Tory Burch makes UK and German loss, pandemic has hurt business

By

Sandra Halliday

Published
Nov 30, 2020

Tory Burch UK, which runs four British stores and two in Germany, has reported an after-tax loss for the 12 months ended last January. It lost a relatively small £654,250, but this was significantly worse than the modest profit of almost £42,000 it made a year earlier, although the prior year had contained 53 weeks rather than 52, which would have skewed the figures.

The company continues to have backing from its American parent company and the firm’s commitment to the British and German markets is ongoing, it said. 

The loss came despite the business reporting sales 3.32% higher at £24.9 million. But the cost of sales also rose sharply from £7.9 million in the previous financial year to £9 million this time. It was affected by currency exchange issues. with currency effects having a negative impact to the tune of £229,000 in the latest year after having been a positive £45,000 the year before.

The firm’s gross profit was £15.9 million, down from £16.1 million a year earlier but operating profit rose to £608,000 from £65,000.

Yet it’s unlikely to report higher sales for the current year with the company saying that its operations in the first half were impacted by the pandemic as it was forced to temporarily shut its stores. 

In the UK, the company has full-price stores on Regent Street and New Bond Street, plus Westfield London and an outlet in Bicester Village. In Germany, its full-price store is in Munich and its other location is in Outletcity Metzingen.

With city centre stores suffering from low tourist flows and office workers continuing to stay home, even when stores were allowed to reopen, Tory Burch woudl have seen lower visitor traffic than usual.

And with stores closed again in another wave of lockdowns, it said it can’t accurately predict what the final impact will be on the year’s figures, especially with the end to the Brexit transition period looming at the end of this month.