buying and merch Portfolio- ALLSAINTS DOCUMENT TO UPLOAD | Page 6

6 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 7