Next snaps up 25pc stake in Reiss for £33m
NExT has bought a 25pc stake in upmarket fashion brand Reiss.
The UK’s largest clothing retail chain will pay £33m for the holding and lend Reiss a further £10m to help it recover from the pandemic.
Next has the option to buy an additional 26pc for a slightly higher price any time before July 2022 – handing it a 51pc stake and control of the company.
The deal reunites Next chief executive Lord Wolfson with Reiss boss Christos Angelides, who worked for Next for 28 years before leaving in 2016. Angelides will stay on as boss of Reiss.
Next already stocks Reiss clothes on its website and the deal will see Reiss’s online operations move to Next’s Total Platform.
Wolfson said: ‘Reiss is an outstanding brand with enormous potential and a first class management team. We are excited to see what can be achieved Reiss, which counts Britain’s Got Talent judge Amanda holden and the Duchess of Cambridge as fans, was put up for sale by its US private equity owners, Warburg Pincus, before the pandemic.
Its first store, selling men’s clothes, was opened in London’s Bishopsgate in 1971.
The company moved into women’s clothing and accessories in the early 2000s, and now operates from 183 stores and concessions in 14 countries. The chain has previously said photos of Kate Middleton wearing a white £159 Reiss dress for her official engagement portrait in 2010 sent the brand to ‘stratospheric’ new heights.
But it has struggled in the pandemic as customers swapped its signature suits and tailoring for jogging bottoms, and commuters and tourists deserted its city centre locations.