Ted Baker moves London headquarters to cut costs

British luxury label Ted Baker has moved out of the headquarters it's occupied for the past 20 years into a new, cheaper location in the heart of Fitzrovia in London.

The new HQ, which the brand expects to move into in the summer, will be called the Gorgeous Brown Building (GBB) - a nod to its former HQ, called Ugly Brown Building (UBB).

The new 10-year lease is for 30,000 square feet of net space at a cost of 30.33 pounds per square foot. The new headline annual rent will be 900,000 pounds a year, significantly cheaper than the 3.25 million pounds it was paying in rent for UBB, and up to 4.2 million pounds in relation to an option to lease for Block A of the Tribeca development in Kings Cross.

These savings are separate from the fixed rent cost-saving target of 15 percent for financial year 2022 that Ted Baker announced at its preliminary results on June 14 2021.

As part of its transformation plan launched in June 2020, Ted Baker completed the sale and leaseback of the UBB for 78.75 million pounds, alongside a short-term leaseback until March 31 2023.

“Having spent more than 20 years in the UBB, it will be invigorating to be in our new site in Fitzrovia,” said Ted Baker CEO Rachel Osborne in a release.

“Times have changed, as have our ways of working, and our brand has a refreshed personality and energy, which will be perfectly reflected in the Gorgeous Brown Building.”