Matalan makes strides in turnaround, new in-house womenswear labels strong

By

Sandra Halliday

Published
Jun 23, 2022

Matalan has filed its accounts for its latest financial year and also updated on the first quarter of this year with the company clearly making progress in its turnaround.

Sales rose 38% to £1 billion in the 12 months to the end of February. And its pre-tax losses narrowed to just £7.7 million from £131.5 million a year earlier.

But it wasn’t all positive as the business shed jobs, with its employee count down from 11,558 to 10,837 during the year.

The company also said that for the first 13 weeks of its current financial year, revenue increased from £221.8 million to £286.5 million.

Executive chairman Steve Johnson said the market this spring “has remained volatile, hampered by widespread inbound supply disruption and weak consumer sentiment in the face of the spike in inflationary pressure on broader consumer spending”.

But the firm remains “well positioned, offering outstanding value to our customers, which has shown through in our sales performance”.

And he was particularly pleased with the “positive response to the new in-house-developed brands launched in March, Et Vous and Be Beau” within womenswear. They’ve “performed extremely well, both online and in stores”.

And referring to the latest year’s figures, Johnson added: “The results represent a strong recovery during what remained a period of ongoing challenges. Despite these obstacles, and assisted by the support packages provided by the government, we significantly improved our level of performance and profitability in what remain demanding circumstances for both our sector and consumers more broadly.”

He said that “throughout the last year, our large and spacious out-of-town stores with free parking remained safe and appealing destinations for customers” and that the two newly opened stores are “performing well”.

The stores complement what’s now “a significantly scaled online business, having grown its turnover by over 50% since the beginning of the pandemic, with lots more potential still to realise”.

The company is also working to boost digital and building on last year’s first phase of supply chain automation, it’s further developing the planning for the migration of the website onto the THG Ingenuity platform in spring next year.