buying and merch Portfolio- ALLSAINTS DOCUMENT TO UPLOAD | Page 6
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INTRODUCTION
INTRODUCTION
BRAND OVERVIEW
Allsaints is a unique and different brand, known for it’s leathers, that was established in 1994
as a menswear wholesale brand by stuart trevor. Allsaints sold wholesale to departmental
stores such as Harvey Nichols, Harrods and Barneys. Allsaints soon became known as the
first stop for design led fashion that never follows trends, for style conscious shoppers
(Anonumous, n.d).
Allsaints opened their first stand alone store in Foubert Place, London, on November 1st
1997, Allsaints day (Anonymous, n.d). since then Allsaints has opened 200 stores worldwide
in countries, Belgium, Canada, Chile, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Kuwait, Mexico,
Netherlands, Peru, Ireland, Russia, South Korea, Spain, Switzerland, Taiwan, Turkey, United
Arab Emirates, UK and USA (Allsaints, 2017). they currently have concessions in places such
as Selfridges, John Lewis, Coin (italy), Paris (Peru and Chile) and Bloomingdales (Anonymous,
2017).
In 1998 Allsaints womenswear was launched, with Kait Bolongaro being the original
womenswear designer for Allsaints, until the end of 2005 when Stuart Trevor sold Allsaints
to Kevin Stanford, they then went on to launch Bolonogaro Trevor. Since then a lot has
happened within Allsaints including their online presence, in 2006 their e-commerce website
launched, and three years later Allsaints launched a new version of their website including
international versions in a range of languages to target foreign markets (Anonymous, 2017).
William kim joined allsaints in 2012 as chief executive; his vision was to globally expand
the brand and drive growth in the core UK, US and Asian markets. He pushed the brand
into venturing to new territories such as Canada, the Netherlands, Germany and France
(Hounslea, 2015). In 2015 Allsaints opened its first store in Dubai (Iyer, 2014). Only recently,
in 2016, Allsaints expanded to Japan with a website and a store in Tokyo (Waller-Davis, 2016).
“Last year we moved from 11 countries to 18, and by 2020 we should be trading in 30 to 35.” –
William Kim (2015)
Financially Allsaints have been doing well since the 2010 collapse of Icelandic banking
(Anonymous, n.d), which impacted the brands financial backers. In its last financial year total
sales rose by 9% to £252.5m including a 7.4% rise in the UK due to the introduction of bags for
the first time and the expansion of ranges in knitwear, coats and jackets, inparticular their
leathers. Almost a fifth of Allsaints sales are made online via third party sites and their own
website, rising last year to 33% to £47.3m (Butler, 2016).
Figure 2
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