 2021, which was at 508.5 million pounds despite the stores being closed at the beginning of 2021.
The operating loss was 38.1 million pounds, lower than the previous year. The company cited the closure of stores for the loss.
Central and Signa have a 50-50 partnership.
As part of the deal, they purchased Selfridges’ Oxford Street flagship and its stores in Manchester and Birmingham, England; de Bijenkorf in the Netherlands; Brown Thomas and Arnotts in Ireland, and their associated e-commerce platforms and the properties in London, Manchester and Ireland.
Central and Signa’s combined existing portfolio includes 22 luxury department stores and two stores under construction in Düsseldorf and Vienna. They are the owners of KaDeWe, Oberpollinger, and Alsterhaus in Germany, and Globus in Switzerland. Central wholly owns Rinascente in Italy, and Illum in Denmark.
As reported, by 2030 the partners are targeting 9 billion euros in total sales from their overall retail portfolio. Over the past 10 years they’ve plugged 1 billion euros into the stores in their portfolio, and will invest a similar amount in the next few years.
Selfridges may be the biggest group in the joint portfolio, but the partners’ plan is to treat it like the rest of the properties in its portfolio, as the pride of the city.
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