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Tough Market For John David Group

By FashionUnited

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Fast fashion is proving to be a tough market for retailer John David Group, which operates the JD Sports chain and Ath, the more fashion-led chain. Group turnover increased to GBP458.1m across the year, up from GBP370.8m in the 10 months to the end of January 2003 a year before, while pre-tax profits of GBP6m were down from GBP15.1m in the 10 months to January 31.

Peter Cowgill, who replaced executive chairman Roger Best in March stated: "Since my return to the Group, we have been carefully evaluating our operations and procedures with a view to improving the future prospects of the business. All strategic options remain under review." Cowgill said that the core sports business, representing 90 per cent of group sales, continues to perform strongly without the need to discount, while the fashion chains continue to disappoint.

Cowgill said JD Sports' strong relationship with brands such as Nike Adidas, Puma, and Lacoste, "who recognise our pre-eminence as visual merchandisers of their products to target consumer groups, is key to our continuing success. This part of our business will drive the future business performance". The group said that trading since the year-end has been in line with expectations, "although the fashion fascias will take some time to recover from some of the buying decisions in the past year".

JD Sports