Profits remained steady at Jack Wills, the fashion brand owned by Mike Ashley‘s Frasers Group, as a raft of store closures and job cuts saw its revenue fall below £30m.
The business, which was acquired by the owner of Sports Direct and House of Fraser in 2019 out of administration, has posed a pre-tax profit of £10.1m for the year to April 30, 2023, compared to £10.6m in the prior 12 months.
Newly-filed accounts with Companies House also show its revenue fell from £34.3m to £28.4m in the period.
During the year the number of Jack Wills stores in the UK fell from 52 to 33 while the number of people it employed was also cut from 304 to 233.
While Frasers Group reports its financial results regularly to the London Stock Exchange, its accounts do not go into detail about how the Jack Wills brand had performed.
Third-party deals to boost Jack Wills’ profits
A statement signed off by the board said: “The company has shown a strong performance despite the reduced number of retail stores generating lower levels of revenue.
“Levels of profitability have remained constant as a result of improvements made in operational efficiencies and tightening of costs in the current period.”
On its future, Jack Wills added: “The elevation of our multichannel retail proposition remains a key strategic objective.
“To this end, we are improving the customer experience at every step of the journey.
“We aim to deliver an unrivalled range, availability and quality of products -both third party brands and group branded products.
“The elevation strategy continues to enhance and improve our stores and all our digital operations, our product offering and our marketing channels.
“This is vital to strengthen our relationships with our key third party brand partners to deliver benefits for consumers and to drive the company’s long-term profitability.”